Akai MPC Key 61: Gamechanger or Hype?

[Music] well hello there and welcome to the channel my name is derek and today we're going over the akai mpc key 61. is it hype or is it ready for prime time let's talk about it we got a lot to cover in this video let's get into it [Music] alright so now we have the keyboard turned around and we'll just start from left to right you have an expression pedal you have a foot switch and you have a sustain pedal this has one less pedal input than the modi x6 and the same amount of pedals as the phantom o so phantom mode is going to give you like an expression pedal uh a foot switch and a sustain as well and so does this so just kind of showing how this compares to what other keyboards in the market actually have this gives you a midi out a midi in and a midi through um the modi x gives you a midi in and a midi out but no midi through uh now this has cv and gates it gives you uh eight uh cv and gate um jacks and that's actually more than the big phantom so the actual the big phantom i have the phantom 7 it's actually more uh cv and gates on the back of this than the big phantom the big phantom gives you four this gives you eight uh the modi x doesn't give you any cv and gates the phantom o series doesn't give you any cv and gates uh either so uh something that is you kind of unique to this price point um is you know uh having cv and gate connectivity so if you want to connect your your modular gear and stuff like that uh you definitely have a way of doing that we're just going to move down uh the keyboard here and now we have inputs now these two inputs uh there's input one and input two and the both of these inputs here are um combo jacks so you can plug in either xlr or you can plug in an uh a quarter inch uh trs jack and both of these are supplied with phantom power you see there's a switch right here we can turn it on and it will supply phantom power to both of them so you can connect your condenser mics uh for doing like vocals and stuff like that studio vocals and stuff so that's a great addition there for those inputs uh your montage is going to give you regular trs inputs but uh it's not going to give you xlr inputs with phantom power um the mode x will give you regular trs uh inputs but it's not going to give it to you with um uh the xlrs with the phantom power and uh neither is the phantom oh the phantom o doesn't give you combo jacks xlr inputs in order to get this kind of connectivity you would actually have to go with a phantom a regular phantom the big phantom and it gives you the same kind of connectivity with the um with the uh with the phantom power um even the core chronos doesn't have anything uh like this either the korg nautilus doesn't have this so this is something especially for the price point that is specifically unique to um the akai so for people who actually record vocals like me in the studio and you want to actually do it in your keyboard this is a great way of doing it because you can connect all of your you know your special condenser mics and stuff like that and uh and use those to record your vocals inside of the keyboard and then it's got some knobs here for your your gain and it's got a switch so you can switch it from line and to instrument and you have it on both of the uh both of the input jacks there we're sliding down a little bit so you get your uh you get your main uh left and right uh outputs and then you get two additional uh outputs as well so that kind of setup there is the same as the phantom uh o series because phantom o series gives you two main left and right and then it gives you two additional uh outputs that are assignable just like these uh as well now if you went with the modi x the modi x only gives you main left and right and you don't get any additional outputs on the mode x but you do get it on here now if you were to jump up to like the the um the montage then the montage gives you the same amount of outputs as this if you stepped up to the phantom from a phantom o series step up to the phantom and you get an additional output so it gives you uh your left and right and then it gives you four additional assignable uh outputs and uh this keyboard here then you have your uh usb 3.0 um drives here so you can connect your flash drives um here you can connect you know anything you can connect um like uh ssds and stuff like that you can do that as well um connecting it here and uh use that um and then here right here is where you would just uh you would connect to your uh connect to your computer now on the phantom o you only get uh one of these jacks i don't believe it's a um i don't believe it's a usb 3 but it is a usb port uh but you only get one of them and then you can connect to a computer as well and the same with the the modi x you only get uh you only get one instead of two so this does actually give you more connectivity um in its price range than the other keyboards in this in this particular department now if you went with a i think the montage uh the montage only gives you one um however if you went with the um like the big phantom then the big phantom is going to give you um two of these so that's that there and then you have a network cable none of my keyboards actually have ethernet because this actually has wi-fi and bluetooth or you can connect to the internet via ethernet cable as well and i'm sure akai is going to be adding some more functionality i know this works for like a ableton link um and you can connect to your computer you can turn on the wi-fi on your computer and you can like update your your programs and stuff like that but uh lots of potential right here uh for that network to be used um for you to be able to use the internet with your uh with your um with your keyboard uh lastly here on the back we just have our uh power on switch and then we have our regular ac in um so on the back of this keyboard an ac in so that means the power supply is actually inside which makes the keyboard a little bit heavier it's not super heavy because the it's actually made of plastic this whole case here is made of plastic it's still a good build but it is made of plastic instead of a metal chassis um but it has the power supply internal so there's no wall wart and i will be very honest i actually prefer having that in dealing with a little bit of extra weight um rather than having the wall wart that comes with the modi x and the wall wart that comes with the phantom o um i would rather have an internal power supply because a lot of times if something is to break uh or that can break something that