Akai Force Tutorial | Using the iPad with the Akai Force as a Sound Module

yo what's going on everybody man it's your boy marcus elbow welcome back to elbow media studios and if this is your first time i appreciate you clicking on this video man hey you might want to consider subscribing because if you're into music production you're into learning cool equipment and you end up just watching cool streams with us having fun interacting with the community you're in the right place man oh yeah also all we do over here is keep it crunk man let's get double it studio check it out guys today i got a treat for y'all i have been waiting to do this video for a while i've been trying to figure out how to shoot it in a way to where you know you could see everything and get a clear-cut understanding on how it work today we're going to look at how to take your ipad and aum and turn it into a multi-rack sound module for the akai force or the mpc i'm gonna be using the kind of force but you can do this with the mpc as well npc live too so this is going to be a very cool tutorial and if you grasp it and you understand it then you're going to have some fun using all the sounds that comes with your uh with your ipad and being able to take that over to the akai force man this is going to be great all right so let's get a start on some of the things you're going to need to be able to get this started first of all in order for you to get this started you're going to need these cables there's no question about it these are the cables you're going to need you're going to need to get your camera kit adapter as you can see i got the type c but you also can get the lightning port one that comes with that i have that one as well but since my ipad is a 2018 anything 2018 and above is going to be a type c and this is the one you need to get just let me let you get a good look at that because it has a usb it has the uh 3.5 millimeter earphone jack and it also has another type c so you can hook up your power okay you're also going to need to get you a quarter inch uh cable with a 3.5 millimeter at the end that way you can hook up to your camera kit and you could also hear sound coming from your ipad okay you're also going to need the the cables that come with your cod force or your mpc uh maybe not the mpc but the account force these are the adapters for your midi cables so you're definitely going to need that for your ins and out and you're also going to need this midi to usb midi cable interface as you can see here you have your your uh midi cables connections here and you have your usb here okay i will leave uh a a i will leave um i will leave links in the description for you to be able to go and purchase at least these three the other one comes with it but if not then you can also purchase those as well i'll leave a link down just in case you didn't buy and it didn't come with all of the stuff if you bought it used or anything like that but that's all you're gonna need right there so that you can get started man so let's let's just go ahead on and do what we do we're gonna go ahead and head over to where i got everything set up and we're going to connect it and hopefully i can get you guys going and you can learn how to do this and you can start having a real uh great time using all the sounds that's inside of your ipad or your iphone all right all right man let's get it so the first thing we're going to do here is we're going to connect our midi cables to our midi uh adapters and if you look closely here you will see that it has midi end and midi out here let me show you right there that says midi out this one here says midi in as you can see there that's going to be important whenever you start to trying to hook this up to your ipad you're going to need to know which one that is so as you can see here i have those guys connected and if you look right here these are where the connections go so all i need to do is i need to come out of the i need to come out of the ipad and then i need to come into the akai force so what i'm gonna do is i'm going to look for my midi out and my midi in again and what i'm gonna do is the quickest way to remember this is out is in and in is out so right here you have out so what i'm gonna do if you can see that right there i will try to zoom in on that i'm just going to put my n into the out am i out into the end okay that's connected okay and that's connected now the next thing we need to do is we need to connect to the ipad and we're going to use our camera kit here so hopefully you guys can see that okay so now we're here at the ipad and what we're going to do is we're just going to connect this to our ipad here okay now that's connected make sure you guys can see that okay let's get our cable okay and as you can see here all we're going to do is connect our usb to our usb on our camera kit okay and now that portion is done and we are connected as you can see the red light here is an indicator that you are connected okay now we need to connect the sound to make sure that we could hear our sound from the ipad to the akai force we're going to need these cables here these cables right here remember we had our quarter inch to our 3.5 millimeter we're just going to go ahead on and get this connected okay and what we're going to do is we're going to go into 1 and 2 on the input section here on the akai force and just want to make sure that you're on the line connection here okay and you don't have phantom power on because we're not using the mic and then what we're going to do is we're going to to connect this directly into our ipad okay i'm gonna do is we're gonna connect that directly here so that we can get sound coming from the ipad and that's connected so now we make sure we got everything connected here we have our sound coming from the ipad here okay and then we have it going directly into the account force and if you want to you can kind of mess with your dials here to make sure everything is leveled looks good to me okay all right let's move on to the next section where we start to get everything working all right let's go ahead on and see what it's going to take for us to get everything hooked up uh with this whole system okay so first thing we want to do is let's just go ahead on and set up uh aum real quick since it's the uh uh you know not the most complicated but it's it's going to take a few things to get that set up so first thing we're going to