Mpc x Controls and Connections Guide

what's up facebook this is cheap digger I've never said that before I usually say what's up YouTube this is cheap digger who cares anyway I'm doing this beginner's guide tonight and completely impromptu on all the MPC X controls and connections so this video is for anyone that has just bought with MPC X and or anyone that's thinking of buying an MPC X are a bit intimidated by all the controls and connections that you see on the machine so let's start with the top panel controls of the MPC X so if you're new to the MPC X I'm going to take you through all these controllers and tell you what they all do so these are your pad Bank buttons now these perform four main functions so let's first of all take a look at a drum program so when it comes to a drum program essentially the pad banks are giving you access to additional virtual banks of sixteen pads that extend the limitations of the 16 physical pads so let's say we've loaded up a whole bunch of samples on these 16 pads here and we go up to pad Bank B and now all the pads will be completely blank and we can load another whole bunch of 16 pads and so on so forth until we completely max out the entire drum program now a drum program can accommodate a hundred and twenty eight pads each with a sample on it but additionally to that each pad can have up to four layers that's another conversation to have let's just stick to the pad banks the reason I'm telling you that is that you can access the upper layers of pad banks if you in my case you can just press the pad bank button once now I've got mine set up to do that so if there's anyone watching that's already got on MPC X and thinks they knows no all of this stuff there might be some things in this video that you'll learn if you haven't come across it so don't you know not watch it if you have some experience with this machine let's get back to the pad Bank so if I want to go in to the upper four banks so these first four banks here 16 samples each or 16 pads each and then we've got an additional four banks so we've got e F G and H now I can just switch between the bank so we're in pad Bank a and now we're in pad Bank e pad Bank B or rather be when it's read an F on its yellow see when it's red and G when it's yellow the when it's red an h1 it's yellow let's go to the menu and go to the gear symbol which is the Preferences and if we go down to general you can change the behavior of how you access those pad banks so you can see it's his says here Bank button press now I've got mine set to SEC select toggle Bank which is the alternative mode I just prefer it because it's easier to just press it once and then twice that access the upper level of banks but the default behavior is select a to D this means that you have to double tap DoubleTap the pad Bank buttons in quick succession to access the upper banks and as you can see I'm in pad Bank F now if I press C it goes straight to the lower bank of C or you can press and hold shift and press one and you can access the upper banks but you can't toggle between them even if you're holding shift so I recommend it's totally up to you guys but select toggle Bank is the quickest and easiest way to switch between the lower four banks and the upper four banks so let's get back to what was saying about drum programs so that's what they do regarding drum programs they allow you to access the you know additional virtual pad let's say for a drum program which can have 128 pads in it in total when it comes to key group programs it's slightly different because you have a chromatic program in this regard now there's four chromatic program types in the MPC live and MPC X you've got plugin grams so this is cheap synth so you can see now that the pads are acting as octave or the pad banks are acting as octave if ters you can go all the way down to the bottom and then if I press this button twice I'm in the very upper octave range so that's what they do when you're using chromatic program whether that's a plug-in key group program MIDI program or CV program that's what they do for chromatic program type so they can be used for that the third thing that you can use the pad Bank buttons for is pad performance I just need to clear my throat one second excuse me so when you're using pad performance the pad Bank buttons can be used to shift up the octaves in the same way that I just showed you so we're still we're not actually let's go back to cheap synth the plug-in program let's go to pad performance now you can see here that this will shift the octave but these will also shift the octave so vice versa they can offset each other so that's the third use for the pad Bank buttons so you can offset the octaves depending on what you've got it set in the pad performance mode or if you're using the pad Bank buttons themselves I hope that makes sense now the fourth use for them is if you're in next sequence mode so if you're new to the MPC format next sequence mode allows you to use your pads to trigger your sequences in your project so if you look here we've got the list of sequences so this current space that we can see in this list will show us the first eight sequences so the first eight sequences can be accessed by triggering these pads and you can see when I press the pads it's just jumping up through a list with the