can break easily is those kind of adapters and uh and then they're not easy to find a replacement for those that work properly and so on and so forth so i like having just that there so that is the connectivity in the back of the um of the mpc key 61 and now let's take a look at the front panel and talk about that all right so now let's take a look at the build quality on this keyboard uh the build quality on this keyboard is actually excellent um yes it is all made of a plastic chassis but it is actually a very good build everything feels solid and well made high quality just like you kind of expect from you know npc right now uh akai does a great job it i did a great job with the mpc live mpc live 2 the mpc x and the mpc one those are all built very well the build quality is good and the mpc key 61 is really um is really no different um everything is really good now what people want to ask is is how is the how is the key bed so i say the key bed is actually very good but i'll put a caveat in there it's very good for its price range so when i say that i mean it is not as good as the roland phantom it is not as good as the yamaha montage it doesn't have as much travel it doesn't have as much travel in the black keys right and it's not quite as it's not quite as responsive as those keys but it's right about where you know it's right about where the phantom o is so it's right about the phantom o's uh range now to me this key bed is certainly better than the than the modi x the modi x to me is the cheapest key bed uh that i have actually it's the worst key bed that i have um i actually measured all the way from end to end on the modi x on my modi x and it was actually a little bit shorter than the same key range on the phantom and the same q range on the montage so by it being a little bit shorter when i play i can notice because i'm actually more sloppy when i play that keyboard and i was always wondering man every time i play the modi x i just feel like i'm just sloppy and i thought maybe because the black keys up here are a little bit thinner and maybe you know maybe the keyboard was just the keyboard is just a little plasticky and cheap and kind of clicky clackety and so i thought that was the issue but the issue really is the measurement itself and so when you've kind of developed a muscle memory like i have it actually makes a difference but if you're not really a keyboard player you might not really notice that and some other keyboard players that i know have not really noticed that but for me i noticed it at least on mine and the distance between the keys now on my modi x is uh you know they're not all uniform so you can see some are further apart from one another after playing it um and that really happened within maybe two weeks after having it i started kind of noticing that it was a little wider in some spaces and stuff like that but the keyboard the keyboard on that is just not as robust as the keyboard on here now these keys they are actually a little bit smaller um they're actually yeah they're actually a little bit smaller this way lengthwise they're a little bit smaller but for me that doesn't really mess up my playing at all by it being um by it being just a little bit smaller that doesn't really mess up my playing by being shorter now from measuring from end to end it's exactly the same all the way down to a sixteenth of an inch as the modi x i mean excuse me as the montage and as the roland phantom uh that i have and so you know i don't get any problems when i'm playing this as far as being able to play clean right so uh very good very good keyboard now keep it now the thing about this keyboard here is that the keyboard actually has after touch so the modi x which is the baby brothers of the montage the phantom o which is the baby brother to the phantom uh the nautilus which is the baby brother to the now discontinued chronos none of those keyboards actually have aftertouch with the big threes what people call them yamaha korg and roland what they do when they come out with their budget um keyboards is they remove aftertouch from the keyboards well in this keyboard it's not removed you actually get after touch in here so will you think the keyboard is good well it depends right so everybody has a different opinion on what a good key bit actually feels like but i will say this in general if you are coming from using inexpensive midi controllers you will like this keybed if you are coming from montage phantom stuff like that then this is going to feel more like a budget key bed to you but what you have to remember is as far as this price range it is in that budget price range okay so other than that it's got a variety of different controls and stuff here it's they're very very good of course you get your 16 npc kind of pads now these pads are smaller than the pads on like the the mpc live and the mpcx uh but it's the same size as the mpc one pads right so let's get you get your 16 pads and you have pad banks so this is one bank of 16 pads if i hit this button here now you have another bank of the 16 pads if they hit it again you get another bank of the 16 passes hit it again you get another bank of 16 pad so total in total you actually have 128 uh you have 128 different pads and the 16 is representing those 128 so you can switch through the various banks it's got a new sounds button here or you could do you know the sounds on the screen itself to select your different sounds get to the new you know their new kind of uh operating system here to select your different sounds and stuff really quickly but it's not really a new operating system it's kind of a skin or the old operating system um and then you just have a whole bunch of different things a few buttons that i do want to point out is one is the grid you can hit grid and this gets you to your piano roll and your piano roll has pinch to zoom functionality and this is where you can go in and edit all your midi notes in your data your midi and all this kind of stuff move notes around and stuff like that uh lengthen them out or whatever uh you can add you know change the velocity all kinds of different stuff here you know a standard kind of uh piano roll right and you can get to it very quickly by just hitting the grid it's always there another button i want to point out really quickly is the undo uh button and you can do a shift and it would be a redo button so you can do undo and redo here on this keyboard uh the cool thing about this is that you get multiple levels of undo on the roland phantom you only get one level of undo so