AKAI MPC ONE: Review and full workflow tutorial // Comparison to MPC Live

hi this is MP Siwon a music production sampler synth and sequencer that works both standalone as well as a controller for a Kai's NPC music production software the big news about MPC one is that it brings in a lot of the capabilities of its bigger brothers the MPC X and the MPC live in a much more compact and affordable package though with some trade-offs which I'll cover in [Music] this video I'll focus on what MPC 1 can do stand alone without a computer attached to it compare it to the MPC live go over its entire workflow including all the ways that you can sample and sequence and of course discuss the pros and cons compared to other competing products on the market before making this video I asked my subscribers for questions and got over 200 of them most of which I will attempt to answer let's get started let's start by just taking a look at the machine itself front and center are a seven inch multi-touch display and sixteen velocity and pressure sensitive pads you'll mostly be navigating around the interface pressing the buttons to get to specific screens then using the touchscreen perhaps with one hand and changing parameters with the data dial the data dial has plus and minus buttons I don't end up using them a lot I use just the dial itself you can also double tap any parameter on the screen and change its parameter that way so you don't have to use the data dial you can also edit parameters using the q links which work in groups of four more on the q links later on additional buttons are just shortcuts to ver your screen so you can access a screen or a mode by hitting the menu and choosing let's say looper over here or sampler over here but you've got direct access using these buttons as well so you'd press sampler to get to the sampler screen if you wanted to access the looper you would either hit shift sampler or just double tap a button to get to it's shift function in most cases regarding the pads I'm not a great finger drummer to say the least but they a little bit too rough for me compared to others I've used I actually changed the responsiveness setting to as sensitive as possible and that solved the issue for me maybe I just need to work on my finger drumming muscles in terms of connectivity and PC one has an SD card slot and 8 inch headphone output in the front and on the back are stereo outputs stereo inputs each with dedicated level control 5 pin MIDI in for playing the internal sounds and 5 pin MIDI out for sequencing external gear NPC one can also sequence modular gear with for physical cv outputs which can facilitate 8 cv outputs if you use an insert cable like this one with a ring in tip separator if you're not using the cv outputs from Angela you can't use them as audio outputs maybe that's a future suggestion for a firmware update if possible or NPC to a USB type B jack lets you use NPC 1 as a controller for the MPC software as well as an audio interface but only when in controller mode not when you're using it in standalone mode a USB type a host jack lets you connect MIDI controllers or a USB Drive for additional storage I've tested you can't currently connect a Wi-Fi dongle or bluetooth dongle for wireless connectivity you also can't connect another audio interface to expand the number of inputs or outputs on MPC 1 I don't know if it's officially ok to use a USB hub with this but it worked successfully with me I used a non powered USB hub to connect both external storage and this keyboard worked just fine NPC 1 also has an Ethernet port for network connectivity and for things like an online connection to splice and able to link which I tried and works really well you can't at least as of the current firmware use NPC 1 as a controller for Ableton Live like you can an MPC X and MPC live but you can use it in MIDI controller mode of course MPC 1 comes with about 2 gigabytes of factory content onboard and 2 gigabytes more free storage on its internal drive I have successfully connected both 128 gigabyte external drive into the USB port and 128 gigabyte SD card seems to work fine and you've got 2 gigabytes of RAM for loading up samples into your project as of version 2.7 - it doesn't stream samples from the hard drives ok so the question I got asked most frequently was is it worth it or in other words how does it compare to other instruments in the category like the MSC 707 tell you to get act octatrack and so on there's no easy answer overall pound for pound if you work with the features checklist and PC one probably has the most options and features the question is what is the workflow like to access those features which is what I'll address in the bulk of this video another comparison that I was asked and it's easy to make is how this compares to NPC live the software and workflow are exactly the same pros for the NPC 1 are that it's $300 cheaper and has more buttons which leads you directly into options like sampling and editing a program which is very useful and that it has 8 CV outputs for controlling modular since the pads are also smaller which I don't think is a disadvantage a big Pro for the NPC live is that it has a built in rechargeable battery which is a really fun option MPC live comes with 10 gigabytes of a factory content instead of 2 which is substantial and includes multi sampled instruments like pianos guitars and synths MPC live also has room for an additional internal drive it's something that doesn't exist on the one and aside from CV MPC live has more connectivity options to midians and to MIDI outs as opposed to just one of each on the MPC one RCA phono inputs with a ground connection and more outputs so you can route different sounds to different outputs though it too only has a single stereo input for sampling one last thing and it may just be me I tried the touchscreen on both and it seems to me like the test screen is just a tiny bit more responsive on the MPC 1 both have the same total voice count which according to Akai is 64 stereo voices before we review everything else I want to talk about terminology because every groove box or sampler uses terms differently a project contains everything that's held in memory at any given time all of your samples sequences a song or multiple songs all of these live in a project and all are available for immediate access as opposed to other projects which you'll need to load up from one of the drives something that requires that you stop your music and wait for the project to load which can take anywhere from a few seconds to more