pad banks let's just press pad Bank C and then press in fact let's actually press that twice and go to pub Bank e if I press this pad now that will give us access to sequence 65 because obviously you've got 16 sequences when you're in pad Bank a because it's corresponding to the pads pub Bank B you've got another 16 so 32 48 64 so then when you're in pad Bank E you are on sequence 65 66 67 68 and so on so forth all the way up to pad Bank H if I press the last pad in pad Bank H my sequence sequence 128 because in any given project you can have up to 128 sequences so that's the four uses of the pad Bank buttons so I hope you've got that locked down now that is what the pad Bank buttons do and that is their main functions in the MPC let's move down to the full level and half level button so let's disengage it that is the default mode for full level and that means whatever sounds we play on the pads they're going to respond to the amount of pressure so they in this regard of velocity-sensitive if we engage full level the pads will now trigger whatever sounds we're playing whether it's a plug-in midi program key group program or drum program at full level so obviously that depends on the actual volume of the sample that is sort of hard set in either the pad mixer or the program or within the program editor itself but floor level will play them at their full level it's pretty much does what it says on the tin now if you press and hold shift and press full level you can see the full level button flash now this means the pads are now in half level mode so again no matter what volume you've got them set in the background they will play at 50 ten of their full level and they won't respond to pressure so when in full level or half mode level mode they won't respond they're not velocity sensitive and they won't respond to pressure that's what the full level button does 16 level things get a little bit complex so 16 levels is for use predominantly when you're using drum programs so if you press a pad that you want to apply it the 16 levels to so I've not got any sounds loaded in my MPC at the moment so I'm going to make sure I'm in sequence 1 but then while I'm using that I can just go to next sequence mode press my pad bank and there you go we've jumped down to sequence 1 so let's go to the browser I'm going to go to places in fact I'm going to go to expansions and load in a sample just a simple sample to my first pad and make sure I'm in the drum program go back to the browser and go to the vault now have no idea what to sample to use for this I've not planned this at all so let's get Tom or something a bit more musical sounding this'll do this is fine hello you come in so let's go back and take a look at 16 level so I've got this Tom sound on my first pad in this drum program to apply 16 levels to this a press 16 level if I had additional samples I could use the data wheel to access other samples to apply the 16 level function to now what the 16 level does inbrief allows you to do 6 different things here so we can use the pads going from pad one pad 16 to control the velocity and you can see the pads or the sound gets louder as we go up through the pads even if we've got four level engaged it overrides that and 16 levels becomes the thing that's controlling the velocity in that regard the next one is tuning this is the classic one that's been around in MPC forever or the one that's most commonly used so you can change the pitch of a given sample over here when you're using tuned in 16 levels you can offset the kind of range so as you might know in an octaver there's 12 notes so if we choose this parameter here which is I forget its original pad that's it you can choose the original tuning or the default pitch to be on one of these pads so currently it's set to 1 so that's the default pitch and if we play from padua not to pad 12 that will give us a full octave but these last four pads will be the same as the last night on pad 12 I do Apollo to apologize it's actually one semitone up from that but then they're all the same that's because this 12 notes in an octave and obviously we've got 16 pads here so the last four pads are irrelevant if we move that up to pad for to be the original pitch this will now give us a full range across the 16 pads because we're offsetting it by four and now we've got 16 levels of tuning so that's the default but I think my MP CX has been left at one and that and I think it remembers that setting so I hope that makes sense if you choose the original pad to be the last pad pad 16 obviously you can then go down in pitch [Music] but when you get to here these four pads then are all the same pitch that's because this is the octave and these are out of range likewise if we choose the original pad to be pad 12 now we get the full range of pads or full range of notes but we get a lower pitch that is tuning it can also affect the filter so let's just press and hold menu go to pad faulting that's the shortcut to get to your program editor if you take a look at the filter envelope page the default filter that I've got set and I think it is the default one for most MPC X's and lives it's the low pass to filter and you can see that it's fully open here so even though it's set to fully open let's adjust it actually now you can't hear any change because that's because