Akai Force: Beginners Guides to Merge Pads

easy people on these nice things here and uh this is a beginner's guide to what i'm gonna call merge pads because that's what it's called merging pads so that makes sense uh yeah this kind of came about um i was on a bit of a thread on the akai force users group um the facebook users group and um i give a shout out to amit talva for kind of jogging it into my memory he's um he made a thing called the kit mangler which is quite good um i'm gonna try i'll put a link on it and what that does is it you can copy two kits and you can layer them together over each other um which can be good it's online obviously you can't do it inside the machine but you can do it on online on the um on the it's on the web browser so anybody with the internet can do it and then just all you do is you can put it onto a memory stick or whatever and you've got two kits that are layered on top of each other this isn't what i'm going to show you i just mentioned that because that jog my memory into saying well let me show you this about merge pads so this is a beginner's guide to merge pads for anybody who's just looking at the akai force and uh or more to the point got one and they want to do something new um i know i'm waffling a bit and what i should be saying is i usually do these guides beginners guides and they're not on absolutely everything on the archive files they're always on things that i think would be interesting or something that i feel will inspire people to do music more music and be creative because that's what these devices are these devices are tools you know i mean you're the creator these are tools so your ideas come from you and then this is just a tool for you to use it always keep that in mind um so with that said i thought this was so good i'm gonna start from right from blank you know me or you if you don't know my things i don't do edits so everything's just here in real time if i do an edit it means it's really complicated so i'm not needed to so like i said again and i'm already two and a half minutes in this is beginner's guide to merge pads so what i'm gonna first do is i'm gonna get an empty project and i'm gonna clear it because um while i do this i might mention some other things that you may or may not know so what i intend to do is i'm going to merge four kits together as one thing there's a good reason why you might want to do this several but this is the one that i'm going to go with so i'm going to do is add the plus sign and then go to advanced and i'm going to do four blank drum programs blend one two three four why did they do that it means that i can just immediately load into them without having to add one or anything like that they're already there so um somewhat randomly not intentional but i'm gonna just do one kit of an each kind so that you know that all these work and i'm also going to show you a little caveat just in case you do this with any custom kits or any of your own kits or whatever to keep this in mind so what i'll do is i'm going to try and do something hip-hoppy and funky so i'll just go hip-hop for this first one go kit i'll come out here we've got kits and that's amazingly blank because uh yeah okay so i like my old school we'll have that that's one so that's one kit all right go to here and i'm gonna go to expansions and i'm going to go [Music] i'll do something from the vault so that's two kits i'll go to something from machine um let me see let me see something from machine i'm taking too long thinking about that um i didn't even mean to go hip-hop but let's see what what's there these are blank because i haven't got the preview so i've got no idea what this one is but we'll load it up see what happens there and funny enough and i didn't even think of that i just meant to do the hip-hop for the first one but since we've gone so far we'll carry on and um i'm going to do a machine expansion how many kits have i done i've got one two three ever one two one and two yeah so i'll do a third the third one i'm gonna do no i'll do this one as another kit and i'll do an expansion i'll do this one one of these i can clear that any [Music] anything yeah that i don't know what that's about but we'll do that and then one more what i'm gonna do let me just check what that is oh no that's the synth one i don't want that [Music] yeah we'll do that that's it that's better so that's that and then one more what i'm going to do is i'm going to do a kit that i made um i like of bases so load that up and that's it so i've got four keys one two three four what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna add one more kit am i gonna no i'm not no i'm not i don't need to so what bother so i've got four kits and what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna make all those four kits go into this number one here that's what i've just decided now so the caveat to this to keep in mind this will stop everything from being complicated is you want to do kits as quadrants and what i mean is usually um any factory kits what come with the archive force um come as 16 like 16 sounds and that's a quadrant and the reason why i say that quadrant is because that's quadrant a that's quadrant b that's quadrant c and that's quadrant d and the reason why you can tell that is this diamond so wherever the diameter is shows you what pads banks you are in so this is pad bank one this is pad bank two pad bank three pad bank four you can keep going up because it it's got 128 so you can go up again if i did one i could go up to that and then that would be pad bank five six seven and eight but make life easy for yourself always keep to four because they're all visible and you'll see why i say foreign as well