depending on the size of the samples in your project a project is made out of sequences which isn't such a good name if you're used to other instruments sequences aren't note patterns but rather entire scenes meaning entire groups of tracks and patterns you should use sequences as different parts of your song like a verse or app or though you could build an entire song in a single sequence if you wanted to because a single sequence can be up to a thousand bars long inside a sequence are tracks these can be for example the various instruments in your song drums bass synth pianos vocals and so on there are a few types of tracks you can see them here and we'll go over them in detail if a track is a instrument or a plug-in track then it contains one sound typically which you can play chromatically up and down a scale and there are a few track options which let you host a group of sounds so for example all these samples exist in a single drum track now overall there are two global types of tracks MIDI tracks and audio tracks let's start with audio tracks they're the simpler ones they are strictly containers for samples there's only one type of them you can fill them either with one long sample or place multiple samples along their timeline audio tracks are always up to the length of a sequence which is four bars in this case but I've seen that you can create short repeating loops within them though they'll always reset at the length of the sequence so that's audio tracks MIDI tracks can also contain samples but they can do a lot more I'll just hide the channel strip here so we can see a little bit more information MIDI tracks can be either the length of the sequence or any number of beats up to the length of the sequence you can't set them to longer than the sequence but if you set them to fewer beats than the sequence they will repeat poly metrically and will be reset when the sequence resets MPC one has six types of MIDI programs drone programs will trigger different samples per pad plugin tracks lets you load up one of currently three modeled instruments bassline is evasive electric is an electric piano model and tube synth is a more comprehensive virtual analog synth the next track type is instruments or key group programs they're pretty similar to drum programs in that they're also sample based but they have tools that let you play samples melodically or use multi samples more on that later next up our clip programs which are kind of like able to enliven accession grids you can assign a loop to each pad and then launch loops quantized and time stretch to your beat and to other tracks now I'll go over all this in detail of course but the last two types of programs are a track for sequencing MIDI gear with this little mini Jack here a CV track for sequencing modular gear last thing you need to know about tracks I mentioned this earlier they all have a sample pool you're limited to 2 gigabytes of samples and if I hit browse over here and sample assign you can see these are the samples that are currently loaded up in this project you can load up loops and one-shots NPC one supports importing multiple format types once you import a file though it's uncompressed - I think 44.1 kilohertz and I assume each sample has some overhead so that's more or less how you should calculate the two gigabytes that you can store in your project like I said at least not currently it doesn't support streaming from the hard drive Luke I have hinted at multiple occasions that that is a feature that may be coming in the future by the way you can load up to eight audio tracks and 128 MIDI tracks overall but I think only eight plug-in tracks total and then the final bit of terminology is programs that's the content that you load into a track sort of like presets on other instruments so let's dive into a little bit more detail into each of the type of tracks or programs drum programs that you do actually more than just load up a sample per pad first you've got eight banks of samples so these 16 pads are really one bank and you've got ABCD and double tap or shift tap e F and G so you can load up 128 pads into a single drum program that's a huge advantage for the NPC one and in terms of scope you're not limited to just one drum program now aside from loading up samples there are quite a few sound design options for drum programs and you access those in the program editor screen which you can reach by pressing here let's zoom through these very quickly options are arranged in tabs which you can press at the bottom of the screen and if there are three dots here or a few dots here it means you can cycle between a few screens the master tab has parameters that apply to all of the samples in your drum program things like politi transposing everything over all pen level and you can also have a single pad trigger multiple pads using the simultaneous play function and you can assign choke groups or mute groups using this function the samples tab lets you chop the sample up you can chop a sample up either using the on-screen controls or the qlink knobs I'll talk about cuelinks later but they're arranged in groups which give you access to different functions as you cycle through the groups for example this is sample start control all the way from coarse to fine tune start points there's always a cue hint at what the cue links are controlling and you can long press cue links to see exactly what each of the four groups controls no I won't go over over all these functions that are looping functions reverse functions warp functions meeting options to change a samples play time without changing its pitch or change its pitch without changing its play time you can pitch individual samples without affecting the other samples like we did before on the master screen and there are a couple more really powerful options in the NPC line the first of which is sample layers so each sample can trigger three additional samples aside from the core sample so why not say launch a symbol alongside this kick you can even set an offset between launch times so delay one sample or have one trigger before another and since you are technically wasting another voice for each of these samples there's a really nice flatten function which will let you combine the samples into one single sample aside from that you have a few sound design options these all exist on a per layer basis both panning and velocity start and ends so you can set it so that samples aren't triggered together but maybe one is triggered if you play lighter and another if you play harder the filter