we've got it in 16 level mode and we're controlling the filter so 16 level was overridden the filter so this is what happens now so it's opening up the filter as you go up through the pads so it doesn't matter what we've got this set to but it does matter if you change the filter type so let's now change it to a high-pass filter and now you hear the high-pass filter being opened up in fact I made a mistake there I pressed another pad I need to select the pad that we want to apply 16 levels to which is this first pad and change the fill type for that now it's a bit weird it doesn't jump smoothly from pad 1 up to there and that's probably because well I was going to say probably because the of the original pad setting but that only applies to tuning so this is something that I think I need to flag up with that Chi is that it's not a massive deal because I've very rarely used this but it's a function that's available to us but it's not a very smooth sweep from going up with the frequencies let's go back to 16 levels and filter yeah so it jumps quite quickly out of range and then these last pads are very quiet but you can control the filter with 16 levels layer I've had trouble with this I'm not too sure how to use it for layer I've experimented with that and I cannot get it to work I'm not too sure whether this is a bug also you can also control the amplitude envelope attack parameter so let's actually go back to the program editor and choose our pad and let's just return it back to a low pass filter and as you can hear now I am controlling the attack with 16 levels so as we got through the pads we're essentially moving the attack of the fill of the amplitude envelope so it's essentially going like that by the time you get to pad 16 it's a very smooth curve so it's just gently rolling off the attack likewise you can control the decay now this only works let's close that look at the program editor this only works when you've got it in one shot mode and the amplitude envelope is pretty much shut down so I like to use the attack hold decay sustain envelope let's bring the sustain and the decay all the way to zero I actually did that for a different pad I do apologize I bring that down to zero and decay to zero and now you can hear as we go out through the pads it all gradually should elongate the sound but it's not doing that for some reason let's go and check out why not decay there you go just had to re-engage 16 levels so as we got through the pads it's gradually opening up the decay so that one works quite nicely for stuttering effect particularly with note repeat quite a nice little tip there so that is what the sixteen level button does excuse me it just have to clear my throat again I've got a bit of a dry mouth I'm gonna have some water and I shall return in two seconds water yeah right so where were we we've covered 16 level next button is trap mute or pad mute so this allows you to access your track mute so let's say we had several tracks we can just use the pan snout to mute and unmute the tracks if we use the secondary function by double tapping in quick succession or pressing in holding shift and pressing track mute we're now in pad mute mode so we can mute individual pads now we can only mute this one pad because we've only got one sample in there now something that's come up on some of the groups here is that the automation of trap muting and pad muting are separate so to record track mutes you have to use your transport controls and record it into the sequence so let's just record just mute and unmute a few times and you can see now that's automated that now if we go to the main page and just look at the top of the main page you can see that we've got the automation button here that will not allow you if you put it in to write automation mode when it's read like this that will not record your track Muse that will record your pad mute so this time I'm not going to press record and play on the sequencer I'm just going to press play gonna go into pad mute mode and now I can record the pad mutes with the automation the reason for that is is because tracks are looking at the actual track and sequence data and pads and all the parameters of pads are controlled by automation that's why it's separate that's my basic explanation so that's what that button does toggles between track mutes and pad mute with a quick little overview of how to record the automation I hope that's been of use ask a to the next sequence mode I showed you this earlier this is where you use the pads to trigger your sequences and you can use the pad banks to jump up through the different banks of sequences and you've got 128 in total the secondary function for this if you double tap in quick succession again you can press and hold shift and press that is song mode I'm not going to go into song mode if you want to check out my youtube channel I've got plenty of videos on song mode but that is how you access song mode this is where for beginners if you don't already know this you can stitch together all your sequences you can convert it to a longer sequence self-contained you can export it as an audio file you can do lots of things with song mode that is that button let's move down here we've got the program edit button on the MPC X on the MPC live or for all users press and hold menu like I've