because it's really helpful so i've got my things there so the first caveat what you need to do is you want to get rid of everything you want to keep all of these to one quadrant so for example if for some reason you said i want to use all this here you want to delete all of that there you want to delete all of that there and whatever you only want one quadrant at time for my easy use i'm not bothered about that because i can do that anyway now and you'll see how easy that is to do that so that's already a sound so that'll do so what i need to do is delete anything so that i've just got 16 sounds and this is good house nice special effects but it doesn't really matter i can either keep them in the memory i can delete me it doesn't really matter shut up so that's so now i've got 16 there got 16 there i double check it just in case check just in case you get any rogue sounds so you haven't there um i know what these are these are group um followers is what i'll call them and that's another lesson i might show one time but we're not on about that one about this so i'm going to delete all that stuff there don't care what it is so i've got that and here is a good example of what i'm on about i've got loads of bass bits but it's all lords bass bits so i need to get rid of everything down to 16. so i can keep my finger on it and just wipe it because this is so good that you can just do that and do all that and you can get rid of everything it says and if you're in doubt where you are you can look and you can see that it tells you what it is so now let me come back down to there and now i can check is there any anything else on anywhere no there isn't i've deleted everything have i yeah double make sure yeah and that's it so i've got 16 on every one so one two three four so what i'm going to do is do one thing i have to create you can either do it here or you can go to launch do launch and and then like go clip and do it there whatever it doesn't really matter how you do it you have to create a clip it doesn't have to be a clip of sound but you have to create a clip and the reason why is because you have to go into this clip because inside here is merge pads i didn't make this machine i don't know why it's there it's got nothing to do with clips but that's how they've done it so merge pad is in here same with copy pads if you ever want to copy a single pad to another kit or anything like that it's in here you have to create a clip first and then you go into grid edit and it's in there so what we're doing is dealing with is merge pad so what i'm going to do is i'm going to press merge pad and it brings you up this this is what you want to keep in mind the top one is where you're taking in information for from the bottom one is where the information is going top one is where you're taking the information from the bottom one is where you take you sending the information now here's where it gets easy all you have to remember is this is always in numerical order so if i say this and it's hip-hop whatever horse from your kit doesn't really matter it's on track two because it's one two three four that's the way it goes so keep that in mind so what i'm wanting to do just for the sake of argument i'm gonna leave that on two so i'm going to send from track to and i want to go to track one so go into i'll click that just if i didn't wasn't quite sure i could just scroll to the top and that's number one but let's say i didn't know that i could grow up to the top and number one so what this is going to do it's going to copy from track to all the pads 16 because it's a bank right to track one and the other thing what it's going to do because i leave this tick on it's gonna do it to the next bank the reason why i said make sure he's 16 is because if you have 17 it's going to ignore this bank and it's going to add on to there because it's going to say that needs to be an extension and then you can look at something and wonder why things are missing so the best idea is to keep them to 16 like i said make your life easy make it quicker so then all i do is i'll press that and what's going to happen is that information there is going to appear here like this so i'll do that again doesn't matter where i am as long as i know what i'm wanting to copy because i'm going to do track three so i'll press it again um i'll take this off no so you can see the whole quadrants press merge pad and then i'm going to do it again so let me say i wasn't quite sure so go to track three that's track three so i'm sending information from track three into number one number one and it says look it says there's mashed and hip-hop something and that's what it was if i wasn't quite sure i can rename that i might do that on the next one left that on so if i press that it's gonna appear there like that bingo ding um just for the sake of um doing it i'm gonna name this again i'll just go put my kit don't have to name things but why not mia so second caveat now first caveat remember 16 get rid of that and blah blah blah cup of tea slice cake remember that 16 parts this last one is all one color so what seems to happen i've reported it because there's a bug this is a 3.06 official so if you depending on when you're looking at things might change if there's any issues i always report in fact i could confidently say i'm so litigiously litigious is not the right word i report any issues that come up in fact i'm i must be the most amount issue reporter of anyone because i mean like i've seen and i don't know why i don't know why it is if anybody's got a machine and they're on the forum you should report a bug you should go and check and do a bug report anyway that's not about that this is what we're on about so this last