envelope tab lets you control a dedicated filter and Ambon Volokh per pad you've got a few envelope types both for the amp envelope and the filter envelope a few modulation destinations and also a few filter types so all these options here let's just start with one filter cutoff and resonance each of these by the way on a per pad basis and we obviously won't go over all these but these are all the filter options low-pass high-pass bandpass and then a few models and formant filters so quite a lot to play with here there's also an LFO and modulation tab there are multiple LFO types including sample-and-hold which is a random LFO and multiple LFO destinations pitch filter amp and panning with a mod depth for each again you can control these either with the data dial or with the cue links one really nice option is the layer function so if we go back to our layered kick and delayed cymbal sample you can set it aside to being sensitive to velocity to cycle between the samples with the delayed cymbal or trigger randomly now I got asked about this NPC one doesn't have a probability function like you might see in other groove boxes but this alongside say with empty samples in the other three layers gives you effectively probability functions of 25% 50% and 75% less sound design option for samples in a drum program is the effects tab you have four insert effects per pad and four sends again on a per pad basis I'll talk about effects a little bit more in depth later on but just to give you a view of the overall number of effects here there are quite a few organized by manufacturer or type if you like and yeah there's there's quite a few to play around with here let's just say choose a number of delays ping-pong delay I can edit the delay parameters by hitting the pencil button these are all editable that's my random symbol by the way going on left him right delay times that's just one effect you could add like I mentioned before three additional ones so I could add reverb why not let's go with this guy now these inserts like I mentioned before mind you are on a per pet basis so if I hit this pad I can have four completely different insert effects or send levels so that's it for drum programs let's go ahead and go into a new track and take a look at plug-in programs currently MPC 1 has 3 types of plug-in programs or basically since a baseline synth it's just a new program to this now you can play these with an external keyboard and there are a number of presets that you can load up for it in different categories as well so let's say go for sub sign op do [Music] now one little annoyance with the NPC's well it's my press the pants you barely hear a sound it's actually playing a really low octave you need to go up and down the banks to play higher octaves using the pad so you don't have to use an external keyboard this by the way is connected and powered through the USB host port so there certainly is an inconvenience at least in the current firmware when you play a instrument type program you'll need to be in the higher banks if you go back to your drum program then you're in bank D need to go back to bank a to play the different samples the NPC's do have a notes mode which for some reason doesn't work by double tapping this you need to shift press notes in which case the pads can be assigned either chromatic notes or notes in various scales and still be played while you're in bank a there's no option though to lock the pass to this scale so if you leave this screen and say go back to the main screen you're back to playing the different banks chromatically anyway back to plug-in programs like I mentioned there are quite a few presets to play with here we obviously won't go through all of them in terms of sound design the synths program edit pages are completely different than what you'd see for the drum programs which would make sense the baseline synth is a relatively simple synth with these options within the scope of this video I don't think it makes sense to go over all of these let me know in the comment section if you'd like an overall sound design tutorial for these different plugins if there's enough demand I'll make one meanwhile let's just take a brief look at the other plugins electric is an electric piano type engine this too has plenty of presets to go around in different categories let's just pick one to see what happens maybe you go with pad and I don't know so here and yeah you can play this with like I mentioned with an external keyboard or with the pads chromatically I won't go into the sound design here either let's just take a brief look at the program added options here quite a few things to play with these are the tabs very briefly and then finally let's take a look at tube synth again plenty of presets to go around here in different categories lead for example and then again you can see quite a lot to play with super saw why not that's our pressure sensitive this can impact the synth preset of course and here too you're not limited to the presets if I hit program edit you can see all the various screens for tube synth the next type of program is key group programs key group programs are designed to let you play melodies with samples as opposed to synthesized instruments with plug-in programs now if I press program edit on the key group programs you'll see the tabs are very similar to those that are available on drum programs the big deal about key group programs is that unlike drum programs that just let you use different samples for different velocity levels key group of programs that you use different samples for different groups of keys this is important because the biggest problem with playing melodies with sampled instruments as opposed to synths is that if you only use one sample it quickly loses its original character and becomes short and chipmunky the higher you go and longer and lower quality the lower you pitch it down now this may be an effect you're interested in but for more natural sounding sample based instruments NPC one supports the concept of multi sampling so if I go into the browser here and go through my samples you can see there are plenty of samples here each sampled at a different pitch and when combined together into an instrument let's say this guy depending on the quality of your multi sample this can be quite a few samples so if I go ahead and load this program into this track the end result is a piano that sounds pretty good regardless think how high or low you play it so the idea here is that you set different key groups which represent different ranges