Suggestions about recording hiphop

[Smoove03]

I was wondering what good equipment should be considered when dealing with rap, hiphop & rnb. Not just rapping but composing the actual music.

I use an MPC 2000, kawai keyboard, tascam 488, guitar w/amp, and a small 8 trk mixer. I need more sounds and effects. But I wanna expand my shit. And I need some suggestions of what I should be focused on next and the future.

I definately need a good pair of monitors. Any suggestions? Thanks ;]

Smoove

[Change of POETS]

Monitors?

I have a set of Alesis M1 MKII actives... they do the job sufficiently...

Except one of them the amp died, so I'm sending them back to Alesis under Warranty to get replaced.

[Smoove03]

how much you talkin after they get replaced? Ill check em out on the net and see what they're goin for and let you know what Im gonna do. You gotta pic of em?

Thanks!!

[jugalo180]

you may want to move over to a digital audio work station (daw) if you want to really expand in effects. you can get expansion boards for the mpc, some cd's with samples on them and even a sound module. the mpc is a workhorse. as far as hip hop goes you pretty much have what you need to start out producing and recording. i didn't read anything about your mic. in hip hop samples and loops are your meal ticket.

that's just my 2 cents. oh definitely get some monitors. i sold mine and i regret it till this day.

[Smoove03]

im glad to hear that. I have read the MPC manual but im still not clear on how to plug in something like my keyboard, play something, save it as a loop, and assign it to one of the pads. At the company I work at they have it hooked up that way. If you know anything bout that, I would love to get a little more help.

I have been looking at digital for a long while. I was thinking about recording to my computer directly. That's how I used to do it, but I got addicted to hardware! Digital can get pretty expensive so ill definately work on that.

I bought an scsi cd drive for the mpc, and bought a few sample cd's from the internet. They are truely a blessing =]

Thanks for the help.

[jugalo180]

holla at flo dolo and hi_d_ho_man. i believe those cats both have the mpc in thier arsenal. glad to see that i was of some help. post a thread for them or send them a personal message.

[homershines]

Smoove; Do you also have a zip drive for your MPC? That is a great means of saving sounds and sequences. If you are really busy on it, you should also get an external SCSI drive too. Something say like a 1 or 2GB drive will do. This could be your master storage for all of your work.

Peace.