Akai Force: Basic DJ Setup Guide

easy people nice things here like and subscribe after putting a post on like the archived force users group and also on Glee ear slots the Fred I asked if people wanted to see how we can set this up as a DJ device and quite a few people wanted to have it so you requested it here it is I'm going to start with a few caveats to this number one this is going to be long I'm going to try and be as fast as I can but I need to explain things so if anybody's wants to fast-forward and they don't understand the premise of how this works you might as well stop now you you're not going to get it I have to tell you the fundamentals because otherwise it's just not going to work right second four cavities this will only work on anything which is consistent that means if you've got any weird tracks what suddenly changed temple and the dot half tempo there you actually just change to a different BPM it's not going to work can't do that can't do it at all you want to in your mind this is what you want to think this is not surround or this is not Virtual DJ this is not tractor this is better in some ways far better than all the free programs what I mentioned but in some ways it isn't because that is not the priority job what this does so like I said if it's consistent be not problem not a problem not a problem at all that's not to say you can't mix something which isn't kisses on that that's just really Fafi I would advise against it if you want to do something where you've got old tracks and it's temple shifting then go and look at my akai akai false audio tracks guide I've done two but the latest one is a little bit quicker about how we explain stuff so go and we'll look at that because that's what that's how you'd want to break something down if you're going to use an old-school track the reason why I say that is me personally I like 60s and 70s music I like mixing it boom-bap hip-hop and you but I like actually getting the original samples and mixing them and that's the reason why I came across they as a DJ device because I know if I can do that on this you can mix anything on it so I'm gonna do this as a if you watch me do this you can set up your own so if you've got an AK I force you can build your own DJ mixer and then that's there and it's done and you can use this to watch that I'm gonna be telling you some of my tips what I have obviously if you've never too many to me I'm a no addict person everything is done in real time so I will repeat again if you do feel you have to shot and attention span to listeners with me yapping then I would say this isn't for you maybe somebody else is showing a DJ thing I don't know with that said let's get started first thing you need to do is you need to create two tracks to of your tracks so I'm going to just create one audio track and then another if I wanted to create all your tracks in a different way I could do it like this and go here and I could go to here and then I could go to all your tracks and then do it right just in case anybody doesn't know you can do it like that second thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go and I'm going to say deck one but track one like to keep things in an e order do it move to that next track by pressing the track number and I'll move it there obviously you can't see the rest of this because this is the part what's important here if you notice there's a little delay I don't know anybody who knows OBS please tell me how I would fix that delay he's a pain right then that's going to be dead too but still so that one is on that side that toons gonna be on that side how do I do that well I've got here the crossfader and what do we suppress the assign button and I press the light down at the bottom you can't see it but there's a light where it says warm down at bottom and that's going to be Dec 1 and it shows there you can tell if he's right because it says it's assigned even though I can't get closer I've got pretty crappy old phone and iPhone that dick says it's got a headphone socket bastard that's the only reason why I never upgraded so um and I can't be bothered to change to Samsung cuz a that's a faff unless somebody can tell me oh right so that's going to be on a and I'm going to press this and I'm going to assign this side side B the track tool so now and it shows on there so I've got a and B that's great so if I got that way I'm you just gonna come out a little that side I go that way musics gonna come out outside crossfader so we've got now we've got them both basic miss mixer on the planet that's no good because we want to be able to EQ and blah blah blah so I'm going to tell you a couple of things here first one old knobs and the two most important things you want to look at in this view when you're using this as a DJ mixer and the DJ device is project and screen the rest are irrelevant the project and screen are important and this is why I said there's a few moving parts to this and these are the two main moving parts screen is when you're going to be editing and setting up your queues for your new tracks and project is going to be when you're going to be mixing the tracks as I've shown before because you can press from more than one button at a time you can actually be in a queue position on your screen while doing something in the project position with a mixer as you can see that's more advanced but you can do that so I'm mentioning that because when people start working this they're probably going to go WOW I come up with other ideas say wow I can do this now so I'll just add for iodine right so what we're going to do is we're going to set up eq's on each of these channels so I'm going to go to mixer and I'm going to go to the insert and in the first insert of each of these channels I'm going to set up an EQ so I'm going to go down to kill EQ one the reason why is because it's got all the free bands so that's cool it's nice free band EQ and I'm gonna go back to the other mmm that to track two and do the same thing again so sorry so now I've got two EQ on bone on channel 1 1 and channel 2 so now let's talk about knobs