shown you and you press pad 14 and that's the shortcut you've got your sample edit button again if you press and hold menu and press let me think it's yet pad 13 that takes you straight to sample edit or you can use the dedicated button on the MPC X we've got your pad mixer button here so this is dedicated to where you do all your mixing with your pads and the luxury of having MPC X is you've got all these lovely cue links to just freely mix all your pads then what's going on with my voice tonight I've got a frog in my throat so that hasn't got a secondary function then you've got your channel mixer and this is where you can mix all your individual programs so this isn't a track mix so this is the programs okay let's go down to these buttons these are your cue link modes so all right usually have mine in screen control mode but you've got all these different modes you've got pad parameter mode pad sing program and project so if you also check my youtube channel I've got a detour detailed video on how to edit all these and what the different modes are but they do have a secondary function if you press and hold shift you can access the editor to edit the different modes so pressing and holding shift and going through them will switch the modes or in fact you only have to press and hold shift once to access the editor and then you can just flick between the modes that's what they do obviously these are your cue link controls where you can control tons of different parameters you've got your pads now let's take a look at these buttons so these are buttons to access the menu that will take you straight to your main menu the Browse button will access the browser if you press and hold shift and press browse I'm not going to do that that will immediately save the projects in fact I can do that because I've not saved this before but let's say you've already saved the project a quick way to just save the project immediately is to press and hold shift and press the Browse button and that will save it but because I haven't saved this before this will give me the option to save as next we've got the step sequencer button and the secondary function is the list editor so if we press that we can access the step sequencer if you press and hold shift press it again it turns yellow for the secondary function and now we've got the list editor where you can do detailed editing of events that you've recorded the next one is sampler and looper so I press and hold shift press sampler and you can access the looper or just press it once access the sampler you've got your X Y FEX which is the real-time kind of effect controller that doesn't have a secondary function and then you've got pad performance mode here now if you see there's a little white line that goes down here to F key this is function key and it's been available pretty much in the last several NPCs that I've owned it certainly was in the MPC 5000 and also the MPC 1000 that I had but if you press F key you can notice all these buttons now turn red so let's go back to the main page and you can see on the main page as an example we've got MIDI tracks audio tracks we've got track decrement and increment or up and down we've got mute and solo these buttons now emulate these functions here so we can choose MIDI tracks audio tracks track up and down in fact let's go back to MIDI and you can see that going up and down for the MIDI tracks you commute whatever track you're on or solo whatever track you're on so that's what the F key does so I'm going to move away from this section go up to here and talk about these knobs now so this is your main volume knob this controls the main output of the MPC X next to that you've got your inputs 3 & 4 record gain knob so if you've got an audio source connected to the rear panel of the MPC X now should have an image of that so if you just look to the to the right of the two big inputs the combination inputs as they're referred to these are XLR inputs and quarter inch Jack inputs if you just look to the left of that you've got your inputs three and four so you can see there's two quarter inch or vertically orientated inputs and next to that you've got phono inputs and then next to that you've got a switch that says line and photos so if you're using the RCA phono inputs and you're recording from a turntable you want to switch that switch to phono and that will record any audio source that you've got connected to the phono connection which would usually be eight hands hey so if you're using the quarter-inch vertically orientated ports that is inputs three and four but that's the line connection so if you've got a CD player or another synth or another line level source you can connect that there so let's return back to the top panel now that is the gain and that is grouped so those are like that is like a stereo kind of gain control for both of those inputs you don't have individual control but you do four inputs one and two so let's just take a look at the rear again so looking to the furthest left these are your inputs your main inputs one and two so they're combi jacks or combi inputs and they're called combination or combi inputs because they're a combination of XLR but you can also put a quarter inch jack inside there so XLR is generally used for microphones because it's a higher quality and it's a