Maschine guy with the new MPC Live - Architecture/structure

Hey guys, I'm new to the forum and to MPCs. I've been a Maschine user since v1.0, previously owned an SP-555, currently own Push 2, Maschine MK2, and Maschine Jam. Thanks in advance for the help.

I picked up the MPC Live to try and better integrate stability into my live setup. This thing is one stout piece of hardware. It sounds great. The fact that it's fully standalone and battery-powered is just amazing.

HOWEVER I have some really strange issues. I watched the entire macprovideo series, I'm 50 pages into the manual, and I've scoured for every tutorial video on youtube I could find. Still having issues.

SO - On Maschine I can quickly bank from A-H for "pad groups", and a bunch of "pad groups" make a "project" which contains a bunch of "scenes" that are all made up of "sequenced pads from groups" = this makes sense to me.

On the MPC Live, I'm on a "program" which I think is a "pad group" of sorts. I am having trouble with a few basic things.

For example, how do I display the 16 mixer channels in my pad group (PROGRAM) on the touch screen at once for mixing/monitoring? And I don't mean "16 pads with info", I mean 16 channels side-by-side. I imagined I could just use my finger to drag volumes (like velocity curve view) or add inserts per channel like the mixer view on 2.0 software on my laptop. Is this not possible?

Also, when I select a different "track" in my project, it still uses pad bank A to trigger the sounds. Where are my pad banks/groups that auto-populate based on the buttons up top?

Why is it not possible/easy for me to browse to a kit (16 pads of info) and assign that to pad bank B, for example? I'm used to selecting a pad bank, browsing, and then when i select the desired patch/sound/kit, it maps to the drum group/pad group/PROGRAM automatically. If I selected a drum kit, it loads 16 samples. If I select a patch, it's in keyboard/chromatic mode.

Is there a better way to access the pads to solo/mute pieces of my drum kit without going to "MAIN" and then "PAD SOLO/MUTE" screen first? On Maschine you just hold down "mute" and start dragging across the pads you want to silence. Surely there's a better way on the MPC, right?

I'm used to accessing scenes, pads, groups, mute, solo, etc with a quick button-hold plus a tap. Some of these things I just assumed were fairly universal. For live performance, aside from a clip session i've already 100% set up in advance, the Live seems way less fluid than the Toraiz or the Maschine.

Is there a mixer view I'm missing? The hierarchy is giving me a headache...

But here's the thing - I KNOW this device is more powerful, more capable, than both. I think there's just something I'm missing here.

Again, thanks for the help. If I can just sort out a few very basic things I think this little box will be the greatest thing to hit my desk in a decade. I think I could figure out how to use the Toraiz within 10 mins of unboxing, but I KNOW it's not even close to this MPC in any realm (once I find the flow).

Bueller... Bueller...

Bobbyduracel wrote:For example, how do I display the 16 mixer channels in my pad group (PROGRAM) on the touch screen at once for mixing/monitoring?

MENU > PAD MIXER

Also, when I select a different "track" in my project, it still uses pad bank A to trigger the sounds. Where are my pad banks/groups that auto-populate based on the buttons up top?

In PROG EDIT select a bank (e.g. B) and assign sounds to the pads in that bank. Assign that program to a track and when you select bank B those sounds will be the ones assigned to the pads. Record to the track. Done.

A program is basically a group with multiple banks. You could just just multiple programs, each only utilising bank A if you prefer, this would be more like Maschine.

I see the pad mixer view. I specifically asked if there was a way to see the tradtional mixer view (like Ableton, or Maschine) and if, even better, you could edit volumes/pans/etc. with your finger as you do with velocity curves elsewhere on the device.

I'll look into your suggestion on programs tho. When I dig around in the Live box I keep wondering "how do I have more channels than I do programs? And then there's also tracks."

I would like to load a kit into pad bank A, then load a synth into pad bank B, and then some vocal samples into bank C, maybe some loops/clips into bank D. Tap A, play drums, tap B, play synth... Seems super easy, right?

I'll look into your suggestion.

THANKS for the reply!

Starting to make some some progress... The extra layers confound me (channels vs program vs group vs everything else) but it's worth sticking it out. This box is rad!