again so make me make sure I'm on knobs good I'm on nose I'm gonna go out shift knobs because I'm going to go into the not cell to set up those eq's so what I want to do is I want to press track so me track mold and what that means is whatever I'm going to be saying up on here is going to be working for the track much of the tracks here these knobs are going to correspond to to whatever I'm setting up but here in project when I'm in the project mode these knobs here will function for wherever I am in this project hopefully you understand what that means so what I'm going to do is I'm going to reset that knob so we're back to a blank what I want to do is on track 1 so I'm going to go here deck 1 this knob I want to be the insert that the effect the kill effect which is on insert one remember we put mixers em the EQs on the first inserts or shift knobs again to go back to there so what I'm going to say is I want that to be the law gain and up so I want that to be the base which is low gain so I'm going to go go down cuz I've got all of these here over the parameters are here and I want to make sure that a slow gain what I would advise and I'm gonna do it now is make it momentary the reason being is you don't want to have you're not going to be able to see the EQs on the screen and there's nothing except on here where you'll see the EQs and if you don't make it momentary when you put it to that position it'll stay in that position so you've got to you'll have to remember all right I need to put it back to the middle but because it's got these are what they're called they don't have a click which is good means you don't know where middle is you don't know where the default is so if you put momentary if you just hold it and they let go it'll go back to the default which shall be middle it'll be just can't remember it's called something before whether it's the default one anyway in the middle right so I'm logged gain now I've got I've got base low EQ so I'm going to go to the next one and then I'm going to make that mid so meet gain and then I'll make that momentary and I'm gonna go up here I'm gonna go a high gain and make that momentary then what I'm going to do is I'm going the debt to to be on this side so I'm going to press that and then now I'm going to go to debt to and I'm going to make that the same as a bottom row so again low gain turi next one and now how I can choose which one's is just by touching them it's cooking them and it shows me where I am as well so I'm going to make that the same meat gain momentary and then I'm going to do that one for the high gain more military so now I've got nice basic mixer I've got EQ for lower on that side and thingy I've got the EQs on that side I've got eq's on this side so now I've got nice mixer I'm ready to go so let's get going so this is what you want to do you I'm going to obviously say because I don't want this muted now halfway through explaining stuff um I'm just gonna use royalty free tracks so you're not going to hear any tunes that you know because it just get muted but obviously the fundaments work so I'm gonna go to some of my samples here and let's say [Music] let's see what this future based thing is I don't even check this right full mixes so we've got nice great we've got for some for mixes 140 bpm but let's say I don't know why it is so you press you press a clip to lured into a clip so I'm going to press this to load neon Cooper for 182 lured into tech to up do it here but I'm going to start with deck one and then I'm just going to load it blam it's a tip what I've learned next thing what I should say right should say this right if I wanted to hear that and everything you're going to hear is going to just play out but obviously I would assign this to my headphones so be up coming out my headphones only I'm not going to do that so you get to see the premise of what's going on here I would assign up to there I would advise depending on how you want to be about stuff I need apprise to turn off that and just use the play button so if I wanted to check that I said all right is that the mixed one oh that's a - might want No oh that's a tune I want to play your dear me and therefore it's not in your way because otherwise that's gonna be playing well that's on and then you can get kaffir good lord I have to keep stopping in so it's better just to have it not on preview and then just go right up and you can press a button the play button to go through soon [Music] right right so I have to put my tune here the next thing when you load in a tune you want to go to clip this will take you and you'll show you what's in the clip then the two things you're interested in is grid edit and clip edit great only the only reason why you want Khalid greater it is the akai people have said no it doesn't read time right it does it's just slightly different how the dynamic of how this reads BPM detection it's a bit different but it does work it does and it's pretty damn accurate what isn't accurate obviously is the algorithm I don't know if they can fix that I don't know if it's just a process of thing so that's a different much different story anyway so like I said this is not and if I didn't say this because I can't remember ever record it somewhat be fine in a stop to forth start again if I haven't said it I'll say it again this is not sarau or this is not Virtual DJ this is not tractor this is God and bettering lawn to other ways but it isn't that because that stuff is dedicated now I don't know and like I said they might look at certain things in this and add them one of the things I would love is if it had Marcus maca maca tracks or you could add Marcus to this because that would be ace but we work with what we've got so great great edit mold the thing what you need to know about guido dick mold is you using creadit more to double check that this has read the temp all right so i'm going to click on there this has read tempo at half temple hundred and forty all right obviously i could see that it's hundred forty if i didn't know that you're gonna have to kind of you can have to wing it really on