on the piano so this key group for example represents notes between c2 and f-sharp - and then you've got different key groups with different samples for different note ranges across the piano keyboard now what are the coolest features in my opinion of the NPC one is that you can create your own key groups from the hardware itself so for example here I'm controlling Moog's siren it's running in through one of the inputs which is nice but what if I wanted to take the NPC one around with me and I didn't want to take this guy small as it may be as well or plate polyphonically well luckily in the sampler there's a really nice auto sample option and I've already set this up you can choose the sample range we definitely want to go lower than that why not start with C zero then go up to say C six and then note stride selects the semitone intervals from which you want to sample ideally you'd sample every semitone but that could take up a lot of space six semitones is fine you could also sample multiple velocity layers one is fine for me and then you choose other sample parameters like note length and decay and you can determine predefined loop options I'll just keep it at the defaults for now let's just make that the current program it'll tell you how long it's gonna take to finish the process now let's just hit do it and go ahead and make coffee as it samples the note intervals we told it to it all fast forward to this and we now have a siren that not only can go with us but also is polyphonic so just so you don't think I'm cheating I'm gonna lower the volume on siren here all the way this is our new instrument or key group program and I can play it like I said not only monophonic lee but also polyphonically which i think is pretty darn cool this actually came up quite nice I'll be making this available on my patreon all right let's move on to the fourth type of program which has clip programs I've loaded up a sample project here just to make things easier the idea is pretty simple you load up loops into clips if I go to program edit you can see the different loops that I've assigned to the pads here you can set quantization levels edits loops on a per pad basis if you want trim and chop the pads and yeah you're off to the races looking different samples it's arranged currently that samples in this column will replace each other you don't have to do it that way then this will launch attacks in parallel breathe pretty easy stuff so these are launched in parallel [Music] now these live in parallel to anything else you have going on in your project so a nice Ableton Live style session grid these loops live in banks as well right so you've got quite a few banks that you could add into here it would play alongside your project now it was asked to test out the warping algorithm it's okay for drum style loops so if I go ahead here change the tempo of this project and slow it down you can see it goes you know 10 BPM down it's okay let's try a different pattern the slower you go obviously the harder it is for it to work but still okay for transient based loops obviously going faster is easier to pull off it does get more difficult with the melodic style tracks we could hear the grains they're being chopped up certainly the slower you go let's go over this guy as well [Music] okay so that's the warping algorithm faster is easier like I mentioned okay let's move on to MIDI type programs not to be confused with MIDI type tracks many type programs send information out the MIDI out port which I've got connected to siren now now we won't hear anything unless we enable an audio track or sampler to listen into the incoming audio and I've prepared a project that handles both the siren and the yo Coast here setting up MIDI out isn't enough you've got to monitor the audio coming in I've got an audio track set up here actually two of them one to monitor the siren and another to monitor the OU Coast and I've got them set as mono inputs so I can apply different effects to each of these track number one has a reverb and track number two has a spring reverb so even though there's a single stereo input in here you can treat it sort of like two different monophonic instruments with our own signal paths so I'll get into sequencing later on but overall let's just look at all the parameters you've got to control with MIDI tracks ports currently there's only one output remote is an option from the other NPCs to send MIDI over Wi-Fi here you might be able to pull that off using the Ethernet port let's just focus on this one option each program has program change if you like it and Bank change MSB and LSB control and of course you can choose the MIDI channel one of sixteen and then if I head on to program edit you've got various CC options now MPC one only sends single byte CCS you can't send precision double byte MSB LSB pairs or NPR ends but I happen to know that CC 19 controls the filter on the siren which is this guy so I could open and close the filter on siren using this control you can automate this as well in the step sequencer again we'll get to that soon but those are pretty much the options for midi programs let's move on to CV programs they let you send CV out of the either four or eight ports if you use splitters like these so here I've got CV one connected to a Coast spit and I've got CV output 5 split out through here connected to its gate so let's change that to 5 so I can now trigger the O Coast [Music] and again program and it gives me simple access to each of the eight outputs so I've got output two connected to the overtones here let's just go and control that [Music] I could also control these with the cuelinks [Music] and you can sequence these as well control voltage sent out is zero to five volts across all eight channels and you've got very fine-tuned control if you like with shift down to 0.1 volts which is pretty good I got asked about this there isn't any support for s Triggs or clock but you could create a clock sequence using automation okay so we just covered all six MIDI types right drum plug-in instrument or key group clip MIDI and CV the next type of track is audio tracks these like I mentioned are really simple containers for audio clips either one big one or several small ones you can configure their inputs and outputs currently in the hardware obviously only output one in to work these are relevant for cases when you use NPC one as a controller for the software version of MPC same goes for the inputs you really have either inputs one and two three and four aren't relevant that you can select