shielded kind of connection you can also use two different types of quarter-inch jacks in these ports you can use what's known as an unbalanced cable or a balanced cable so I'm unbalanced or TS cables are generally more susceptible to noise but a TRS cable which means tip ring sleeve is less susceptible to noise that's the basic explanation so you can use either but just bear in mind that an unbalanced quarter-inch jack cable for your recording might be prone to some noise depending on how you've got your system set up so let's go back to the main view or the top page again all the top panel so that is what the 3/4 gain knob does it controls your inputs 3 & 4 gain and these two knobs can increase the gain of inputs 1 & 2 which I've just shown you are the main combi inputs but they also control the front panel audio inputs which are called the instrument inputs they are the two quarter-inch jacks you can see just to the left of that knob it's quite hard so if you look at the SD card on the left move across to the 2 foot switch ports and next to that you've got two instrument ports so these are also inputs one and two but they're selectable by switching these switches down to where it says front so if you want to record from the main inputs one two at the rear you choose rear if you want to record from the two front ports you choose front but you can mix and match those well obviously one of them is going to be on one side and one of them is going to be on the other side in the middle of those you've got your 48 volt phantom power switch this provides additional power to any microphones that you may have connected to the XLR connection for inputs one and two XLR is the only connection that will accept the 48 volt phantom power or rather will be provided to so it will only provide that phantom power to an XLR that's connected and that's generally used for microphones a condenser microphone that needs that extra boost in volume but I said these to gain potentiometers can increase the gain of either the rear mounted inputs one and two all the front mounted ones just had to clear my throat again and I did a massive burp so pardon me so let's move down to these controls here so this control is your monitor control so when it's panned hard right you are hearing the main output which is you know control the volume is controlled by this master knob if you move this knob towards the left or anti-clockwise you'll start to hear any incoming audio that you've got coming into the MPC so this is a quick way to monitor what you're recording you can switch that between mono and stereo and if you do that whilst listening to what you're recording with this moved slightly or all the way to the left you will hear that switch between stereo and mono depending on how you've actually got it connected that will affect that let's now talk about the vu meter now you can change what the vu meter is looking at mine's currently set to program so I'm looking at any audio that's coming from the program and these buttons here are a combination of functions so you can arm record audio tracks with this button so record arm let's go to an audio track if I press that button you can now see that the audio track is armed so that's quick access to that you've got your automation read and write button here so if you click that you can see that changes your automation button so that's just a quick front panel or top panel melted access for that function you can solo the current program that you're on with this button now mute you can mute an audio track here but if we go to the MIDI you can see that it's not working for MIDI even if I unmute it from there this isn't muting that this is because this is muting the track so if we go to the track mixer view here you can see that in fact is that doing that now let's go to the channel mixer it's muting the program so it's not muting the track from the main page if we press mute you can see this this is referring to the actual track it's not muting the track but if you go to the channel mixer to look at the program this is now muting the program so this is relating to programs that's all those controls covered let's go down to here we've got a raise so if you press a raise that is a quick way to access the arrays menu and you can arrays all events in a sequence you can arrays just the automation you can arrays specific notes if you tap on there you can see you populate these grids or the grid with certain notes and we can just arrays specific notes except note now I'm going to admit something that I made a mistake I think I actually made this mistake recently in a video and looking back at some of my old videos I made the mistake of saying that this it raises everything except the note data which is not true at all it actually erases any notes except the ones that you select so if we choose accept note and we choose the notes that we don't want to erase so we just let's say I want to retain these ones that are highlighted if i press do it it will erase every other pad that I've recorded it and it will keep these pads all the notes that correspond to these pads in a sequence that's what accept note does and just up here you can choose the range of where your arrays you can choose the sequence and you can choose the track which you want to erase if you go up to the pencil