this this came in at half ten-point came out 70 I know it's 140 f you know the genre but you're playing then you can have a guess of that so if this was FF this was future it is future bass as I said if it was future bass right I know it's double that so I'm gonna press that and I'm going to double double that and the way so now that all that is is just a check that that's temples right there's some additional things was slightly more advanced but I'm not going to talk about them at the moment so now I've got a great clip edit so that that's only thing you're doing we've gridded it you just got an always check to make sure that's right just in case it does something weird like you've got a knife 90 BPM tuned and it's coming 220 if you press detect again it will detect it properly the reason why it does that is it tries to do it really quickly when you load it in but as soon as it's in the compass soon as it's in there it'll read analyze it properly so it initially when it's loading things in it doesn't always get it fully accurate but when it does do the reanalyze ation when it's in here it's pretty spot-on believe me it's pretty spot-on I've planted some tracks just to test it out and it does it does a really damn good job of getting them spot-on it's alright click Edit is where all the work goes this is where I'll go back to what I was saying about knobs and holding knobs screen you have to be in screen for this this is why I'm saying moving parts when you're in screen the reason why you want it being a screen is because you can use these knobs to zoom in and zoom out and you want to zoom in because you want to make sure your cue points are always accurate so I'm going to tell you I'm going to tell you another quick tip two quick tips first quick tip you pressing shift and you pressing one and pressing shift and pressing one because what you're doing is you're going to use that to make sure you're right on the right space on your tube let's say this tune wasn't in the right foot this place the thing what you want to be using to fix that is loop start you don't want to be using a start you always want to be using the loop start to move stuff I'm not going to go in and out I'm just going to say do that right you want up use loop start to get your coupons don't you start you start to get your coupons if you want to get advance maybe you can get into that as soon as if you like I say you understand the fundamentals so that's all right good that's dead-on as you could probably hear and I'm going to stop that number going to press play you can hear that metronome you want that metronome on in your ears because if you that metronome if the music's in time we're not metronome everything else will work you can you can loop something in a track you can stop something you can do a lot of things and it'll always work because that metronome is your guide I've got headphones on now because I've got the speaker's off obviously if this was a proper thing I would have one on and one off so I can hear what's going outside of all depending F your kind of mixer if you're on that type of DJ what you can do is you could just have the cue mix down here and you alright you're good to go okay I'm going to do this live because I want to show you how do we slide we're doing this with all of it on because I need to show you again fundamentals so remember you need to have the metronome on when just in case you don't know how you get that metronome on and in your headphones you press shift metronome hold it it will come up to there and you turn it to free and floor and now free and for is your headphones so always remember free and for is your headphones so if you're going to use these say you've got stuck to a club and you're going to use this on a mixer and you think oh well I'll put three and four in two one and two three and four into that basically what you'll be doing is you've been like negate in all of this so you don't want to do that you always want it to be wanted to you want to just use it like how you would use a DJ controller if you go to a club and you've got your own DJ controller you want to just plug into their mixer and wanted to free and far is your headphones alright so we'll switch it back and I've got that so that's that's plane that's good so now I've got my things to help I'm gonna put that to that temple you can like I says you all right you can get away with a decent amount of time stretch on a track it seems like the ability to fold your tracks mainly but you can get a decent amount you can't get away with pitch so if you start pitching stuff up just do you just want it to be able some kind of law fie style because it ain't gonna be good but you can go away or even a reasonable amount I'd say maybe me maybe 10 BPM faster is always easier because it's it's easier on the processing as it condenses compresses everything slower it's harder because he asked a stretch I'm an algorithm so yeah about 10 ppm you are are you good right so you've got that let's go back to clip and and if you don't want to start this clip now I don't want to start this clip because I like I said and I said this at the beginning so if everybody's done now on board it's because I have to tell you this stuff right I'm not gonna play the music yet because I want to just show you these things and then I'll start playing music so you've pressed select if you press select it doesn't start the track that's the easiest way of doing it there's a button down here that says select for anybody who hasn't got an ark I force I would advise you to look at all the videos before looking at this position be dull as dishwater if you haven't gotten a shot Akai force so if you press select it won't activate even when I press I it'll only just select the beat if i press this without the slit that's the tune okay so I've got me too and explain that's great if fi Fe noise as I was saying I'm going to stop that of going back to what I'm saying shift no shift one shift one is what you're going to use just to get your cue points right so let me just let me explain let's say if I was one in that