you can record something and you can undo it but if you recorded something stopped and then recorded something else you could only want undo one level back uh this i don't know how many levels back you can go i have never ran out yet so uh it does add to the creative process by having that undo button there it adds to the creative you know you can be creative and experiment and do a bunch of stuff and know that you can undo it and then you can always undo it and then you can always redo it as well um so the phantom one level of undo the modx one level of undo uh the montage one level undo core chronos one level nautilus one level uh in fact i do not own a keyboard i've never owned a keyboard that gives you more than one level of undo so as far as this being a workstation and now playing in the workstation market that undo is a great thing right and then you get your transport controls and stuff here as well so you get your record you over it up you stop your play you play start so on and so forth pretty standard stuff here uh you get increase and decrease buttons and you get four q-link knobs now these are touch sensitive when you touch the knob it'll tell you what parameter that knob is actually going to be affecting you when you touch it it pulls it up so you can see it so you don't have to actually turn the knob and adjust the parameter before seeing what that parameter actually does nice touch there uh none of the other keyboards that i have have touch sensitive knobs at all um and then you get your your main encoder here and you can also push it to select different things or whatever so your q links here uh actually you can you actually have four here but you have different banks of q links so you can go through your q links and this actually gives you 16 different knobs you see here you hit the q link button and now you're on your next set of knobs and then your next set of knobs and then your next set of knobs so there's four here but actually represents uh 16 npc guys and stuff you guys know this the people who aren't from npc may not know this kind of stuff then of course you get your pitch bend and your mod wheels but it's uh it's just constructed very well laid out very well and i really like i really like this uh keyboard something i didn't show you is that on the back uh is a compartment where you can actually install your own ssd and i did install my own ssd i installed 500 gigabytes uh 500 gigabyte ssd and it's as simple as putting in a battery uh you simply plug it in and you screw it down and that's it right so it's like putting in a battery in like a old-fashioned remote control car or something like that um it's very very easy to do now you can do that with the cord chronos it has a slot for you to add your own additional ssd the only thing is you have to take the entire back of the keyboard off and keep track of all those screws make sure you don't touch anything you're not supposed to touch because now the keyboard is completely open and and then you install your ssd and then you got to put everything back the way you found it here it's like installing a battery there it's more like doing surgery on your keyboard so it makes it a lot easier uh now the rolling phantom the phantom oh the montage the modi x uh those you can't open them up and install anything inside of those you can always just you know connect flash drives and stuff like that like you can with this but you can't open it up and add any kind of ssd it's just a different system their entire system is just flash and everything is available for you right away there is no ram and stuff like that so that's a little different and the nautilus i don't believe you can open that up and add an additional ssd it does come with like i believe a 60 gigabyte ssd but i don't think you can open up and add something to it like you could uh with the chronos so that's something that it has on the back of here you can open it up but overall just a great layout a great keyboard and now let's go into some of these sounds here let me go to my edit instrument so we just have my um this is a yamaha c7 grand [Music] [Applause] so i think that this keyboard is on par and i think it's on par with the other uh keyboards and stuff out there on the market right now i think it's it's definitely on par with those um it's definitely on par with the ones that i've been mentioning in this video so it's not gonna sound as good as keyscape it's not gonna sound as good as like omnisphere it's not gonna sound you know but those those those vsts are a lot bigger in size even the samples of the key pianos and stuff like that they're monstrous they would take up all the all of the ram uh inside of this inside of this unit so you can't put things in there with that much detail uh as those you can't put sounds in here with as much detail as those because you simply don't have the room you have the the hardware limitations right um but as far as if we're comparing it to other workstations i believe the quality level is just as good and that's really what i think we should be comparing it to we should be comparing it to you know other hardware keyboards not necessarily comparing it to um vsts and stuff like that that you have inside of your computer uh now along those lines now people will compare them of course uh but that's okay but um i think as far as a keyboard it's on par with everything else um but as far as like the price of the plug-ins i think the price of the plug-ins it's pretty steep to get all these plug-ins that come with this keyboard if you don't have the keyboard you're gonna put it in a different npc currently right now the recording of this video if you buy them all together it is 500 when you consider what you can get for 500 out there in vsts and the sound quality you can get for that 500 it really does begin to look way overpriced now i do believe it's overpriced but i don't necessarily i can't necessarily say it's way overpriced because none of those other plug-ins can you actually put in your hardware keyboard and take it with you without a computer and so that convenience is actually a big deal and a lot of people don't see it like oh that's not really such a big deal right you know a lot of people don't really see it that way but it really is a big deal so i'll give you a story um when i first started to play out when i was first gigging and playing out i had an alesis qs7 my elisa qs7 i used as like my master keyboard uh like a midi controller i didn't use the sounds i just used the keys and the you know the pitchman and mod wheels