one is all the same colors so what's going to happen is i'm going to do the same thing again go into the matrix i'll move back to that and i'm going to go here and i want to copy from my funk um bass kit which is in all these and i'm going to put it on my kit so when i do this observe right that's what can happen sometimes this issue occurs i'm still not sure what that is but what i tend to found what can help it um is if i go through and i double check that i've deleted everything so i've deleted absolutely everything but it still can do that so that's the only other caveat so look at this look at that i didn't delete everything look at that didn't delete everything and that's what can match you up remember to clear everything so um that is not a bug that's just me being an idiot so remember to delete absolutely everything i'm going to copy that again but unfortunately that's already copied i should have gone and undo but i'm not gonna i'll just go back to this and i'll go to here go here again so that we're on all these normal levels that's blank so let me just check so i have to go down okay one two three so let's go up to the top make sure all of these are blank as well because it probably might not be annoying me anymore this is a thing about not editing you get to see me making all my stupid mistakes at the same time and that's how we both learn right so let me just double check that's clear right so that's clear we're back down to there so um i'm going to delete this information here i know it was there but i'm gonna delete it just to do this again now so now we've just got these free so again i'll go into here i'll go merge pads the base which is now correct because it's got 16 and then what i've just done which is named because he i put the base in so it doesn't really matter and now this will appear here so when i press that it's appeared there there's no issues the only thing is and like i said second caveat the information's there but it hasn't shown up and the reason for that is because if i go into the track matrix i have to turn off pad follow track color press edit it doesn't affect anything else that you've done in so if there's all these colors in that it doesn't affect them but what it does affect is if you've got a single color and you put it into anything with varied colors it doesn't show up so the only thing i need to do is to give it a color which i'll give it this color here [Music] and in fact i don't like that color i'll give it this color that's better so i can see it fully there we go and then close out of that and there we go so now i can get rid of all of these kits because i've got them all there [Music] so you might say well what's the point of that tom and um the point of that is because you've got them all in one kit there's something nifty you can do well there's a lot of nifty things but i'm just going to show you one because i've gone on too long it's already 80 minutes me and my yabbing as always the thing about this is if you press no once you get into 16 levels so what you are now looking at make sure i'm on bank a is i'm looking at bank a but i've got all 16 levels so what i can do is i'll i'll clear this i don't have to but i'll clear it i'll do one from black so what i'll do is i'll keep these 16 levels and i'll use this because i i have a tendency to use the pads but i'm going to keep the 16 levels there so you can see what i mean what i'm doing so then i'm going to just press here to get this recording and do a pattern so i've got my thing there might might do some hearts right then what i can do is because this is all in quadrants now i can go shift and move it up an octave and when i move it over an octave i'm moving up a bank so it's not an octave really it's a bank even though it does say octave it's a bank so if i press this i'm now in bank b so i've got all of these sounds now and then right so i'll record that in now but what i'll do is i'll add it in like this so now i've got 16 levels so again remember that base that 808 well i've got the tune of the 808 now [Music] right so i can go up again and um what kisses [Music] right so i i've got no idea i'm making this supposed to go along with [Music] anything else so i'll use this again [Music] use filter down there and then i can go up and i can say right here's the thing i've got bass here so what i can do is find the tune to that this base but each one of these is is a separate thing so [Music] [Music] okay and you get the idea that woochoo was whack but you get the idea so i'm hoping that will help you i know that was long winded and you can cut through it and whatever but basically merging um several kits together you get one super kit and you've got all control over the tuning and the filter over one kit and the other thing as well is that's now one kit so i could do that with another kit i could do it with another thing here's the other additional thing just before i go now if you add the load of vocals say you did eight vocals there eight vocal tracks what you could do is you could convert them vocal tracks into what into drum programs and now you've just got all of those vocals in one drum program so if you wanted to do something live you could have like 16 vocals going a backing track 16 vocals and it would only take up one clip track see so i hope that's been helpful um don't forget to subscribe and like it if you like it and dislike if you dislike it and i hope you're well stay safe and until next time as always peace

Channel: nicethings

Views: 1,416

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, vocals, recording, mixing, mastering

Id: WGNXbYc0H8c

Length: 22min 32sec (1352 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 22 2021