wasn't dead on and I wanted to fix that cue I can press this and move through it and I can I can do fine version as well [Music] and the reason why I do loose loop star is because it moves the star as well and it shifts everything by the loop that's seven a m-- BPM and seventeen BPM momentum oh that's coming in its read up for some aim and I know why because obviously came in at seven leading it okay right so we've got that talks about that yeah so now I've got that yourself that's cute that's cute I want to press shift + 5 so it's shift 1 which makes it nom yeah launched so that I can go out and then I want it shift 5 and the reason why you want it 5 is because you want it to make sure it comes in on the bar so that's playing now so now I'm gonna click here because I'm gonna log in to this deck so say these two here that's played on that side clip great because I'm gonna check it look at this do you see white stone this is what I'm talking about finish me out so I want to press the attack and I'm gonna make it detects a change and as you can see this cannot be real hopefully my voice it should [Music] fingers right so look at obviously ready at the wrong time world but that's alright that's not a worry we know that you double that because we know what music way music so if DJ miss Donna so thought now that's great then I'm going to go to clip edit and I'm going to zoom me to make sure that cute boy so here's a good example this doesn't start in the right place so shift to settle my cue so I'm moving this eyeball eyeball here and I move and now Rick McGuire was all about going back to project I can now use product to EQ out so I'm a killing [Music] [Applause] so [Music] [Applause] so I'm gonna show you okay hello in today's track here but before I do PR tomorrow so I'm gonna walk into here and when I love into this [Applause] [Music] Britt's to make sure to read that right spread it from [Music] [Applause] [Music] so let's doing that so that would be playing while I'm detecting now [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] No screen zoom in a 180 about their deserts where the trendiest - I'm doing this fire fire [Music] [Applause] [Music] stop boys [Music] [Applause] fine I mean my six the notes the screen [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] I shouldn't really check this truck because I don't know what these truck stop [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so I'm Julie no idea what so let's go [Music] this is where it goes into chaos because I've not heard this track before I don't know where the start of it is so imagine that of the tracklist playing I'm going to stop that the imagine that of the track [Music] [Applause] [Music] so let me check that because summer don't sound right let's just make it one for me just in case go great daddy we'll sue men so we can see the beginning not Q so this is something what starts on the offbeat so that that was right I didn't know that because I've never heard that song before it's only now I'm hearing it I know that he starts in the offbeat so that was right I didn't have to touch that the younger track I did as you could see cuz that's way that mix hopefully I make sense let's keep moving let's keep moving just to prove my point I'm going to do that this tune into a half tempo and then into something else just to show that he's gonna work nothing not a tick massive tip massive right always load into the clip that's not being used coz that what that does is automatically purges and it means you'll never run out of memory the idea of this is don't loading things you don't need because you can always preview stuff off your SD cards or your USB sticks are which I guarantee is probably this better is if you get an internal SSD drive even if you just gone get like a 128 SSD just getting because you I've noticed a lot of people get a lot of buggy things and I've never had any of that and I would swear it's because I'm not using anything from this and I'm using something internal at the same time so I would advise against saving any your projects to the stuff what the thing what comes up with it yeah I know people say well that's not fair and whatever I don't know I'm just telling you what I deserved I just I've observed his best it's best to have an internal SSD separate SSD drive that seems to have no mash ups or whatever and and right I bought this in you know about this when it was day one like week one so it's very hundred now I've seen him for six quit man at mana if I could get this with for 800 quid a second and 600 quid anyway I digress so it's Korean I'm going to show that game because I think I didn't explain that slow but I'll explain it game so I'm going to play this [Music] [Music] [Music] they read [Music] [Music] okay that's cool [Music] I never so kidnap good payday to me but I want to make sure that starts on the right [Music] they [Music] No [Music] let's see how can we do this I want to do this top speed I probably want to so 134 135 the best way of doing this would be to go 134 so in fact let's counselor will slow it down and then take the warp off and then slow this right down [Music] gonna be pretty flat for me right so we tried it yeah Oh didn't I didn't make it in time I didn't make it time everyone was fast enough I'd have been able to get up to the tempo and that would have worked but then obviously I know you know what I was on the bunk I was on the wrong feet all right so so let me explain that game good I'm still working let me explain that game you logged into these tracks that automatically purges the track before saving memory great Eddie greed Eddie shows you the temple so you want to do that to check your temple clip Eddie moves your loop star to the position where you've got your cue so you want to press shift now to take it off quantize so you can kill this up now if I if I play that obviously you can hear that's not too lit that it's not right it's all over the place right now that's not good to me so what I want to do is shift to bar one that means it's going to land in play somewhere that's plain as you can hear that I've