had after attach and stuff like that so that's what i used in the elisa's qs7 just the keys then how at least this qs7 was connected to a yamaha rm1x sequencer because the elysius qx7 did not have a sequencer in it and then the qs i mean then the yamaha the yamaha r1x sequencer was then connected to a roland xv 3080 sound module because that gave me 128 voice polyphony and better sounds than the alesis qs7 and then that was connected to a rack amp and then the racket was connected to two passive speakers so literally i had six items to go with whenever i went gigging and i had to plug all those things up my setup time my tear down time and everything was exponentially higher my rig my rack and stuff it took up more room than other people's stuff or whatever and it was just more complicated if you plugged everything up and then try to play a sound and you didn't get any noise then you had to go through all this stuff to figure out where the issue was somebody else could come in with a motif and a powered speaker and they would have everything i had in their two items that i had with my six right and so that's kind of the way i see this when you have a keyboard connected to an npc now you know you don't have to have two different things a midi keyboard and this is set up and got to try this different stuff whatever you don't have that if the plugins and stuff are already inside you don't need a computer to have your sounds and stuff with you so um it really makes it a lot more convenient but yes technically speaking a powered speaker is just an amplifier and a speaker in one you could have them separately right but it's not necessarily convenient to have them separately in all scenarios in most scenarios right so that's the way i feel about this but in general [Music] i think the sounds i think the sounds are actually really good you get all these different editing parameters and stuff this is the actual piano you get all these different editing parameters that you can do you get your dynamics you get age you get a release you get heart attack you get the lid you can take the lid up and down you get delayed you can reverb you get you know your level or whatever right and you got multiple uh pianos in here as well so i can come up here and now this is the um this is the steinway d it's got some different presets that i can switch so i can change and i can do chunk i can switch in i can do soft [Music] right so i can go through different things it gives me an upright piano as well so [Music] so just a variety of different sounds and you know editing parameters and stuff for each of them the pedals i can come in here and i can adjust all kinds of different things whatever i want to do it's available for me to uh for me to do in a very easy approachable to use interface right so let me just come over here i can just hit reverb and i can go i can change it from this hall reverb i can change it to chamber right and now you got a different uh reverb i can come over here and i can turn up the mix [Music] it's got my delay and some of that i can turn it on and off real like here really easily or can turn on off right here very easily um and i can come over here and i can you know do the reap i can do the feedback and different things and whatnot and so it's just a whole lot of different things i can do and it's very very easy to do let me go back to my main here let's just pick another one now so now i'm using another plug-in and this is the studio ep i come over here and edit the parameters and once again there's a whole bunch of different parameters and stuff i can edit here got my envelope i got my mechanics all my chorus tremolo all this kind of stuff i can go okay right now it's on suitcase but i can come up here and i can do a whirly if i want to right i can come over here this one is called planet and of course i have a whole bunch of different things and a whole bunch of uh editing parameters and stuff i can get to really easily um i got my amp simulator here i could turn off i could turn on the amp simulator first sorry right and i can turn up the drive if i want to [Music] right so that's you know that's all there uh for you and you can go through you can edit this stuff however you you know edit to your heart's content so very very good very very good stuff here [Applause] so very very good stuff uh let me go back to my main here let me just select a different one let me just go to [Music] so go back to my sound so right now we're on this uh cello and now we're in it using a different vst or a different plug-in rather and um then you get a whole bunch of different you know parameters and stuff that you can edit but you know the same kind of i come over here to the reverb i can change the reverb to a hall let's see we go to hall and i can turn the mix up [Music] i mean to me that sounds very good [Music] like that sounds really good to me and the way they're sampled is actually very good so i hit softly that's the sound i get hit hard you can hear the bow [Music] so very good very good [Music] has aftertouch [Music] so just really good stuff as far as i'm concerned i really do like a lot of the samples and stuff in here and i definitely think that this is on par if not better than a lot of my other hardware uh keyboards if we're comparing it to those things so great sounds and uh and what not inside of this keyboard now of course it comes with like six thousand different presets now we just gotta remember when they say six thousand presets that's what akai says and it comes with over 6 000 presets and i really do uh believe that the only thing you just got to remember that a lot of them are duplicates because you have your fabric excel plug-in which has you know you know all your different kinds of sounds you know bass trumpet you know uh piano strings everything inside fabric xl but then you have a fabric plug-in which has the same instruments inside of it but now it's going to use less less power from the keyboard so you're going to take up probably less ram and less cpu usage and that's going to keep you from you know going over the limits of the hardware um if you need to and especially if you're coming you know coming using these plug-ins on an npc x live a live two or a one uh where you have less ram um then that's where these plugins will come in handy so the fabric the fabric piano and the fabric electric panel they are duplicates of the fabric xl the stage piano and the stage ep so uh just something that you would certainly want to uh keep in mind so but still it's a ton of sounds right for