individual mono inputs like we did for these two and once we selected our inputs and outputs let me just hide the channel strip here you can choose to either always monitor or monitor when it's armed this will sample whatever incoming audio is being sent to it once you hit record and you can also edit the audio here browse load up samples yeah I need to obviously load up samples into my sample pool for instance just load a few of these guys in just go for individual samples why not so now we've got a few samples in the project then go ahead and to edit audio Brown samples and choose I'd say this cord loop for example that could chop it up so it's not just loops I can chop it up any way I liked move elements of it around if I wanted using this arrow okay just take and move stuff around maybe re pitch individual portions of the sample using warp so just say okay up and down bring this back up maybe reverse the sample or just record vocals into it to go alongside your beat so pretty much free rein to chop and go as you please on a timeline that's as long as your sequence okay let's start up with a new project so now that we're familiar with a different track types in MPC one let's look at the number one thing that made MPC so popular and that's sampling and chopping up samples now obviously you don't have to make samples yourself you can load up samples and loops from the factory content or any sample that you can put on the SD card or USB drives my personal favorite when I have some free time is to sample off a radio and try and make music with that but alas due to copyright restrictions I won't do that now so I'll sample this little weird synth called soft pop now there are a few workflows for sampling within MPC you can use the sampler sample in two audio tracks or use the looper within the sampler there are also a few workflows for sampling you can either sample one long sample and chop it up or just assign samples directly into different pads and I got asked about this you can set a maximum length of up to 20 minutes let's just settle for this for now you know hook up a soft pop here now it's going to be coming in on input 1 so I'll set that turn it on you can set a threshold for recording monitor around because you're going to hear this this is a pretty wild sue just hit record [Music] and if you like a simple vinyl just imagine undersampling r2d2 s Greatest Hits that should do for now thank you very much I could name this of course yeah let's just assign it to a pad to make things quicker save save it as well and keep it so now if I go into my drum group program I've got this long example so I obviously don't want it to play as a long sample the first thing I probably want to do is go ahead and edit the sample I see levels here pretty low I can process it and normalize it now there are a few workflows for chopping up a sample and splitting up those chops into new pads I could for example try threshold detection that may or may not work based on the sample you're working with whether it's a beat or something else so the lower the threshold the more samples you'll get the higher it is the fewer samples and obviously this is pretty processor intensive so it may take a while but you could get a threshold and there are a few other options here like just chopping it up by region or by BPM and of course you can always chop samples up manually if you like you can remove and add sample points and when you're in trim mode the pads will let you play different portions of the of a sample of the part that you trimmed or the part before or after the part which is a nice way to to quickly write it's fine and you can pinch and zoom and move around here either with your fingers on the touchscreen or using the cue links remember long press on the cue link button will tell you what each row does and you move between the banks using the cue link button another way of sampling other than using the sampler like I mentioned before is sampling in two audio tracks we talked about that just hit record press record here and lay audio into an audio track and then finally the third major way for sampling is the looper double tap this access it here there are two nice things about the looper the first is that you can set a loop length that's different from the sequence length but it's still time to your project and the second nice thing about it is that you can also overdub onto existing audio just like you can with a traditional looper so if you record into an audio track it will just overwrite the audio that was there previously here you can continuously loop and record layers onto the original layer the only workflow gripe that I have about this looper is that once you're done you can't plug the audio loop you created directly into an audio track or into a clip program so you can't have a workflow where you continues the loop in two different tracks in your project rather you need to save the loop then load it up into an audio track drum track or a clip program but yeah other than that there's a looper in here one little thing that I wanted to add overall regarding the sampler there is a resample option in here so the inputs can be either the physical hardware inputs or you can resample the audio from your project this applies to the sampler as well so if I tap here choose inputs you can sample from your project into the sampler as well not just a looper another way of resampling is bouncing a track into a WAV file so whenever you hit this options here this little pencil next to the sequence or the track one of the options you'll get not for audio but for MIDI clips is to bounce into either a sample or into an audio track that's a track based function and then there's also a sequence or scene based function which will let you bounce it to a sample so you don't need to go through the process of actually resampling a track if you just want a bounce of a track into an individual sample okay so now that we know about sampling and the different track or program types let's talk about sequencing you can sequence either by playing live into a track using the pads or an external keyboard or step sequence using the grid or step sequencer same goes for automation and parameters you can either change parameters live and record that into your sequence or step sequence parameters let's go through these workflows very quickly before you start playing live you need to setup a timing correction or quantization if it's on whatever you play in will be quantized and you can always set it off you can choose to record either with a metronome