The MPC Bible is one of the most helpful ones. It's well worth the cost and he keeps it updated with the newest firmware features. On it's 18th revision.
+1 for the bible. This helped me immensly to wrap my head around the whole MPC workflow and possibilities. Very well structured learning ressource with all the project examples.
I print and bind the manual for any hardware I buy. Whilst undoubtedly I can discover a lot of the functionality just from experience, there's usually some stuff that you discover from the manual that just isn't the sort of thing you find out by chance 😊
Never tried the MPC stuff though (beyond a day with the Force before it had disk streaming), so can't give any specific recommendations..
My first evening with MPC has been promising. I’ve been able to create a nice loop and get to know the workflow. Still unsure about finishing entire tracks but I think that’ll just be a matter of practice.
I was worried that I had to get into the whole sample chopping thing but even with just the built in synths I think I’ll be able to build something awesome.
Resampling is easy, so building sfx using the synths and sample layers has been a breeze.
I don’t get the point of separating programs from tracks yet but maybe I’ll figure it out. So far I’ve just been manually mapping them one to one so far.
One reason I make a lot of programs per track is for mixing purposes later.
When you do an export of your song as stems it's uses programs as the grouping for each stereo track rendered.
So if you load an entire pre-made kit then when you export each drum sound ends up in the same 2-channel file. I prefer each being in separate tracks so as I build my drum kits I make a new program for each drum (kick, snare, hat, etc). Hats usually have 3-4 different samples so those all go I to the same project. Kicks might have 2 or 3 as well.
This also makes it more fun to jam out on using program muting. You can build you drum part up on the fly, process the groups differently, replace them with less effort.
don't get too caught up adding FX and polish until you have a pretty sufficient song written. It is easy to write a dope 4 bar loop and start messing with FX and whatnot, lose track of what you were doing and ultimately lose interest. The plague of this machine is how easy it is to churn out 4 bar loops and how hard it is to finish a track. Sketch the ENTIRE track first, THEN polish and you will be a lot better off. Look into song mode tutorials.
How's it going so far? It definitely takes some time to get the ground under your feet when you are new but I'm sure you are getting the hang of it.
I feel like I came off scary when I talked about song mode stuff, obviously there is nothing wrong with banging out a bunch of loops while you get the workflow figured out.
I haven't used an MPC in a few years but I'm sure I can answer some questions if you have any
Go rip some old disco and go crazy? At least that was a successful way to onboard my MPC. Kept bumping into roadblocks, watched some youtube tutorial, continue, etc. Rince and repeat.