a hardware keyboard the amount of sounds that you're getting in here i think is more than you know comes with coming with the sounds um you know from the factory is more than anything else on the market so you're you're certainly not going to be missing out as far as choice is concerned and there's just so many sounds and we don't have time to go through all of them and all the different plugins and stuff like that i certainly plan on doing more videos so this is not going to be the only one i certainly plan on doing more um and we'll go through really the functionality but right now this is more of an overview of the board and a little bit of a we're just talking about some comparisons between what's on the market right now from other manufacturers right so then we can make a determination on whether or not this is a game changer so now let's take a look at some other things here so i'm just going to go into my main menu here let me just pull up my piano [Music] i think that um reverb is going to drive me a little crazy so i will personally turn it down some good enough go back to my main here so what you're looking at here this is the standard npc screen this is your main screen and under your main screen here what you're looking at is you're looking at an overview of your project so what you're looking at is a project we have a project loaded up right and each project is made up of sequences tracks and instruments you got sequences tracks and instruments so let's start with the sequences which is the first level there now all you npc guys you know this but people who are not coming from npc they may not be aware of this so you're literally looking at your sequences up here this first little column here is your sequences now inside of a project right you can have up to 128 sequences in a project what is a sequence a sequence can be an entire song or a sequence can be just like a verse or something a chorus part of a song you know it can be whatever you want it to be whole song part of song it's up to you right so you have this sequence here and you have your bpm you can set your bpm to whatever you want to set it to and and then you can have up to 999 measures per sequence you get up to 999 measures another great thing is you're recording you can either record a pattern fashion where it's gonna pattern it's gonna loop and you know you can record in a looping fashion or you can record linearly so you can record completely linear you just hit this button here it takes off the loop and you can just record from start to end until until it stops right and so you decide how you want to record now let's compare so the phantom the big phantom right regular phantom the phantom gives you a 64 bar pattern sequencer right you can only do pattern sequencing on it you cannot do linear sequencing so depending on the style of music that you're trying to record you may not want to record loops you know what i mean if you're playing jazz so maybe you were going to do some soloing and stuff like that you don't want it looping right no you can't do it on the um can't do it on phantom right because it's going to loop because that is the limitation of that product right uh so you can only do patterns it's 64 bars uh not 999 so uh 64 bars that you can uh record right the um yamaha montage gives you 256 bars right so and then it's going to loop it's another pattern sequencer you get 256 bars with the yamaha montage okay that's great um uh and so you can say well i can record in a linear fashion as long as i don't go over 256 bars i can record linear as well and that's very true but in the yamaha montage there is no grid feature you cannot edit your midi data once it is in so if you accidentally hit a instead of a flat you can't go in after you recorded it and change that note at all there's no way to do it it's not just that it doesn't have a piano roll there's no way to edit your midi data one of the major things about recording using midi is the fact that you can go back and make changes later you can't make those changes later in the montage or in the modi x right you can in the phantom o right but it limits you to 64 tracks here you can record in the npc you've been court linear you can record looping right and you can you know change all your midi data and stuff once that's inside so full blown um full-blown sequencer in there uh the nautilus right which is out now the nautilus doesn't have a piano roll right so if you want to change your notes change the velocity stuff like that you're gonna have to go through a list and do a whole bunch of steps right it's going to be a lot harder so if you played a drum track and then you wanted after you played the drum track you thought to yourself wow i really want those high hats to be louder in the mix it's going to take you forever to do that on a novelist or forever for you to do that on a uh core chronos right it's gonna take forever to do that right here very very simple very very quick so i really do like the sequencer in here uh better than the other keyboards and stuff that are out there for more flexibility okay let's go back let's go back to our main here so you get 128 sequences right now each of your sequences can contain 128 tracks not 128 tracks per project you get 128 tracks per sequence and you get 100 up to 128 sequences per project so you get a lot of tracks right you're not going to run out of tracks you know uh having all those tracks now let's compare you right the yamaha montage is going to give you 16 tracks the motif same thing the phantom o is going to give you 16 tracks uh phantom phantom mode 16 tracks the core chronos quark nautilus is going to give you um 16 tracks of midi and 8 tracks of audio i mean 16 tracks midi and 16 tracks of audio so that gives you some of the most tracks you get you know a bunch of audio tracks and you get a bunch of midi tracks well 16 midi tracks well where it has this beat is you get 16 true audio tracks but in here you only get eight audio tracks but you do get a 128 midi tracks now a midi track in an npc can actually house audio so i can use an audio track to record something record some audio or i could use the sampler to record some audio and then once that audio is recorded i can then take that audio and add it to one of the pads now it becomes a midi track and it will free up my other tracks now you can do some bouncing and stuff in the cor chronos as well but it's not in the nautilus but it is not as flexible it is not as easy to use and it takes a multiplicity of steps to do it i mean here you just hit bounce