or without an MPC one you can't output the metronome to the headphone outs unfortunately these are here to stay compatible with the other NPC's in with a software you'll always hear the click if you have it on and it's just choose a drum program a little disc it up here and then just so we can see what's going on I'll press this hit record press start so that's how you record live I could have done it with a keyboard as well you can also tap in notes if you like now it's not that easy to hit the right spot on the grid you can always zoom around pinch and zoom isn't that convenient I think for for complex sequences you can also zoom in and move around using the cue links as well now this shows you all the pads in a single view you can also press step sequence and select a pad to view its program one step at a time this lets you also directly program velocities as well if you like and step sequencing here is either using the on-screen or using the pads [Music] I think where the touchscreen really comes in handy is if you want to select groups of notes you can use this sort of just choose all these and then you can either merge them around back and forth or say transpose them if this was a melodic track change their length if you liked so that's pretty much how you get notes into here either playing live or step sequencing automation is changing parameters over time so for that let's just record a note repeat over here of say the hi-hats so if you're in step sequencing mode you could see the different velocities for each pad in this case the hi-hats and change it if you wanted during grid mode then you press this little arrow here and you can see the automation for velocity across multiple tracks and you can edit that as well and of course the zoom level so I could draw the various values here you can also remove them together if you want let's just get this to a somewhat reasonable level now if I wanted to automate different parameters I could either live play the automation or step sequence that as well so let's for example going to program edit here and let's just play around with a filter so let's move the cue links here choose maybe a low-pass filter so to write in automation live I turn this into write mode and that gets recorded now I can view or edit that manually back here if I tap this velocity parameter then choose pad filter cutoff I can see the automation over here and you can also draw automation and the quantized resolution you could also change these values over here in step sequencing if you liked so go into here pad cutoff and edit it that way and then another option to changing parameters other than changing their values here it's just going into the automation and clicking add new here you can choose from any number of parameters for the pad as you can see here so let's say if I wanted to edit the filter resonance I could add that as an automation layer here as well now I was asked about automation for MIDI in CV tracks for CV tracks you can automate any one of the eight cv outputs any way that you like so again either by going into program edit here and then using the cue links just recording this motion it's just prevents going to right here which is wanna be if I change this it'll now be automated and you can do this with a fine resolution as well if you like remember using the shift key drawing CV automation using the step sequencer is only at a 127 step level though and then for MIDI sequencing tracks for some reason if I hit program at it I don't see the automation button here so you can't automate these with the cue links or with the data dial but if you step ahead into the sequencer here then they are available as automation destinations that you can draw okay let's move on and talk about the qlink knobs these are for endless encoders that let you control different parameters based on one of five modes that you can put them in by getting into the Q link edit screen over here which is either a double tap on this or shift tap on this and their modes are as follows in screen mode their function will change based on the screen you're on and then in project mode you can assign them as global parameters for the entire scope of the project in program mode you can assign them to control different program parameters and then you have to pad options pad scene options and pad parameter options and if I move back to this track in pad parameter mode they'll control the same parameter for 16 pads and in pads scene mode they'll control and individual parameter for a single pad now the thing that frustrates me about the cuelinks is that you don't see what they do in a lot of the cases so if I go back into the main screen here I don't know what they do in this screen same goes for here you can long press the Q link button and you'll get an idea of what you do based on the bank you're on and you can sort of switch a bank press again to see their functionality at this point it would really be great if they somehow showed what these guys do on screen if there isn't room maybe perhaps when you touch them because they are touch sensitive now over time of course you do learn what their function is but yeah it's it's a little bit frustrating again depends on whether they're in pantsing mode or screen mode if you can see what they do visually on the screen that it's great and you can sort of somehow guess what's going on but if they affect a parameter that you can't see you can't even see how they change it and which is quite important actually in these cases for example if I hold this down it turns out I was changing swing and you know timing correct or shift timing which is pretty important when you play into into a sequence and also based on their mode sometimes clicking this button will shift up in the order of buttons and sometimes it will shift sideways and yeah I think it would be best if there would be some sort of on-screen display that tells you what they do or at the very least when you touch them will show you what the value is and what you're changing another little feature request while we're here when you're changing overall project parameter the only way to set what they control is to go into shift queue link edit and then choose the parameter that they control in these menus which can be quite daunting so say if I wanted the yeah I mean this this knob to control a parameter I need to go into here and find it it would be great if when I went into program at it I saw a parameter that I liked I could just assign a knob to it and if I'm not mistaken you currently can't assign