showed you how to stop the EQ so that I think is that there's some more advanced stuff but this has gone on for like nearly 40 minutes so I oh I hope I explained that with the basics I'm going to do it one last time one last time just to tell you right so right I'm just going I'm gonna do it with like some kicks here oh no same thing again oh I wish I could play you with music to show your burger cap so alright it pop I know he pops going to be around like 90 BPM right I know it's going to be right so what I'm going to do is I'm going to load up this track so I'll go into samples make sure I'm in samples make sure you read samples that's the track one with the Lord I'm going to log into there right right so I've got my thing that's in there now I'll select it I'll go a clip I've got clip edit make sure I'm on the pointer right all right it's read that perfectly let's say it didn't read it perfectly I'd press detect and then I'd make it detect that so obviously you don't want to do you don't want to you can do it on the track that's plain I would say you make sure you're on the track that isn't put them make sure you on the track that isn't plain because you can't do anything while it's doing that you can't control anything while it's doing that and move it off screen and then move that back all right okay second thing whenever you got to clip edit make sure you're on screen you make sure you're on screen because you want these dials because when you're play something and you're doing it in life live you're not going to have time to be doing all the stretchy things so you want to be in here then click Edit is where how you set your cue so shift 1 puts you in not quantized [Music] obviously that's alright if I wanted to get up say I wanted to get uptight that I could go in a bit more but that's fine well they say it wasn't you could want to go to your cue point on whatever and kill them and then ask them and then you want to go back to five so that's one bar I would say do it this one by because you can't make a mistake one bar if you've got perfect robot timing you could do it too quiet abby's if you want that's fine have you got soup missile but I mean you could got six things you don't mean but if you get it wrong you're gonna be off the shift so just until you get your head round it I would say use five then you can do whatever you like after that you play that so that's play so I could see why it can't be right they know gone we don't it zoom in make sure that starting where I wanted to see you that's not starting quite right that's going to be a bit loose so long and then just get myself into so that's right now that's right for me obviously all this would be made for third one there I mean so now go back to Knott's project and I can EQ this out [Music] okay one more tip one more tip I should have mentioned this this is this is just the DJ tip anyway and this is for digital DJ so surrounding I'm giving you this too and this is what how I always get mixes what blend perfectly if you've got a track like this it's a little more glitchy on here it's a little more glitch on here you kinda have to think about it but I will mention it anyway you've got a track and let me go back two knobs right and you want to make sure that track blends let's have a long tail lot long tail in long tail out or bullet long tail in you you can do that and you put that to say four bit beats four bars wait I'm gonna have to take off a sticker sooner or later right well that means now on here is and you and at the same time I come up from my son so if I say I went to this and I press this to do page right right actually ended up something in a look at you so like say this with that too and I got to the end and on this one I was wanted to bring this in I could do the same on here for hours or two files depending on the type of music and then I know I could start this so let's say it's too fast [Music] I think I think about this and this is what they built into it if I press I can have half of this if I deduction right I did do it right you have to do it you've got to make sure I don't do for lips or watch [Music] so I fall to tell you that probably sounded confusing as hell don't watch the end of that unless you understood that that's great so yeah please ask me any problems with that because like I said there was a lot of moving parts there hopefully I made that clear to your comment in like and subscribe um but oh just like if it was terrible but ask me any questions about that and hopefully I should be able to clear them all so after thank you for sticking with me for 45 minutes I hope that has been helpful I hope I showed you how you could set up a EQ I could have set up echoes so for example if I wanted to sell like I don't know him for an echo on this I could have done that I don't need to set up an echo why because I could use the sense to send to that and the only really only thing on what I'd need to do is I go shift here and I'd say right I'm going to do that as track 1 so I'm going to have that as deck 1 and I'm going to use this sense so I'm going to go to return and it's going to be this send on the mixer here so do we on that send anyway I'm going to D don't worry about that because these cos I should have been on track but not going to get into that anyway I hope that has been helpful hope that's been reasonably clear like and subscribe please ask me any questions gain it was long no way around it you have to understand the fundamentals before you can get into this catch me soon and as I always say and hopefully I won't cut myself off be [Music]

Channel: nicethings

Views: 3,719

Keywords: akai force, akai mpc, filter, lfo, tutorial, beats, orignal, new, arrangement, bass, drums, chords, piano keys, music scale, melody, presets, synth, note repeat, arpeggiator, chord progression, beatmaking, akai pro, hip hop, r&b, soul, funk, ableton, ableton push, grime, inspiration, time saving, ideas, realtime, remixing, djing, looping, dance, edm, sampling

Id: 1cq7iaQUp_g

Length: 47min 13sec (2833 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 25 2020