the sample and boom and you have it right so very thought out very very good and again you get 128 you get 128 midi tracks right as opposed to the standard kind of 16 you get 128 midi tracks and some people say well i only need 16. and that's great but the fact is you have the option here you can explode your tracks with your drum tracks you can explode them so your hi-hat's on one track and your snares on another track your kicks are on another track your tom's on another track your cymbals are another track you know i mean just just you have a lot of flexibility when it comes to mixing and stuff like that and you're gonna run out of tracks on these other keyboards these phantoms and stuff like that you're going to run out of tracks a long a long time before you run out of tracks on here okay now per project you can have 128 different instruments right now if you have a whole bunch more different tracks then you know some of the tracks you're gonna be searing the instruments but you get 128 instruments now you only get you only get eight plug-ins but with only getting eight plug-ins you can do the same thing bounce your plug-ins once you get it recorded you bounce it to sample and now it becomes one of your 128 midi tracks and it opens up your plugins and stuff again but truly you only get eight plugins but you know as far as your you know your your drum samples and stuff like that not necessarily drums but just like the where you have your instruments and stuff on your pads and stuff like that uh you can have 128 of those right you get you can do have 128 key groups or whatever the case may be right you just your your only thing that would limit you is the amount of ram inside of the board so the bigger the samples and stuff that you're loading in and stuff like that that's where you could run into an issue if everything is super big you got these super monster size multi samples and stuff like that but other than that yeah you really have 128 uh different instruments that you can that you can use not to mention you know beyond that knee have a sampler right and the sampler in here blows out everything else right npcs right a regular npc that's not mpc key you know npc live mcx mc what they're known for is their sampling and the samplers by far blow every other keyboard out of the water i mean it's it's to me it is not even close so let's talk about the montage the modi x they don't have a sampler so throw those out you can forget those uh they don't have a sampler at all right um you can load multi samples in but they don't actually have a sampler while we're talking about loading multi samples in on the yamaha montage you get 1.75 gigabytes for your multi samples on the modx you get one gigabyte for your multi samples this comes with 32 gigabytes of storage for your multi samples right out of the factory right so you right away you can carry more stuff with you in this right not only that of course you can install your own ssd like i did install the 500 gigabyte ssd you can install a terabyte you can install two you can install three you can install four terabytes inside your keyboard you're not gonna run out of space is what i'm saying for your multi samples but the montage the modi x you get 1.75 for the montage and one gigabyte for the modi x the phantom multi samples you get two gigabytes for your multi samples and those two gigabytes are shared with roland's expansion packs the more expansion packs you have the less room you have for multi samples the more multi samples you have the less rooms you have for um expansion packs right uh the phantom o which is you know the number one complaint of the phantom mo is its storage for multi samples they give you 250 megabytes megabytes nine gigabytes megabytes literally an eighth of the storage of the big brother phantom so 150 megabytes for your multi samples and then that multi-sample storage is then shared with the expansion packs so the more expansion packs you have the less i mean so if you're going on a gig or something like that a keyboard player is going to take it to a gig and they've got samples and stuff they want to take with them you don't have anywhere near the same amount of room in those other keyboards so let's talk about the the phantom oh and the phantom the sampler that's on board is a lot more bare bones and very very much very basic okay it's not like this so first of all the pads [Music] the pads on a phantom are not touch or velocity sensitive so you don't hit it quietly and it makes a quiet noise and hit hard and you get a loud sound they're not velocity sensitive uh these are these pads here these are pressure sensitive as well so you can push down push down harder and you get different modulation of different things happening where you can make the sound go louder or something like that when you when you actually add pressure uh they're not pressure sensitive on the phantom and the phantom oh they're just there you can select them you can push them but they're not like you can use these pads basically like an instrument and you can't do that on the phantom or the phantom oh so these pads npc pads are just light years better than the pads and they're not meant to be that on the phantom or in the phantom right but this is going to be light years ahead if you're using these for sampling and stuff like that right also if you're going to take a sample let's say i'm going to take a sample and i want to pitch that sample up so i want to take the sample up and you know transpose it higher key and then time stretch it you can do that in the npc you cannot do that in the phantom or the phantom oh those are features that are not available in that sampler because it is a bare bones kind of a sampler it's not like the sampler in here but all the warp features and all the different things that you can do and a multiplicity of options and stuff you have for your sampling you can do it in here you can't do it in there this has an auto sampling feature so you can basically set your parameters that you want for your multi samples you say this is how many notes i want you to record uh this is the velocity layers how many oscillators i want you to do and what not basically you set your parameters and then you hit go and it does everything for you so if it's connected or hooked up to another keyboard or something like that it will do everything record all those multi samples and create it for you no other keyboard on the market does that at all so if you're going to do multi samples you have to sit there and you've got to do it yourself