more than one parameter per knob it would be nice if they could be macro knobs as well anyway those are Q links let's move on take a look at a few performance controls by the way always turn off automation because pretty much any parameter here can be automated your sequence could change pretty quickly 16 levels is pretty nice it gives you a few functions on a per pad basis so typically each pad will play individually but if I hit 16 levels then I could say play different velocities with the pads different tunings up to 16 tunings here different filter cutoff positions and a few other parameters as you see here we already discussed the notes feature which for plugin tracks right lets you immediately access both notes in a scale as well as chords and interesting progressions in a bunch of different genres and options moving on down here we saw a taste of this before as well if I get this going okay no repeats which you can latch and play at different intervals this also doubles as an arpeggiator for plug-in tracks so if I hit note repeat here you can see it has an ARP option with a bunch of it's too much here as well our PGA Tour options here yeah I mean it's what you typically expect from our PGA Tour different time divisions no borders a few radiation options the only comment I can get you here is that you can only have one arpeggiator going so if you want multiple arpeggiators you need to record that into a track what you can other performance modes are mutes so you can use the different tracks if you like or mute pants in a yes plugin program here let's go back into my drum track [Music] okay select pad mutes remember I mentioned before you need to be in the right bank to see the pads one important feature in that segues us nicely into creating songs on the MPC one is that you can automate mutes so one way of organizing a song is creating sequences with you know intro verse chorus and so on we'll do that in a bit but another way while we're on the topic of automation is to automate mutes as your song plays so if we take the example of a long timeline it's all this going on in multiple programs to automate mutes I go in to track mute and hit record and play start and I'll be a bit excessive here so we can mute either using the touchscreen or the pads good enough for the sake of this demo and then we can replay the end result watch the mutes happen over here and in the mutes or automation just like any other automation so if I go into the grid and open this up then you can see we have an additional automation Lane and you can go ahead and edit this so track is either muted or not and this is just like any other automation so let's take a look at building a song one way is just to put all the events on a massive timeline and that's an option but another is to chop up your song into sequences or scenes like I mentioned before so I've got four basic parts here in this song now you can perform the sequences in a mode called next sequence mode so I go into that here I could press this pad to move on into part two and to say move on to part three when part two is over [Music] and so on so that's how you perform your sequences live another option is song mode where you can create as many slots as you want so let's say four slots here and in slot number one I want to start with part one and then move on to part say two I could choose to repeat that say twice move on to part three and then part four and then I could just get my song going it'll start with part 1 in this case move on to the next one and so on you can also export the song not while it's playing if I had stopped here hit export and this will generate WAV files either of the entire mix or of separate programs separate from this you can also export a project into Ableton Live I've noticed some things don't get exported here like clip programs obviously that would be a bit complex to represent a clip which is sort of like a session view within a larger session and then another option in song mode is to print or convert an entire song into a new sequence so if I do this sequence 6 will now be a combination of the song that I put together let's take a look at that on the timeline now for this to work well you'll need to have all the track's in program aligned well across your original sequences right so all these different parts will need to have the various tracks identical on a per sequence basis in terms of overall project scope a project can contain 32 songs each with up to 99 steps alright let's move on and talk about effects so effects on MPC 1 can be applied on multiple levels all the way from pads to key groups to programs sub mixes and the master output so we mentioned this before let's say that I wanted to apply an effect just to the snare here I'll go into effects and then I can add a reverb just to the snare let's go with large why not [Music] okay so that won't apply to the kick or anything else just the snare so let's take a deeper look at this as well let's maybe apply a ping-pong is always nice to this pad and then I could add another insert effect that let's yeah a reverb to that as well and there are sins as well you can set up send effects for the entire project now I obviously won't go over all of these but let's just take a look at them maybe you sorted by type so there are delays and reverbs we've been scrolling through these quite a lot then dynamics controls channel strip compressors you can see quite a few here eq's so a lot to choose from for sure vintage effects and then you've got a nice shorthand for these effects here on the main screen so typically you'll might have it in this mode where you look at the sequence track and program but if we click on this little eye here you can unhide the channel strip so we could look at pad effects right now let's have a change here this is what we said before and then program effects and overall master effects and this strip also lets you route audio to sub mixes so by default audio is routed to the program but there are eight sub mixes you could set overall levels per track in the track mix screen and there's a pad mix screen as well and this is also where you set effects both for the sub mixes right here and for the returns then aside from the insert and send effects the last type of effect is XY effect let's load up one and you choose it here and set up and there are quite a few options here it's a chaos' pad style effect - here you've got these loops or stutters and a filter and there are a bunch of presets here maybe try out one more tape stop so I think we pretty much covered