Those that have this device, you might want to skip ahead to the fifth paragraph

So, I had an MPC Live 1, it sat on the shelf for two years. A month or so, I broke it out and decided to really start digging in to learn how to use it. I come from the realm of orchestral music, so the idea of manipulating wave samples is very foreign to me.

It took awhile to really grasp what is really going on. Sequences I had no trouble with, these are complete "sections" of music (ie intro, verse, chorus, verse 2, chorus 2, hook / bridge, chorus 3, outro). It is very strange writing music in a non-linear fashion, instead, creating loops and in the most simple form, track muting and using insert effects to change a sound. I understand you don't have to do things this way, but this is how I am starting to learn and dive into this thing. I know linear writing is possible, and this is something I will dig into.

Where the confusion was for me is the difference between tracks and programs. For those that have this device, I have a very simple explanation. Tracks are your MIDI data, programs are your instruments assigned to said track. This means, until you assign a program (instrument) to your track, you will not hear this track. This gives you the flexibility to create different programs / instruments (via the built-in synths or with various wav based samples) and play / test a track with different programs / instruments to see what you prefer. For whatever reason, the difference between tracks and programs are never clearly explained in Youtube videos, maybe this will help some people who might be new to this device, or have been struggling to understand the difference between the two.

The MPC Live 1 / 2 / One / X all work exactly the same way, the only difference between these units is the inputs / outputs, buttons, knobs, the OLED display for each Qlink (on the X) and the 10 inch display (on the X) vs the 7 inch display on the other three models. Of course, the Live 1 is portable with a built-in rechargeable battery, the Live 2 is portable with the same built-in battery but also has a very decent and capable stereo speaker. The One and X have no batteries or speakers, and only the Live 1 / 2 / X have a SATA HDD port, while the One does not. Functionally, as far as making music, these units are all identical, run the same firmware, and have the same capabilities, less the hardware input / output limitations. The Live 2 for example has CV gates for modular MIDI gear, the Live 1 does not, so of course, you would not be able to use modular gear on the Live 1, while you can with the One / Live 2 / X.

I decided to buy a Live 2 for the purpose of goofing around in bed for the times I want to do lazy writing. My Live 1 is now a permanent fixture in my studio where it will serve as a dedicated drum pad with my Yamaha Motif XF8 and icon control surfaces.

- Now, this gets into my two questions... I have collected many of the official MPC expansions through various means, including purchasing some, and acquiring some through other means. I also have the Ghosthack Ultimate 2019, 2020, & 2021 Producer Bundles. I also have Ghosthacks Tesseract cinematic sounds, Skyrealm, and Shymer (from the same Ghosthack). I also have Genera's atmospheric pianos I think it is called & Gloomy Ambient 1 & 2.

I have managed to acquire all of Maschine's non-massive x expansions, 80 in total. I have yet to convert these to MPC and the reason comes in the form of my first question. Can anyone tell me the difference between Kit Maker ($30) and Maschine2MPC? (Free / $15) (https://mediachance.com/midimacros/maschine2mpc.html) ? Anyone have a recommendation on which I should use? I am particularly interested in hearing from anyone who has tried both.

My second question, any recommended sound packs I should grab that I didn't mention above? I like all genres, so recommend what you like. I am also interested in sound packs that cover a broad range of genres (the reason I purchased Ghosthacks Producer Bundles '19, '20, & '21).

I will be watching and reading closely

 

The Only real difference between Kit Maker and Maschine2MPC seems to be that in Kit Maker you can set the pads up however you like. They seem to handle samples the same as far as type and renaming. And you can also add Bpm info in M2MPC. Both are very solid options (imo) to making kits.Also, M2MPC only uses Maschine kits.

As far as soundpacks, i'm not sure. There are tons of packs depending on the genre you like, and a lot of them are on sale right now or just reasonably priced.

Good luck fam.

 

I have the Mpc One.
Didnt start Ableton since i have it. I run everything in my studio with it.

One advice. Dont use expansions.
Make your own samples from drum machines synths etc.

 

that advice can work against you though, also. a lot of sample libraries and expansions that were made for specific formats/devices are often really good and are just basic staple sounds anyway. like Akai/emu scd's. Your results are usually not going to be any/much better.
Using staple sounds like this while you are writing, really can help you not get bogged down into an individual sample that you can just replace later anyway.