right this keyboard will do it for you so it has a major advantage over these other keyboards in the sampling department the core chronos the quark nautilus yes they have full feature samplers they don't have auto sample but sampling but they got full feature samplers but if you ever try to do a sampling on there you will be frustrated trying to figure out where your samples go and you know you got your your your right your you know your left and your right and where it stores it and how to do it how to cut it up and how to time stretch and how it's just step after step after step menu after menu after menu it is not like doing it in here like chopping up samples and add them to the pads and stuff like that you're not doing that with a cork knowledge or chronos the same way as you can do it on here it's just a better more powerful keyboard right in in those aspects right now where i think that this suffers is one one major demerit of the uh the akai npc is this so we're just gonna um [Music] all right so we're gonna go here and this is my [Music] [Laughter] [Music] now as you can see when i switch sounds it actually there was some load time right i come back over here do this it has to load [Music] and those load times right [Music] can actually kill a show because they just don't load fast enough and god forbid you actually had to load something during a show that low time could kill you if you're going from one song right into another song right into another song right into another song and that's how a lot of sets go when you watch bands and stuff perform they don't like to stop all the way and have big lull times and stuff in between and that can be something that really gets in the way and for a lot of guys that's going to be one of the major deal breakers i think what akai needs to do is they need to implement streaming i think the streaming right now is just a must-have just like the korg kronos uh the cork nautilus they have streaming so they can stream from the ssd their sounds and so when you turn from one sound to another sound it's instant it's ready to go see i i hit the keys twice and there was no sound right now it's ready if i go like this it comes in late because it actually has to load so that's one of the demerits now i did use this uh twice so far that's kind of brand new so i wasn't able to get with it a whole lot yet but i was able to get with it and you know the way i did it was just i set up my sounds here so my sounds were all set up and ready to go so i had my sounds and stuff ready to go and what i could do is i can come into the sounds i can come into the key ranges here and um i could just go shift let's go shift and i could turn on my different sounds right and then i can mute and unmute my sounds as you know as i see fit so um wanna add a pad unmute it [Music] right if i wanted to do cello turn on the ep the brass right so i could switch sounds for that and kind of you know simulate having seamless sound transitions and stuff like that without stuff cutting out without any loading well that's loading you know you can load up eight plugins at a time um that's loading yourself ahead of time and being ready for that but if you're running into a situation where you you literally had to switch sounds or you literally had to switch projects or something for some reason then there's going to be some load time so i think that's where they can make some improvements and implement the streaming i personally i like to have faders all of my keyboards have faders and sliders and stuff like that so i can quickly and easily adjust the volume on these on these different sounds because i mean right now yes i can adjust the volume by coming here and i can turn it down or i can turn it up or whatever right and i can do it with this uh in here but uh it would be nice if i had sliders and faders and stuff like that and i could actually do it and i could actually do it that way so that would be something that would be that would be good for me but there's you know some people who don't necessarily need the sliders and don't you don't really need them right but for me if i'm going to be layering a bunch of sounds when i'm playing live i want to be to access those you know volumes and stuff like that really really quickly um and so i think that's kind of a demerit as far as you know being able to perform live and stuff like that so is it ready for prime time as far as live is concerned i mean i wouldn't gig with it by itself uh i don't gig with one keyboard by itself anyway and i wouldn't use this one by itself because it only has 61 keys i need more keys than that at least 73 preferably at least 76 and a lot of times 88 really but um so i wouldn't necessarily give with it by itself but if you're looking for a keyboard a workstation and you want to be able to record full-blown projects on your keyboard i believe that the mpc key 61 is the most powerful keyboard at doing that and contrary to popular belief it is not just a keyboard for rnb and not just a keyboard for hip hop that's not you can record any genre of music that you would like to record on this keyboard um it's just that npcs have been very very popular in that genre you know in those genres that's where it's been popular but you can record a whole lot of any if you want to record jazz you record jazz you want to record classical you can record classical if you want to record you know gospel you can record gospel you know because if you want to record in pattern in loops you can create loops if you want to record linearly you can record linearly if you want to use you know different you know um sounds uh like this it has those kinds of sounds you know it's to have your your brass it's going to have your base and your drums and your everything it's going to have everything and it's not just just recording edm and hip-hop and stuff like that you can record any genre of music in fact i think this is more versatile for more genres of music than any other keyboard for the simple fact that you can record in a linear fashion and you're not stuck recording in a in with patterns right the suit cancer is more powerful the sampler is going to be more powerful and so it's just a better production instrument last thing i want to cover really quickly and then i will be done is let's come over here um let me go back to my main menu and uh and a little bit key ranges perfect and let's unmute the piano [Music] all right perfect so if i come to my sounds and i come to uh edit the instrument and i got all these different parameters and stuff here right