icon here you can also choose a raise there so you might already know this but let's say you're playing back you can't press a raise and access the erase function while it's playing back or whilst recording but you can if you go into the sequence edit menu you can choose a raise and whilst it's playing back you can actually erase things during playback if you didn't already know that so let's have a look microphone still working now that's arrays now we've got undo and redo so undo is just simple you just can undo anything that you've previously done if you press and hold shift and press undo that will redo something you've got copy so this copy button refers to either copying pads so if we press copy you get this come up let's choose this pad we want to copy that pad you have to press on the screen choose the pad you want to copy it to press through it and now we've copied that pad to this this pad here the other way that you can use the copy button is in the grid editor so let's just put a note in there let's select it we can copy that note and it will instantly copy it and paste it for us along the grid the secondary function for that is delete so if you press and hold shift and press delete now it won't delete the notes in the grid editor it allows you to delete pads so if we want to delete this pad that we just a second ago we could choose that pad and we can just delete that pad and that clears the sample off of that pad that's what that does so that's everything covered here this is your main data dial now this is been around in MPC since they won whatever dialog box or selection box or parameter that you're currently on you can just use the data wheel there's a really quick way to scroll through different parameters or different values and so on and so forth underneath that you've got an increment and decrement button so depending on what mode you're in or what window you're in let's use it to go up through the sequences you press + and you can see you can just scroll up through the sequences or scroll down next to that you've got a numeric keypad now this is something that not a lot of people know but if you choose something like the sequence selection box here if you type in 45 for example and press Enter it will jump to sequence 45 so that says I don't know if you can see that on there but a little red value comes up there of whatever number I've put in the numeric keypad I put 23 in press ENTER and that'll jump to sequence 23 likewise we could change the BPM if I wanted to change the BPM down to 100 just use the numeric keypad and press do it or I could press this button in the middle of these arrow buttons that's also an inter button so this can be used to enter values and this dedicated enter button can also so that's the numeric keypad done I've done the function key let's now look at tap tempo so my current tempo is 100 let's say I want a faster tempo now I've pressed that four times for the NPC to register it at the new tempo of 160 4.38 this is good if you've got another audio source that you want to get the NPC synched to or roughly synched to you can tap in alongside in time to another beat and get somewhere near to matching that tempo and then you can obviously adjust it if you want it to be an exact value it's got a secondary function if you press shift and press tap you can see now that master is highlighted this means now that every sequence in the project will adhere to amass the tempo my master tempo is 170 so that means all sequences will now be at 170 beats per minute but if you press the hold shift and press it again to take it out of master mode now it's in sequence mode so now the tempo is based on each and so now each and every sequence has got its own independent tempo so let's change sequence 7 to 141 beats per minute let's go back to sequence 1 and that's 170 beats were in it my goodness I've been going for nearly 40 minutes amazing so let's now take a look at let's just take a look at the settings for the tap tempo if you go to menu go to the gear symbol for your preferences now let's see is it yeah there it is in general so you can select the amount of taps that the MPC needs to register a new tempo from using the tap tempo so you can set it to 2 taps 3 taps or 4 taps I've got mine set to 4 taps just because most music that I make is you know based on a 4/4 time signature that's not to say I'm making 4 to the floor music please please no there's nothing wrong with it it's just not my my main thing so yeah that's the tap button and the master button so we've covered all of this we've got our main page button so whatever mode were in we can just press that and continuously return to the main page this can also access the track mixer so if we press and hold shift and press that main button that will access the track view which you can access also from the screen here I never use this this is where you can mix or adjust the levels and volumes of your MIDI tracks so once again you can double tap that and that will go to there or you press and hold shift and tap map this button here is your note repeat button this allows you to repeat the note on the pads to give you kind of stuttering effects if you didn't already know the secondary function is to latch that so if you press and hold shift you can lock that if you don't use shift you just