 

Agreed. That's the power of the MPC series.

Agree with this also. It really just comes down to workflow. Having "starter" packs isn't a bad idea. Especially when you're going through a creative slump.

 

well, I can't speak to current mpc expansion pack quality. but a lot of care went into the creation of those old manufacturer-made sample packs. in commercial and college level studios, with great and very expensive analog equipment. I think writing them off as not useful simply because others have access to them or they may have been used before is counterproductive.

I hear stuff out of the current Logic Pro library about every day on the radio.

 

The reason I like soundpacks is because usually, I want to write music, not create sounds. I come from writing orchestral music, so I have a very solid music theory background, when it comes to synths, I often have no clue what I am doing. This doesnt mean I dont play with this aspect, but I can spend four hours creating a sound and the result is something no one can listen to, and it gets even worse because often, I cannot think of a creative way of using that sound.

Instead, what I like to do is use the work that other people have done and tweak those to my taste. This allows me to dip my toes into sound shaping, without falling through the rabbit hole of creating something from scratch.

Worth mentioning, my friend asked me why the MPC instead of the Maschine+? My answer was simple, the processing power of the Maschine seems extremely limited when considering how resource intensive the software is. As I said, I come from an orchestral music background, so my tracks tend to be tens of minutes in length, using as many as 60 instruments in a single track. When you add the fact that I love using the piano roll to create chord structures by hand (I still have trouble with playing the pads as a pianist), the touch screen is invaluable to me. Finally, while modular gear is not a huge deal to me, one of the most invaluable time saving tools I have is a modular MIDI arp called the NDLR, which generates limitless arps with various degrees of variation and randomness based on user defined parameters. Even if you choose to use the arp in the MPC, it seems significantly more powerful than what Maschine is offering, and I think the arp in the MPC is nothing short of amazing, considering it is almost a hidden feature (you can only access it one way, and good luck finding it, it's buried in a shift-sub menu). Using arps and then customizing what it creates saves alot of time and is extremely inspirational. Another very interesting feature is the generate random midi events function, this is weirdly inspirational...I can take a snippet of randomness, heavily edit it, and create some really interesting melodies. I haven't even touched on importing MIDI notation! I have hundreds of thousands of MIDI melodies from various packs (I kinda dig the stuff from NIKO lately) and tweaking those to my style. These are all things the Maschine does not do to my knowledge.

One of the things about the MPC that does annoy me is, I bought both my Live 1 and Live 2 used. Both had all of the factory content removed from the internal storage. I wish I had a way to restore that original factory content, my understanding is, Akai has some sort of file you stick on the sdcard and the content is reinstalled, but all of my requests for this file through their support have not been responded to. They do offer the factory content as something you can put on external storage, but that is not what I want. If anyone has this file, that would be great.

 

littlewierdo, thank you for the excellent explanations! I did the same thing and come from the same mindset for composing/programming. I've owned almost every different MPC version since the very first MPC60. I bought the MPC-X when it first came out and enthusiastically dove in. The familiarity of using past MPC's was helpful but like you, the level of confusion of the newest machines was off putting to say the least. As a result, this wonderful/powerful machine has sat in my studio collecting dust for well over 2 years. You've inspired me to fire it back up though and put some time in to re-understand the work flow of it. It's easy enough to use of course but, as you already know, the level of the things you can potentially go deep. To others reading this: you really have to wrap your head around the MPC way of thinking (which is different) to be able to fully use it fluidly and effortlessly. If a piece of gear takes too much time away from creativity (for me) it simply ends up not getting used as much.

 

Nice Yea, just make sure you update your firmware and while you are there, download the new MPC Synth content (1.1 gb in size) and copy this folder inside the expansion folder (\Expansions\MPC Synth\). They have added several new synths, one of which is Hype (the synth that was exclusively on the MPC Force until now). They seem like great synths, Hype, the one I have looked at most, has 1000 presets and two oscillators that can be tweaked with several different customizations. If you havent looked at it in two years, I think the drum synth that they added a few months ago is nothing short of amazing (honestly, it nearly obsoletes the need for drum samples and it even allows one to create 808's).

If you can wrap your head around it and be flexible with changing how you are accustomed to working, for what this thing is designed to do, I think it is a clear winner.