Advice for a budding (10yr old) producer...

Do you have a DAW in your Mac yet? If not like I mentioned I love Logic and for the price it is a real bargain. With drum designer and ultra beat, especially ultra beat he would probably have a blast. Any chance you could get to a Mac store and try out Logic? Watch some YouTube vids on it and the included items. Like Alchemy and ultra beat etc. you may find that alone will fill his needs for now. Not to dissuade you from masculine it is better to learn one before the other trying to learn both at one time may be and exercise in frustration for a ten year old. In a nut shell take it one step at a time! No pun intended.

As for the Roli app I noise it isn't my favorite. But with the dashboards I have been using the light pad with Logic. I think though one of the other products may be a better fit since the dashboard for light pad is in its beta stage he doesn't need that possible frustration as a variable in his learning.

 

The kid is 10 man. Let em have fun making stuff and if they want to sample that comes later but why waste money on something as complicated as an MPC1000 if we don't know if the kid is going to get bored in a year or two. Not all kids stick with it and as cool as it sounds to talk about record sampling the fact is that kids nowadays want to make stuff they hear and synth heavy EDM focused stuff is what's hot right now. i highly doubt sampling as we knew it back in the day (crate robbing) is ever going to be a thing. The business behind it is different, and now you have 1001 loop and patch labels out there making stuff. Most kids just sample from Youtube.

An MPC1000 imo is the worse thing you can get for kid just learning imo.

 

that's like saying there's no value in the county fair because kids today don't do anything but play video games. there's truth in what you're saying but that doesn't lessen the value of going to a record store or anywhere for that matter with another person and learning together. each record as I'm sure you well know is a history book and an audio engineering lesson In one, you can't get that with schmapple packs..... btw the county fair still has value too... also keep in mind that I'm taking into account that the op is a parent obviously looking to get into the activity with their kids so my suggestions are heavily based on that, I'm looking at the whole experience in total. also gadget is more complicated than the mpc 1000 but I'm not against it , just it's lackluster sampling capability in spite of having two samplers in it .
why would a 1000 be the worse thing for a kid, it teaches you to listen, teaches the difference between linear and non-linear , the correlation between tracks and sequences, working within limitations, and the nuances of timing.... plus it teaches you how to hook more than one instrument up to another and how they interact.... a kid could make a whole album with just a 1000 and a microkorg and really have the experience of touching, shifting positions, and using all of ones senses in the process ... as opposed to just looking at a screen and swiping

 

A kid can make a whole album doing the same on a computer, I don't see what an MPC1000 brings to the table other than frustration imo. Remember the kid is 10 and they have been using an iPad. They are already acclimated to a certain workflow or have expectation of what music making is to a certain degree. Having him use an MPC1000 which is arguably very old technology on top of being (imo) a pain in the ass to use regardless of how functional it is (again imo) is only going to scare the kid. It needs to be fun. Besides that he's interested in EDM, I think familiarizing them with a piano roll or music theory, sound design (subtractive versus FM versus wavetable synths) is far more important than learning how to sample in the context of what they are interest in. Not everyone samples and I personally don't think it's should be the bedrock of musical education or exploration. You can teach him how to listen and pick up things from records by introducing him to interesting music just as well without an MPC1000 and without sampling. Like teaching him how to play and understand the music he's listening to. That to me is more important. But to each his own I guess.

Korg Gadgets imo are fun to use. Making it fun is what it's all about imo.

 

In my opinion being 10 and acclimated to using an iPad doesn't mean that a kid his age or younger can't learn piano, guitar, drums, bass, string instruments etc.... or a sampler.....I personally think the bedrock of musical education should be 'musical education'...... here's my post that we've been discussing just incase you thought I said the kid should only be sampling.


"This is not a bad idea at all but the sampling game on gadget is atrocious, which provides an opportunity to suggest that if you go this route ,also get a used mpc 1000 and a record player, both you can get for super cheap, this will give him all he needs for his sampling game and going digging for records with your son will undoubtedly be allot of fun not to mention by digging with him for samples he'll learn allot about history, music, production, and how not to be stuck in front of a computer for the rest of his life. Best of all just through listening to different records it will all start to come together for him, once you show him that edm is not a thing but a great many things that come together to make a thing it will probably blow his mind as he begins to not just listen to the surface but hear the roots of the music"


furthermore I understand that you feel the mpc 1000 is frustrating but there are allot of kids that aren't frustrated by it and think it's fun

 

In the end, OP, what does you kid think will work best for him. A lot of options here but if he doesn't like it, in the end he will not use it. I can't say any of these approaches are wrong in this thread but I am curious where he wants to start.