MPC Masterclass EP1 Workflow & Main Screen

good morning for this one you might need some espresso [Applause] whether you just picked up your very first mpc or you've had one for a while like i did and it was sitting in the corner and every day you stare at it and go what the did i just buy this is going to be a video manual going over everything regarding using the standalone versions of the mpc let's start by going over the overall concept of the mpc workflow diving into each individual page on this video we're going to start off with going over the main screen which is the one you're going to be working on and the one you can kind of stay on most of the time and in future videos we're going to go into all the nitty gritty individual submenus that come on all the other pages so without further ado let's just dive right in now one thing to note about the mpc workflow is that it's different than your traditional daw like ableton or logic those daws work on a one-to-one workflow meaning that for each instrument you insert it's going to have its own dedicated track that's considered one-to-one npcs work similar to let's say studio one where instruments and tracks are separated and you can have multiple tracks triggering a single instrument now when we head over to mpc land we are going to have three key terms to consider sequences tracks and programs just like any other daw inside of the mpc a track is a container for either midi or audio information now if it is midi information it's going to be triggering one of six different kinds of programs these programs will be represented by the following symbols a drum program plug-in program key group program clip program midi program and a cv program and just to recap since it is not a one-to-one ratio multiple tracks can trigger a single program such as if you had a drum program and you wanted an individual track for each one of the drum sounds a kick a snare a hi-hat you would then have multiple tracks triggering that single program then we can go on and add effects to the overall project and all of that information the sequence of the midi notes the audio and the audio tracks those are all contained inside of a sequence now that we've covered the key concepts of the workflow of the mpc and the three key ingredients sequences tracks and programs let's take a look at this main screen see where everything is laid out all the sub menus so you can get going and start creating right away here we are on the mpc main page now this is the same page across all the current npcs and with any mpc screen if you want to adjust a value you can simply touch on it and use the rotary knob or you can double tap and that will pull up the sub menu on the side and then to get out of the sub menu just click in the gray area and you'll return back to the main screen so starting on the left we have what number is this track and it's going to start off by saying unused i would recommend naming the track as well as the program and to do any renaming on either the track the program or the sequence you just simply hit the a right here and that will bring you into the name edit so let's just call this drums now moving over to the right we have the six different program types that this track can be triggering we have the drums plugins key group clip midi and cv now note that when you change the type of program this track is going to be triggering the lower section we'll change to match so right now we're in drum and it says a drum program right here if we change this to a plug-in we're going to see that it switches to a plug-in if we change this to key group it changes to a key group so on and so forth now moving over to the right we have the length of this track by default it matches the length of the sequence now let's say you had a long evolving 8 bar sequence but you only wanted the drums to be a repeating one bar idea you could have this length right here as four beats and it would just be a one bar loop that repeats inside of the full length of the sequence now moving right below that we have the velocity now the velocity essentially is what is the velocity of all of the elements contained within this track such as if you have a track with multiple velocities you can decrease the overall velocity of all the events within that track by adjusting this velocity down to 50 percent it will move the velocity of every event in that track down 50 percent but they'll keep their relative velocity differences between the tracks then moving up we have transpose now transpose just allows us to change all the events within this track by semitone either up or down the red circle is the record arm button which automatically defaults to auto now what auto means is that you will hear the playback of the recorded notes and can trigger notes only when the track is record enabled the next is merge merge means you will always hear the midi input and the recorded notes at the same time next is off which means you will not hear any input but you will hear the recorded notes n is the opposite you will always hear the input midi signals but you won't hear any of the recorded notes but with all these sequence track or program they all have their relative edit menu by clicking on the pencil in the lower corner below the track section we have program here's where we will tell the track which program to trigger again it will change based on the type of track above but you will also have multiple programs within the same program type an example of that is let's say we're using four instances of hype let's say a base a pad a pluck and a lead each instance will have its own program under the plug-in program section this is where naming everything is highly recommended to keep things straight and matching names to the track such as if we didn't name anything what we'd see is plug-in one plug in two plug in three plug in four but if we name it to match whatever the track is above that's where it's able to keep things straight so as an example let's say this right here is our bass track and i want this program to be my base now these are going to correspondingly match so i know that my base is triggering my base program now if i go to a new track and let's say we'll call chords on this one a lot of times people may forget