everything you've got five shortcuts here - the sequencer and overall track controls if I go into the menu here you notice these five shortcuts are the same ones that appear over here and we've pretty much covered everything except the fact that you can set pan colors if you like and list edit this lets you see all the events in your project and also edit them let's move ahead to pros and cons on the con side I'll split it into Hardware cons and firmware cons meaning features that I would love to see updated but potentially other people might want other things and Akai will have to prioritize on the hardware side well many of its competitors don't have this feature just because NBC life does it would certainly have been nice to have a battery here we use this to get away from a computer and a battery means we can also get away from our desk obviously you could also power this with one of those 110 or 220 volt power bricks further on the hardware side having only two inputs and two outputs is limiting both in terms of the number of devices we can feed into MPC one two sample or as an effect processor and the number of individual outs available for separate tracks perhaps this can be solved with a firmware update that will let you hook up an external audio interface though obviously that means no longer being a fully standalone production center without add-ons aside from that the hardware feels very solid the touch screen is excellent the pads while a little stiff can be customized to be responsive in my opinion and the shortcuts are very useful on the we're and firmware side features that I'd like to see implemented and Akai has been churning out quite a few updates so there's hope for additional changes the top things I think are missing and wish were added were a way to see what the key links do on screen for more information about this see the key links section using the timeline it would also be great to set up patterns that can be used across multiple sequences right now you can copy and paste a pattern across multiple sequences but if you make it change once you'll need to duplicate that change to every sequence that uses that pattern now the factory sequences seem to just put everything on one long timeline if you want to make a change in a certain place you'll need to repeat that change everywhere else if you're familiar with a machine workflow I really like that you can set different patterns on a per track basis and then on a per scene basis choose which pattern you want to use here you've got a copy-paste patterns across your sequences or across your timeline manually another thing that I think needs to be addressed and I mentioned this before is the fact that drum patterns get played on bank a and melodic patterns need to be played around banks CD or E it would be great if there was a way to make the notes mode persistent when you play melodic tracks wish list item number four for me is a way to change tracks without using the menus so right now there's no shortcut to change tracks again I'm stealing this idea from a machine so say I wanted to move from this track to a different one I need to find the track menu on the screen somewhere and if it's not say click main go to here and then choose a different track either with the data dial or by tapping on it it would be nice if there was maybe just a shift shortcut so you can choose different tracks this way finally one feature that a lot of people asked for is streaming from the internal drive USB Drive or SD card I think two gigabytes of RAM is a lot to work with but certainly competing products have the ability to stream long stems or full tracks from one of the drives so those are my and my viewers main cons I mentioned a few other minor issues throughout this video and obviously I believe all of them are important for you to know otherwise I wouldn't have mentioned them but all that said within the context of what MPC one can do and its price many of them can pretty much be classified as firstworldproblems the sheer amount of features in MPC one all relatively accessible and available as a standalone sampler and sequencer is pretty out sending the sampling workflow is fast the autosampler is a killer feature in my opinion letting you bring in pretty much any software or hardware synth along with you in the box and the variety of program types you've got here is something you don't get anywhere else to my knowledge in standalone hardware form I was initially worried about the touchscreen interface because one of the things that bothers me with touchscreen interfaces is the fact that it's hard to change parameters with your finger so say if I go into this parameter you're sort of always blocking the parameter and it's hard to be precise with a number but the workflow where you tap a parameter with one hand and use the data dial or one of the queue links to change it I think works really well another huge Pro for the NPC one and the NPC in general is multiple levels of undo and redo sometimes it undo is a little bit too much but more often than not it's a true lifesaver and again yet another feature that's rare to non-existent in competing products so all that at the price that's being sold at which is currently around $700 plus the option to move projects to your computer to the MPC software and take them even farther using computer instruments or other computer plugins or finish the project in your DAW makes MPC won an extremely compelling standalone production tool and if you want a whole bunch of electronic music production ideas tips and tricks you might want to check out my book available to people who support this channel on patreon feel free to ask me anything in a comment section below hit like if this was useful and ring the bell if you want to make sure you don't miss the next one thanks for watching [Music] you [Music]

Channel: loopop

Views: 455,959

Rating: 4.929142 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: sRqmvFlg6QA

Length: 58min 31sec (3511 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 09 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Sequence7th]

A 58 minute review by loopop, think this pretty much uncovers every mystery about the thing and shows some of the quirks I've never seen mentioned before and a lot of cool things I did not know before. I asked if it can do S-trig, it cannot. Glad to know you can adjust the pad sensitivity too. They required a fair wack when I played with an mpc x.

[u/Gary_Glitcher]

They have V-trig to S-strig convertors up on ebay. They are around $20.00