have to press and hold it to trigger your sample to repeat it or your pad even if you've got a plugin program no repeat will work on that as well also if you press and hold note repeat you can see you get your time divisions come up at the bottom of the screen underneath that you've got your locate menu buttons so you can go to a particular location in your sequence with this if you press the locate button in the middle it will bring up the location menu I also have a YouTube video on on my youtube channel explaining the locate menu in all its function so I'm not going to go into that too much now so you can go to specific events you could go to the start of your sequence or the end of your sequence will start up bars end of bars so on and so forth and then of course we've got our transport controls this is your main recall button if you've already recorded data and then you use the main recall button it will overwrite it sorry it will overwrite any recorded data you've currently got in your sequence if you want to add it to the already recorded data you use overdub so whatever one you press you're putting the transport or the sequencer interpret cord arm mode but this will replace record this will overdub record which will add additional data to your sequence you've got a stop button here let's say that you've got a sound that you can't cut off the best way to cut it off is double tap that in quick succession and that acts as a panic button to stop all salem's it's the same on the Akai force there's a stop button towards the top left of the Akai force you can double tap that in quick succession and that will stop all sounds you've got your main play button this will play from wherever you currently are in the sequence and your play start will play from the very start of the sequence or it'll reset and go back and of course if you're recording you can record from the start with play start or you can record from the current position in the sequence that's all the top panel controls covered let's now take a look at the rest of the rear panel connections and controls so we covered the two combination inputs which are on the furthest left if you look just to the right of those we've got inputs 3 & 4 so we've got the quarter inch line inputs these are the vertical orientated ones and you've got next to that the red and white RCA Fono connections and next to that you've got your ground connection there so most turntables will have a little cable with a little fork connection on the end of it you plug that into this little connection here so you have to unscrew the little silver knob and put the little fork in between that and the chassis and screw that back in and that will get rid of any ground noise or hum that you might be getting from your turntable like I said before you have to switch it to phono to accept the phone no signal or the turntable signal from the RCA jacks going to the right of that you can see you've got your outputs so you've got three sets of additional outputs aside from the main output so let's go all the way to the right of that the white ones that is your main outputs one and two then you've got 3 & 4 5 & 6 7 & 8 these can be used to split out programs or different pads to a mixing desk for more of a separated mix which gives you more flexibility when mixing from the MPC X the MPC live has two less output so it's just gots the total of six main outputs or should I say it's got four auxilary outputs and two main outputs just to the right of that you have got the small little connections there or the little imp output ports and these are relating to modular gear so these are your CV outputs if you've got a eurorack modular system and you can send different bits of information out of these underneath you've got your MIDI so going from the left you've got four MIDI output ports this is where you would connect things like synthesizers and drum machines that you want to control with the MPC if you want to control the MPC with an external MIDI controller you would use the MIDI input ports which are the two furthest right MIDI ports that you can see there so you could control though the MPC with an external MIDI keyboard or something of that nature also next to that you've got to vertically orientated or stacked USB input ports now it doesn't explicitly say their input USB inputs as it does the USB 3 port it says USB output you could probably see there the reason these are inputs is because these can be used to accept a USB MIDI device to control the MPC so you can connect a USB MIDI keyboard and control the MPC or trigger the sounds that you've got in your MPC with these USB ports but they are also USB ports for any USB storage media that you want to connect to the MPC whether that be a USB stick or a USB hard drive so just think of those as inputs and not outputs I said the single USB 3 output port is the computer connection port so when you get the MPC X you'll notice that you've got a blue USB cable you connect that out of here into your computer and that purrs that or that allows you to use the MPC and controller mode and it also will mount any removable storage media that you've got connected to your MPC X and then last of all on the rear panel you've got your power connection just above that you've got a little kind of latch that you can unscrew and