to change out this and they go and change the preset well what they just have done is change the sound of the bass on the bass track so you always want to remember when you add a track you're going to hit this little plus button right here and then you'll get a new program and you want to name that program to correspond with the track that you're sequencing so this again would be chords so let's start off by going over what is all involved with a drum program and then we'll go through all six of these different styles of programs so within a drone program right here we have the name of the program and if you've loaded programs from your browser this is where you're going to find them by double clicking you're going to see every single program that you've actually loaded into this project and so you can freely change in between different programs so moving over from the name we have warp sample assign samples and edit samples now warp samples is the most comprehensive of the three menus which we're going to cover every page of this in greater detail in a later video but right from this page you can see that you have a lot of control over the sample including how many layers are inside of this one pad you can layer up the four samples inside of a single pad you can edit the start and the end of the sample just simply by dragging your finger or clicking within the box and using the rotary knob you can change the key in semi-tones or fine-tuning and you're going to see the key shift respectively right here in the key you can reverse the sample you can turn on time stretching and warping you can adjust how much of the time stretch you want applied and you can also adjust the original bpm and then bpm sync sometimes when you import a loop it may not read it correctly and the original bpm may be off so that's where it helps to actually touch on this and just adjust the bpm so it matches but then we can go through the other pages and do even more sound design we have envelopes we have lfos we have modulation and then here is the effects within each pad you can layer up to four effects within the pad now warp samples is where i spend most of my time when i am editing my samples but let's go back to the main screen and check out edit samples now edit samples has some similar things such as the tune which is essentially changing the semitone up and down now the only time i'm really inside of this edit samples is when i'm working with the loops and i'm chopping up a sample that's where we'd hit trim right here at the bottom and we'd switch trim into chop and this is where we can chop up a sample lay it across the pads save it as a new program honestly that is the only time that i am really inside of the edit samples assign samples is essentially the same as going into the browser it's the assignment page which is down here but the main browser is just tapping over here to go to the main browse window so in the assign page you are seeing the entire pool of all the samples that can be then loaded into the individual pads you will also see multiple names in the pads which have multiple samples inside of the layers you can load up the four samples into a single pad and this allows you to do something really cool called sample cycling see the video link right here at the top of the screen to go into detail about what sample cycling is you can also access this pool from warp samples by clicking on the layer and then the sample box right here double click on that and that will bring up the entire sample pool that you can then load into that specific layer and now this one pad has three different sounds layered onto it now let's go into the plug-in program and as you can see it's very similar on the left to the drum programs it's going to start off with plug-in 01 the tube synth and the default so this is where we would want to name our program to match the track name double tapping on plugin is where we're going to see the full menu of available plugins and if you scroll down this is where you're going to see all the drum plugins such as the individual drum plugins or the multi which is going to load all the drum modules across the lower eight pads now once we have selected what plugin we're going to have on there let's say the hype select that right below that is the preset now double clicking on the preset will bring up actually the different categories that we can choose from so as you can see we have all these different categories and then clicking into one it will then take us to all the different presets that fall within that category select it and as you can see it will reflect right here at the bottom of the screen right there now after you pick the instrument and the preset we move over to the right and we see pad performer now pad performer will allow you to change how the pads behave this makes production a lot smoother because you can always play in key you can find chords that work and there's even progressions you can change the root note you can also change the octave and it just makes production much smoother because you know everything you're playing is going to be in the key of the song now moving over to key group we see the same pattern where we just have a generic program with zero zero so remember if you have things loaded in to key group you double tap you're going to see a list of all the different key groups that you have loaded into this project that you can select from or you can just create your own and the familiar pad performer which is the exact same if you're in the plugins moving down to the clip again we have clip 01 and then we can go in and edit the clip editing the clip is essentially a very basic version of edit samples it's just editing different loops then we go into midi same thing we want to always make sure to rename our midi program so we don't end up messing up when we're adding in more tracks what channel is it going out of of what midi port so if we double click on here we just say okay mpc a and i want it going on channel three then we have bank msb and bank lsb those are a bit more complex to go into detail on this video so that's something you would want to google to understand how msb and lsb work most of the time you aren't going to have to worry about that and then the