and let's say i go to my reverb and i'm a chamber reaver right now but let's say i want it to be a whole i'm gonna turn up the mix that's fine [Music] right so clearly there are effects on this uh [Music] on this keyboard i'm going to add just a little bit of age just for fun take it out tune a little more [Music] right so i've got some effects on here [Music] great got effects now let's come back into my main here and i'm looking at my track here my piano track i can come over here and i can hit this little eyeball and right here when i hit effects you can see you get four insert effects per track and right now on all the tracks here you can see that it says no effect no effect no effect no effect what that means is these effects that i have on here they are they're basically like burnt into the plug-in itself because so being burnt into the plug-in itself means i'm not using up my actual insert effects that are available for this track so on this track i can add my own insert effect so come in here and um and i can add you know i can add you know different uh insert effects that i want to add so everyone come here and adjust the dynamics got all these different effects tons and tons and tons of different effects that you can add to this track and you come out of here you can do the same thing you can add a bunch of different effects you know whatever you wanted to add you can do it right so you get four insert effects per per track so you know say hey you may be wondering what's what's the big deal right what's the big deal 400 effects per track no big deal right that's cool uh but the only thing is um in the core chronos right it gives you 16 tracks right and on those 16 tracks you get 12 insert effects per 16 tracks so and you can split those insert effects up how you want to but you only get 12. so if you have a song and your song has 12 tracks you only get 12 insert effects right and that's it now you can put all 12 on one track or you could put six on one track and six on another or you could put three on this one two on that one four on that one whatever you get up to 12. uh if you've got 16 tracks there's going to be something there that's going to have to share its insert effect with something else it cannot have its own the yamaha montage gives you two insert effects per track so you can have insert effects on all of your tracks but you get two per track and you only get 16 tracks not 128 tracks okay the yamaha modi x gives you um two inserts two insert effects all the way up to you know from tracks one through twelve right thirteen through sixteen thirteen fourteen fifteen to sixteen yep thirteen fourteen fifteen and sixteen you don't get any insert effects on those so you get one through 12 you get two answered effects 13 to 16 you don't get any insert effects on those now you can have master effects on those but you don't get any insert effects okay so you that one falls short so the yamaha montage yamaha modx and the phantom uh now they call it a multi effect but really it's an insert effect and on the phantom guess how many insert effects you get you get one insert effect per track 16 tracks one insert effect this literally gives you four insert effects so when you're building your music building your stuff up making your songs making your production whatever it is you're making you have more flexibility as far as your tracks and stuff are concerned with your effects because this just gives you more and you get your masters and stuff like that and your masters your sense returns and stuff like that in here just like you do with the other keyboards but this just gives you more not only that but wait there's more right if i was [Music] to record this plug-in here [Music] right so if us make some sort of recording literally what i can do is i can come in here and i can hit what's called bounce to sample and i can take that track and make it a sample and now that track becomes a part of my midi samples and it goes with my 128 tracks right and it will go on a pad on each pad i get four insert effects so i can record something put on a pad and that pad would get its own ins it would get its own four insert effects and then whatever track that pad belongs to there's also four more insert effects i mean so you can really stack your effects the way you want to stack them now of course if you're using too many effects it might mess up your mix and stuff like that but all i'm saying is the options and stuff are certainly there it's more powerful it's like the dsp in here the processing power for your digital signal processing is just more in here than it is with those other keyboards so you're getting more insert effects right a lot more insert effects not just a few more you're getting a lot more insert effects you're getting more tracks right your vocal tracts and stuff i'm not sure if i said it already but you get like a vocal doubler uh you get uh pitch correction so if you are a singer or a rapper or anything like that you can add different effects and stuff to your vocals just like you would if you were using a doll this is the closest thing to a doll in the box so if you are looking for something to record and do production and stuff on i believe currently today this is the most powerful keyboard on the market to do that job if you're looking to play live and that's what you do playing live and stuff like that is what you do you're not really necessarily into recording you don't want to read necessarily record on your keyboard and stuff like that then of course you know the phantom and stuff like that those items and stuff are very good that you just kind of you know you take your pick right phantom o you know modi x uh whatever you like better but if you were really getting into production and recording your own stuff this is the keyboard today to get that's my opinion on the matter you can let me know what you think in the comments below thank you so much for watching this video please like and subscribe to this channel if you like this kind of content where we do overviews and we do reviews and stuff like that of music gear and keyboards and stuff please like and subscribe to this channel hit the bell notification icon so you get a notification when i upload new stuff because i'm always doing so once again thank you for sticking with me this long and i will see you guys on the next video

Channel: Darrick Keels

Views: 78,513

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Id: Pg4jpvvAB6s

Length: 61min 33sec (3693 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 10 2022