feed your power cable through and screw that back in and that will just hold your cable in place just in case there's a risk of it getting knocked out with the MPC live this isn't much of a problem obviously because that runs on battery I think if you're running it off of AC power and then pull the it will still remain on because it's got an internal battery and then of course you've got your main power switch now just like any computer you can press and hold this for a number of seconds if you encounter a lock-up or a freeze and this will kind of reset the NPC X or restart it as you can with a computer so last of all to finish this tutorial on all the controls and connections for the NPC X we've got the front panel so going from left to right you've got an SD card port now this can accept any standard SD card or micro SD adapter with a micro SD card installed the ones that I recommend are SanDisk or Samsung or Kingston they're the three main manufacturers I've never had any issues with the sandisk micro SD card that I had for the first year and a half of owning the NPC X it never give gave me any problems other than the fact that it just ran out because it was 16 gigabytes and I maxed it out about two months ago so now I've got Earths a solid-state drive that I installed in the underside of my MPC X so that's your SD card port just to the right of that you've got two foot switch controllers now let's just go back to the top panel view so you can see my screen if you press menu and press preferences and go to hardware and scroll down you can see you've got two foot switch options here if you click on the box there you can use your dialog your dialog or you can use your beta wheel to scroll through a number of parameters that you can control with an external foot switch just got to clear my throat again apologies for that I just had to clear my throat once again so yep you've got two foot switch controllers that you can control a number of parameters so you can control things like the transport controls you can control all the pads you can control your recording now I haven't got one connected unfortunately I might include that in a future YouTube video I need to get a footswitch controller you can control the function keys you can switch pad banks and that's where you can configure you where you can configure your foot switches so let's go back to the front panel view and let's talk about the next connection so next to the 2 foot switch connections as mentioned earlier when talking about the top panel inputs and outputs and stuff like that you've got to instrument inputs here so these are handy for guitarists or bassists if you want to connect a guitar here this is a good place to connect it but these can also be used for any other audio source like a CD player or a synthesizer or an iPhone or anything else providing you've got a suitable adapter and cable so these can be used for things other than the guitar next to that you've got a mix knob now this mix knob allows you to get a blend of the inputs 3 & 4 or your inputs 1 & 2 so when it's panned sorry outputs I do apologia is this mix this mix knob is pertaining to your outputs 1 & 2 & your outputs 3 & 4 and this relates your headphone so just tune it just next to that first knob that you can see going from the left you've got your two headphone jacks there you've got a mini jack or a one-eighth inch jack and then you've got a quarter inch jack so this knob next to them or to the left of them is the mix knob which allows you to hear the outputs one and two if it's all the way anti-clockwise you're going to hear outputs 1 & 2 in your headphones you can hear outputs 3 & 4 if you move this knob to the right or fully clockwise then just as said you've got your two headphone jacks they're mini jack and quarter inch jack and the last control that you've got on the MPC X is your headphone volume on the far right there so that's it guys I hope you've enjoyed this video this is mostly for complete beginners who want to know what all the cables or rather the connections and controls do and a little bit of in-depth knowledge on some of the modes that these controls can access I hope you've enjoyed this video this was kind of an experimental live video that I've just done off the cuff because I'm trying to find different ways to present my tutorials other than YouTube at the moment and see if it generates a little bit more traffic for me on Facebook and I said if I post a YouTube video on Facebook unfortunately there's no direct way to watch it on there and it just gives you a link to YouTube it's not a massive problem but there you go it's a good way for me to teach you guys something and not also experiment with how far I can reach you guys on this platform so I hope you've enjoyed the video all right we'll hopefully see you on the next one maybe on YouTube maybe on here take it easy thanks for watching this is cheap digger and I'm out

Channel: Tubedigga

Views: 24,883

Keywords: mpc live tutorial, mpc one, mpc one lesson, mpc one tricks, mpc one tutorial, mpc tricks, mpc tutorial, mpc x, akai force, akai force tutorial, akai mpc, akai mpc live, akai mpc one, akai mpcx, mpc, mpc 1, mpc lesson, mpc live, mpc live lesson, mpc live tricks, mpcx tutorial

Id: ChPje1DM8Ds

Length: 52min 6sec (3126 seconds)

Published: Fri May 10 2019