familiar pad performer then let's go over to cv cv is similar to midi where it's going to be sending a signal from the mpc to an external unit just using control voltage instead of midi signals and it's what ports is it coming out of is the mod wheel active is the velocity active so regardless of which program type you are on again in the lower right we have the pencil that's going to show us the menu of everything we can do within this program and we're going to go over all this in detail in a later video but get in here look around have a peek so you're familiar with all the terms with inside this menu and moving to the top center we have sequences and a sequence contains all the information of the tracks and the programs a sequence can be treated as different sections of a song and that's how i use my sequences so i'll have sequence 1 as the intro sequence 2 is the verse and sequence 3 as the chorus or a sequence can actually be an entirely new song idea because switching in between sequences you can have a track named completely different assigned to a completely different program in the previous sequence and so forth i like to keep my sequences as sections of a song and keep the project as an entire song but you could have one project with multiple song ideas inside of that now on the left is where we're going to be naming our sequence which of course we can change with the little text button right here the bpm is the tempo of the song then the length of the sequence one little note though is that if you want to let's say change this length of the sequence from two to four or to eight and you don't want to reprogram anything i'd suggest going in to the menu and using double length that will double the length of the sequence and copy over all the events in all of the tracks so you don't have to go back and reprogram thing to the right of that we have the start and end point of the sequence and then also if this sequence is going to loop or not this is handy let's say if you're programming the outro and you just want it to play one time and then stop playback on the unit itself you would turn off the looping once this sequence plays one time through it will stop and the music will stop and everything of the sort so handy little trick right there and then transpose will actually transpose every single thing inside of this project so if you have a singer that wants to try the song in a different key you can simply go in and transpose the entire song up or down and then see if it works inside of their register and of course the lower right is the full edit menu pertaining to what you can do with the sequence my most common thing that i do use in here is going to be double the length of the sequence and then also copy the sequence let's say if i had an intro sequence i want to copy it to the second sequence and then add some more things to make it into a verse i would use copy sequence right there now let's jump over to the left side and starting at the top we have the home icon that just brings us back to this main page that we're looking at right now so if we're in any of them we hit the home we're going to go back to the main you can also get there by hitting the main hardware button moving down from that is going to be our grid edit this is where we're going to be sequencing out our midi notes by drawing them in we can highlight some we can delete them if you hold down the shift button on the hardware you are going to see a sub menu pull up below on the bottom section of the screen now moving below that we go into our track overview this is going to show us a summary of all the midi tracks and the audio tracks with some basic information what is their monitor setting what is their volume what is the input and the output what program is running with inside of that track this is a good way just to have an overlooked view of what you're actually working with inside of the project below that we have the step sequencer the step sequencer essentially allows you to take a sound you can hit pad select and then tap one of the 16 pads or it will default to the last pad that you touched and then simply draw in different events and then adjust the velocity accordingly that's going to be your step sequencing window and then below that is your x y effect you would have to insert an x y and if you want to change it you hit setup right here in the lower corner you can go through a whole bunch of different really cool xy effects and those are really fun to play with by dragging your finger across the screen and hearing how it affects the audio defaulting to the main output now let's take a look at the top first is the name of the project remember a project holds everything all the sequences which hold all the track and program information the folder will show you everything contained within the project the programs that are being used all the samples within the project and also all the sequences that you're going to be working with in the recording sequence name so if you were using this for introverse and chorus you would see the names corresponding right here introverse and chorus moving over from that the i and the o is going to show all your open midi connections so if you have a lot of external gear this is where you're going to get a great overview of everything that's connected to the mpc moving over from the i o is going to be the bars beats and ticks now this i think is often overlooked because this is really valuable to actually scroll through the project like a jog wheel on a console or a controller so if you have let's say a 16 bar sequence and you're here in the edit mode and you want to scrub instead of tapping up here on this overview to move the playhead around the easiest way to do that is just to touch on bars beats and clicks and now essentially the rotary knob becomes a jog wheel allowing you to scrub through the project this is really handy for copying and pasting and just jumping to the exact place you want to paste the midi notes then moving over from that is going to be your time correction by default it is on one cool thing to try on an mpc is just to quantize the first note of let's say a four bar idea and then finger drum in the remainder of the notes that's a little trick timberland always uses