Hi there! This is Riley from inMusic. This video will teach you how to setup
and customize your AKAI MPK Mini mk3's control mapping with MPC Beats. Before we get started, make sure your MPK Mini is properly connected to your computer
via its provided USB cable. Its LED display and button backlights
will illuminate when power is supplied. This is also a good time
to select the correct program for using your MPK Mini
with MPC Beats. The unit's LED display will show you
which program is currently active. The default program setting
is Program 1, which is called MPC, and this is the one you'll need to select
for linking with MPC Beats. If MPC isn't the current program, press
and hold the PROG SELECT button and tap PAD 1 to load it. So now let's go ahead and open MPC Beats. Just to keep things simple for this video, I'm going to select the Hip Hop template. I really like the drum kits in this one. Before you start to play or record
anything, open the MPC Beats Preferences menu
and go to the MIDI / Sync tab. At the top, under Input Ports, make sure both TRACK
and CONTROL are selected. TRACK should be enabled by default,
so leave that on, and CONTROL is the setting you'll need to enable before
changing any MIDI mappings later on. And under Sync Send, set the Sync Output to MIDI Clock. This is important for later
when we start using the Arpeggiator and Note Repeat functions. So now that's good to go! So I'm going to go into the project
and shift to Program Edit mode so we can view our
pads right here on screen. Now, if I start tapping the
pads on the MPK Mini, we'll see the lower eight pads,
A01-A08, respond in MPC Beats. To access the sounds mapped
to the upper eight pads, just tap the BANK A/B button on your
MPK Mini, which will light up green when you're using Bank B,
and now your eight pads will correspond to pads A09-16 in MPC Beats. What we're seeing here is
the default MPC Beats MIDI control setting for the
MPK Mini mk3. Nearly every built-in drumkit
you'll load in MPC Beats will assign a kick on PAD 1, a snare on PAD 2, usually a closed and open
hi-hat pair on pads 3 & 4, and more kit-specific percussion, synth hits,
and sound effects on the remaining pads. So that's all well and good. But what if you'd rather use
your own custom MIDI setup? Maybe having your core drum sounds
on pads 1-4 doesn't make sense for you,
and you want to rearrange them. MPC Beats makes this really easy.
In the bottom right corner, click on the MIDI Learn icon,
then next to the dropdown menu that shows the name of your device, click
this little menu and click New MIDI Map. Now you have a fresh slate
to assign your pads however you like. So at the top, click ENABLE and LEARN. Now I'll select Pad 1 in MPC Beats, which means whatever pad
I hit on the MPK Mini will now be assigned
to that pad in MPC Beats. I want to keep my kick on Pad 1,
so I'm going to tap PAD 1 on my MPK Mini, and boom! Now the MPK Mini's first pad
is assigned to Pad 1 in MPC Beats. So now here,
I don't like my snare being on PAD 2; I'd rather have that on PAD 5 and that bass boom percussion
sound on PAD 2 instead. So I'm going to click on
Pad 2 in MPC Beats, then tap PAD 5 on the MPK Mini.
And conversely, I'll click on Pad 5, then tap PAD 2 to load
that bass boom on PAD 2. So now if unselect LEARN
and try my newly assigned pads, I can hear that
my new layout is now active. Now, of course, the pads aren't the only parameter on your
MPK Mini that you can customize. If you click the VIEW dropdown menu,
you can see that every knob, button, and pad on your device can be assigned
to whichever parameter in MPC Beats you want to control. This allows you to customize your
MPK Mini's layout from front to back and create a setup that's completely
tailored to your creative process. Now, of course,
if you don't want to start from scratch and just want to change a few aspects
of the default MPK Mini MIDI mapping, you can do that, too! Click on the MIDI map dropdown,
and go to Factory > Akai > AKAI MPK mini 3, and then open this little menu again and click Duplicate. Then in the dropdown, open
User > AKAI MPK mini 3 Copy. You can see I have a lot of copies
made here, so just pick the most recent one in your software. To change a default mapping, right click it and click Clear MIDI Mapping. Now that parameter is free
to be assigned however you wish. Now let's set up your
MPK Mini's Arpeggiator and Note Repeat functions in MPC Beats. The Arpeggiator causes any played keyboard notes
to repeat multiple times in a sequence, which is really useful for creating
colorful, expressive synth sequences. It's important to link the Arpeggiator
with your MPC Beats project so its tempo is synced
with your project tempo. Otherwise, your sequences will sound
out-of-time with the rest of your project. Before doing this, make sure that
in the MPC Beats MIDI / Sync tab, the Sync Output is set to MIDI Clock, like we covered earlier. Next, after turning it on, press and hold the
Arpeggiator's ON/OFF button and turn knob K6 to the right so the LED display changes
the BPM setting to EXT. Now your Arpeggiator
is synced to your project tempo. Remember that in order to hear your keyboard notes
playing through the Arpeggiator, your project in MPC Beats
must be actively playing. If your project is paused or stopped,
you won't hear any notes play as long as the Arpeggiator is turned on. As for Note Repeat, it functions
similarly to the Arpeggiator, but instead of sequencing
your keyboard notes, it causes your pads to repeat samples at a specified interval
while holding a pad. This is great for playing beat sequences
that would otherwise be too quick to finger drum manually. Press the NOTE REPEAT
button to turn it on, then, just like with the Arpeggiator,
press and hold this button and turn knob K6 to the right
to set its BPM to EXT mode. With Note Repeat, you'll also need something
playing back in your project in order to hear samples being sequenced. For a more in-depth explanation
of these two functions, check out our video about using the onboard features of the MPK Mini
and MPK Mini Play; the timestamped link
is in the description. You'll also find more resources
and technical support for your MPK Mini mk3 below,
as well as the link to MPC Beats Academy, which is a fantastic resource
for learning how to fully flex your creativity while composing music
with MPC Beats. Feel free to drop a comment on this video
if you have any questions. Thanks so much for watching, and have fun
with your new MPK Mini mk3!