do we already got aum up so we're just going to go ahead and get a um going i'm going to create an audio um audio track and then what we're going to do is we're going to hit the plus button and go to audio units and we're going to put digitalism inside of there okay now since digitalism is up uh what we want to do is we want to go to the menu section and first thing we're going to do is we're going to look down here inside of the midi section and we're going to first of all all notes are off so what we want to do is we're going to go here to use midi and then what we want to do is we want to highlight we want to hit none and then we're going to make sure we just hit number one that's going to be our first midi channel the way this works is you have a midi channel for each of your sound modules and then inside of the akai force you're going to set that up to make sure that your midi channels coincide with the midi channels that you have inside of a um okay so let's just go ahead on and make sure that we have a few more set up okay and i'm just gonna go here and i'm just gonna hit another one and we're just gonna go with digitalism again uh just for the sake of you know let's go with house mark two i'm gonna let house mark two load up and then we're going to do the same thing we're going to use the usb midi okay and then we're going to again hit none and then we're going to hit number two to let it know that we want number two to be uh our second midi channel and just for the sake of you know redundancy we're gonna do it again we're gonna go to audio units and then this one we can put in um let's just go let's just go with digital one okay and then in digital one we're gonna do the same thing we're gonna use midi uh usb midi which is the our midi card that we have we're gonna check off none and then we're gonna hit number three okay so now essentially what we have now is we have three midi devices which is three sound modules and all three all their own individual channel okay so let's go ahead on and uh let's go ahead and look and see uh how can we make sure that we're good inside of akai inside of the archive force okay okay so what we want to do inside of the car for us we want to go to our matrix and what we need to do is we need to go here and we need to create us a midi track okay and what i'm going to do is i'm just going to go ahead and create three midi tracks here since we have three sounds over here okay now since i have three midi tracks what i can do is i can double click and go inside of the midi section and then tell the account force to look at the usb midi and the way that you do that is you just scroll down and you hit your usb midi on your control here and then you can also do it on your inputs and your output okay and then that first one is going to be midi channel number one as you can see right there i hope you guys can see that okay and then what i'm gonna do is i'm going to just leave out of that one i'm gonna double click on number two uh i can leave the the input to all ports but we just want to make sure the second one is usb midi we're gonna make sure that one is number two and then we're gonna go here to the third one and we're gonna do the same thing go to output put that as usb midi and then we're going to go to number three and then we're going to close that out okay now if we go back to one we want to make sure that we could hear what's coming out of the ipad in order for you to do that you have to set up the account for us to be able to listen to the ipad the way you do that is you go to menu and then you're going to go into your sample section and then when you get into your sample section you're going to hit monitor on so now you can hear any type of audio that's coming in through the inputs okay so now if i go over here to digitalism okay and i hit the keyboard section here [Music] you could hear it okay i know y'all can hear that right so uh i can turn it up here [Music] right and if i just exit out of that and i go into the other one and i hit the keyboard again you can hear that one and if i go into this one to digital uh digital one i hit the keyboard again okay we can hear all of those and they're ready to go so we know now that we have sound coming into our akai force coming from the ipad okay but we still need to make sure that we could play what's going on so what i need to do now i'm gonna go back to the matrix okay and then what i need to do is i need to be able to play on the keys so if i hit the note button i should be able to play it [Music] that's coming straight from the ipad right there if i switch channels that's coming from the actual number two and then if i switch channels again [Music] it is just that easy and i also have my keyboard hooked up as well [Music] i just want to make sure i have all of that on all channels and now you're hearing me play my keyboard [Music] so now essentially what you're what you're seeing happening right now is all of my sounds are not coming from inside of the forester coming from the ipad because i just showed you how to connect each one up using the akai force and using the ipad in tandem to be able to connect all of my sounds and i can go in and i can record just like i would on any other device if i wanted to okay [Music] i can go in here to my ipad and i can change my sounds if i want to let's see [Music] [Music] whatever i want to do i can do it here and all i gotta do is gonna actually follow it's gonna actually [Music] if i just go in and do like i would normally do and create a clip here for bars just to show you that it will record uh let's go ahead and hit shift and let's go back to the matrix and then we're going to hit shift i'm sorry we're going to hit hold down knobs and hit screen that way we can see what we're doing and uh let's change the tempo to a little something faster maybe 145 and then what i'm going to do here is i'm going to go ahead on and arm the track which is already armed and then i'm just going to hit record [Music] and i can start recording and go in here and edit this just like i would anything else [Music] i can go in and grab that and edit it just like i would anything else just nudge it on over [Music] all right let's get out of that and then what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna go back to the matrix i'm gonna go to number two i'm gonna go ahead and create another clip and then i don't know what sound is inside of