and you'll notice with his beats they're never quite perfect but they have a specific feel and groove to them that is one thing to try on the mpc is take off the time correction and let your natural rhythm sequence for you and then you can always go in and nudge the notes forward and backwards to get it a little tighter but don't be too reliant on the time correction so moving over from the time correction we have the metronome and we can just tap on that to go into the metronome we can adjust how it behaves if there's a count in if it happens during recording or record play or only during play what the rate of the metronome is the sound of the metronome the level of the metronome and then next to that is going to be our automation turning it from read to right you'll see an r and a w this is handy if you're using plugins and you want to record some filter automation or record some parameter changes quickly just turn it on to the w play back twist the knob it doesn't have to be recording you can just be playing twisting the knob and then make sure to turn it back to read so you don't accidentally adjust some parameters that you don't want to have automation on one thing to note with all these time correction metronome and the automation if you hold down shift you're going to see a highlight come over them i'm hitting shift on the physical controller and this allows you to really easily turn on and off the time correction turn on and off the metronome and completely turn off all the automation then in the upper right we have the system resources that's going to tell me my battery how much cpu am i using how much memory and my different storage locations the one on the left is going to be my internal memory and this is my one terabyte drive inside and then we're going to see purge right here now purge will actually allow you to delete any sort of unused samples before you save that will save you memory space so get in the habit before you save to purge unused samples and that will keep your project size small and you won't have a bunch of unused samples saved into your storage space now after the upper right we're going to want to go over and have a look right here this is i think one of the most powerful parts of this screen typically you're just going to see this as where the volume meter comes through but if you click this little eyeball up top we open a whole new hidden menu and this menu contains ability to focus on the pad which is the big square the four little squares is the program the three lines are the track and then this is the master output so going over to the left i can see that i'm on pad a03 and the volume of that is coming out through the program itself i don't have any effects on this it's not solo or muted it is the volume adjustment right here and then i can change the panning of that individual sound then i can go to the bigger picture and i can move out to the program so by clicking that guy right there now i can adjust the overall volume of everything within this entire program all the sounds i can see that there's a compressor and a reverb on this program and that i actually have this program soloed and the state of the automation of the entire unit so if we go here and unsolo it you're going to see that it's now unsoloed and if i change the automation right here we're going to see that the automation corresponds so it's just another quick location to change the automation state i can adjust the volume of the program again this is everything contained inside of the program all the sounds and i can pan the program right here then i can go out even further from the program into the actual track well what is this track well the track is the drums it is using the program of vintage space kit 2. it's receiving midi input from all the ports it's sending the midi nowhere and it's in the current state is set to in so again if we hide this it's just another menu of how to do this if we are going through and adjusting more then on the far right we have the master output now as you can see remember when we went when we inserted the xy effect we can see that it did insert on the master output right here we can adjust the volume of the master output we can change where the master output is going if we want to let's say route the master output to output 3 and 4 on the back of this unit but this is an amazing hidden menu do not overlook this once you start using this you're going to be using it all the time when i'm producing this menu is always open because it's much easier for me to let's say add a filter to a drum sound by having this open then going into the menu and then going into program edit and then going into this sound and then going over to effect and adding it right here it's much easier from the main just to pop open the hidden menu right here put it on pad focus and then tap on the screen then i can add that effect on this individual pad instantly without leaving my main screen and that's going to wrap it up for your first edition of your mpc master class i hope that helped explain a little bit more about the workflow and that main screen that you're going to find yourself on a lot to give you a solid foundation for how to use your mpc now in future videos we're going to go over the browser all the sub menus editing making beats from start to finish and everything else you need to know to really master your mpc if you made it this far to the end of the video i know it's a lot of information in there so give yourself a pat on the back and on that note thanks for your time thanks for your attention now go make something cool [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: CREATE EDUCATE INSPIRE

Views: 63,952

Keywords: Akai, mpc one, mpc live 2, mpc live, mpc beats, mpc beats tutorial, mpc 2.10, mpc x, mpc one tutorial, mpc live 2 tutorial, mpc one retro, mpc 2.10 update, mpc studio, mpc expansions, fisher live, fisher losing it, fisher im losing it, fisher coachella 2019, fisher live 2021, fisher set, chris lake live, chris lake turn off the lights, tech house, tech house set, sidechain compression, sidechaining, audio compression 101, mixing audio, mpc tutorial videos

Id: o7iUWQUePF4

Length: 26min 46sec (1606 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 11 2022