Early morning dawless deep progressive house jam w. MPC One, TR-8s, TD-3, Model D and Hydrasynth

Testing out the MPC One as a brain of the hardware dawless setup. Thought about using it mainly as a sequencer but it’s just impossible to ignore all the other features it has! The MPC is well known for its powerful sampling and sample manipulation engine but how about the bundled synths and effects? Well, I must say it’s awesome for that also! So, besides using it as a sequencer, I explored the sample playback and some of the virtual synths and effect plugins. I used plenty of effects for the samples and virtual synths, mainly delays and reverbs.

Breaking down this setup, here’s how it’s comprised:

For main drums I used the TR-8s sequenced by the MPC. I divided all the TR-8s drums into 4 MIDI tracks on the MPC. One for kick, another for mid percussions (snare, toms, rims, etc.), another for main hats and the last track for secondary high percussions, such as shakers. This way I can easily mute each of these groups with the MPC. If I want to control each individual drum I can just use the faders on the TR, like I do during the intro and outro.

For bass I used the TD-3 running through one of the Zoom CDR pedals for some chorus. The Model D plays the main lead and it is also processed by a Zoom CDR pedal with a kinda complex effects chain (compressor, EQ, delay and reverb). For secondary lead, which plays the same notes as the Model D, I used the Hype synth. There is also another virtual synth playing, which is the Odyssey. For the pad sound I used the Hydrasynth with it’s internal FX engine. All the 5 synths have their own MIDI tracks in the MPC so it is possible to mute them easily. I also used another three tracks for some supplementary sounds. First two for top drums (one clip/loop track and one drum pad track) and the third for FX samples. The FX samples were heavily processed adding some high feedback delays and long tail reverbs. The full track was divided into 4 MPC sequences which were triggered manually when I considered appropriate. Regarding routing, all the hardware synths are mixed together with a small mixer and sent to the MPC. The MPC runs into the external mix input on the TR which has a sidechain effect applied to it, triggered by the kick. The TR is outputting two stereo signals, one containing all the TR drums and another everything that is coming from the MPC. These two stereo signals are mixed with an old analog DJ mixer.

Hope you like it! Please listen with headphones for better experience! 🙂