there okay i like that let's go ahead on and let's go ahead on and do another recording so i'm just going to hit record [Music] just that easy [Music] go back to the matrix go to the next sound [Music] let's go ahead and change the octave on that [Music] all right let's go ahead and hit clip i'm gonna go and create a new clip don't stop and go and record this [Music] remember we can go in and edit that [Music] go back to matrix and as you can see here as you can see here uh just as easy as if we were pulling sounds directly from the actual inside of the force from the plug-ins we can do the same thing with the ipad now in order for you to be able to take those sounds and make sure they stay inside of the akai force you have to turn it into an audio track okay and that takes a little bit more doing uh it's not that difficult it's fairly easy uh let's see if we can knock that out real quick without keeping this video going too long okay all right guys so we're back in the studio for this last portion uh i want to make sure that you guys could really see this and it could be clear uh so that you will be 100 uh good on how to make this happen what we figure ready to do like i said is we're going to take the midi data that we're pulling from the ipad and we're going to turn that into an audio file so that you can move away from the ipad and continue working and mixing the track solely in the akai force and not continue to be tethered to the ipad so let's go ahead and get that done so as you know we already created three tracks i've already converted two of those tracks i'm going to convert one more just so i can show you guys how to do it i actually did it in the video but i didn't record the audio unfortunately so that's why i had to come in here and do it in here plus i want you guys to be able to see it uh clearly so you know exactly what we got going okay all right so let's go ahead on and get this done so i still have a track plan here uh we still have the same sounds and everything uh only difference is now you only have one midi track which is number three and what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and turn that into audio file so i've already created an audio file but let me go ahead and uh you know show you how to do that again just in case you don't know all you have to do is hit the plus to create a track and then we're just going to go here to audio file and it's just that easy it's been created okay so when we go back to the midi file what we want to do is again we want to convert this into an audio file so that we could use it inside of the force like a sample so let's go ahead and hit the menu button and then we're going to go to the looper okay then we get inside of the looper let's make sure we have that track solo so i'm gonna go ahead and solo that okay it's been a solo okay so let's go back to the looper okay now that we're in the loop what we want to do is want to make sure that we are on four bars or whatever however long you want if you want to be two bars or whatever just make sure you're on there and you can loop multiple times but we're just going to keep it on play not recording overdub since we're already all that's done we're ready to go all we have to do is hit record to arm it then all we have to do is hit play when you come back around we'll stop it now we got it let's play it [Music] what we're going to do is we're going to hit the export and then once we export that out we're going to export that to audio clip number three remember we already had only got three tracks we started with two now we got three so let's go ahead and put that to three we're gonna go ahead and extend get that clip out of there we're gonna go ahead and hit clear we're gonna head over to the matrix okay and now we have that in there but let's go to the mixer and what we want to do is we want to go ahead and unsolo that we're going to mute number three and we're going to let's go ahead and solo uh let's go ahead and solo the audio track and then we're going to go to the clip and what you got to do is you got to go to the grid and then get the pencil tool and then you want to select the sample and take off warp because if you don't take off warp it's going to act silly and it's going to sound weird put it on four tracks i mean four bars sorry put it on four bars and you should be good to go go ahead and push play let's launch it [Music] now we got it done so if i go back to the mixer and then i un solo that [Music] that is mine now so if i wanted to i can go to number three hold down delete and then delete number three delete one as well and now we have our three tracks we already know four was just one i created just for you and now we are good to go we no longer need we no longer need the uh the ipad we just use the ipad to get the sounds out of it use it like a sound module recorded all the sounds until the akai force and now we can continue making the beat and doing our thing all right guys i hope y'all enjoyed that i hope you really understood that and grasped uh that process on what it takes to get that done it's not really that complicated it's just some uh steps you have to go through to make sure that the akai force and the ipad are communicating over midi and uh yeah it's pretty simple you learned a lot in this though you learned how to interface with that you learn also how to do audio recording as well and how to take that audio recording and put it into the track so it was a lot in this one man but i really been waiting to do this and i hope you enjoyed it i really hope you got something out of this and hey run out man and make some killer beats all right yo this your boy marcus elbow this has been elbow media studios man thank you for coming through don't forget to hit that subscription button notification bell hit that up like button hit the down like it's up to you and uh it helps uh youtube uh when it sees the interactions it helps you to push these videos out to other people so that they can watch them so listen i appreciate you already know that don't forget to come holla that's on the stream on saturdays at 6 00 p.m and uh yeah go watch the next video what are you waiting for the height man your boy mark gazelle i'm out one piece

Channel: elbowMedia Studios

Views: 4,871

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Id: HNquRlE0rqI

Length: 23min 58sec (1438 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 23 2021