Should I keep the MPC Live

Hi,

I have the MPC Live and I'm doing tutorials n stuff but Idk if I should keep it. I used almost 99% of the time FL STudio up to this point but I just cant get shit done on the MPC. Getting frustrated very quick. Especially EQing, Mixing, Mastering etc is so hard on the MPC. I mean and then theres guys like Jaisu, Beatminerz or Marco Polo who make illies on that thing! And don't get me started on Dilla and Nujabes, I mean it's obvious that these guys would feel very lost in a DAW, their huntinggrounds are definitly the MPCs!But for me it's the opposite right now. Today I made a beat on the MPC, it sounded complete bad, was only 8 bars, one sequence, but it contained a soul sample, AKAIs annoying stock drums and a baseline that wasn't in tune. So it sounds kinda okay, but not really where I wanna be at. Also I'm in doubt about the MPCs quality as a product itself. There's many complaints about it, many saying that it's buggy or that it sounds bad, or that AKAI itself is a bad company that feeds their customers lies (for example the promised 2GB sampling ram, which turned out to be effictively 600mb, and also the MIDI functionality, which is said not to be not working fully, although I didnt read into that topic much so idk) I never experienced serious bugs, the only thing that really bothered me is that I can't load my drumkits from my PC onto the Live without installing a SSD on the Live, or providing a USB-Drive or a SD Card. Also the stock sounds are not for me. I mean synth samples and dance/house baselines? I can do that with every VST in FL Studio and even change certain parameters!

I feel like that everything I'm doing on the Live won't sound any better or cooler than the stuff that I can already do with FL. I know theres many ways to the goal, but it just doesn't feel as if the MPC is giving me something or that I somehow gain some experience or something from it. That moment of enlightment didnt come yet.

And yet I watch videos of Jaisu and others who make beats on the MPC that I can only dream of. And I know what you think now... It's not the gear, it's the producer. I get that. It's just that I'm an aesthetics guy, and I find the way of that oldschool MPC with 16 pads and vinyl and stuff just so much more appealing than sitting infront of a PC with FL Studio, even if 99% of my beats are made in FL. Most guys, that I think make really, really cool music, on SoundCloud end up saying to me that they do everything with their DAW, some say they have an SP404 lying around, some use an MPD if anything from AKAI. And of course a MIDI keyboard.

So I don't wanna give up on the MPC yet, but it's just hard for me to convince myself to hold on to it! It's just a very strange situation for me. On one side I look up to people who swear on MPCs, on the other side I just can't get behind the process, it's just so strange not being able to EQ properly and mix and all these conveniences. Also arranging songs, placing certain samples at certain points and connecting external hardware. Of course it also looks way cooler to work on an MPC than on a PC... aside that, at least when it comes to the legacy models, some swear that they sound way punchier and stuff than any DAW or something.

I had the wildest ideas to solve this problem. From selling the MPC and just staying with FL Studio on the PC or to buy a Laptop for mobile use. To sell the MPC and buy a synth, to sell the MPC and get the SP404 which will probably put me intro frustration again. To keep the MPC and use it for not-at-home-purposes like when Im not on the PC. To keep it and hope that Ill grow to it. To sell it and buy a Laptop and MPD pads and use them for FL. To sell it and get a MPC2500 because its simpler and more of a sampler not a try-to-be DAW. The list is endless...

Should I just embrace that I'm a DAW guy? Should I let lose of the thaught of sitting in a dusty record store with my MPC and my 100 bucks Numark record player and dig? Can anybody relate to this? Man, I'm confused. I don't wanna give up on that dream of oldschool vibes that I ever so often have, listening to my favourite lofi and boom bap shit. I also have that feeling when I make an ill beat on the PC with FL. I like simple setups. MPC, turntable, synth. That would be awesome. Now if I could just grow to that.

And also it looks cool. Im an idiot.

Greetings from germany my gs

Burn it. Sweep it under a rug and watch the Cosbys.

Keep the MPC. Keep FL. Make some music in FL, make some music on the MPC. Just keep making songs and trying to learn new things. It takes time to make stuff that sounds good. No reason you have to pick one or the other.

And get over what looks cooler or not. No one cares. Make music.

DAWS make things a little easier for you, so you don't have to work as much. Going backwards is hard.

I personally don't use a DAW, I love hardware & working on MPC's. But I also didn't start in a DAW, I started with an sp404. I started NOT using a sequencer, only made beats in resample mode (meaning I made my beats by sampling myself playing & layering the loops I made). I did this for about a year before getting an MPC, so when I got an MPC, I actually moved up, gaining more features & making things easier.

I love a challenge, I do this because it's fun & I love it, I love making everything from scratch, no presets, no sample packs, I want to be proud of what I made, because I MADE IT. The quality of my beats isn't as important as the process for me. Because of that my beats just naturally got better & better & better. Because I feel it deeply.

If you don't really like to be challenged & just want to make "bangers" as easy as possible stick to your DAW. If you want to love an MPC because it's cool, it just won't happen. I get it tho........ it happened to me with guitar.... I wanted to know how to play guitar SO BAD, I thought it would be SO COOL......... but I didn't enjoy the process. So I never got good at guitar.

If you really really want to love your MPC, give it a chance. Like eclipxe said, use both. Whatever you feel the MPC lacks in, use FL studio for that.

Don't use presets, chop up some drum breaks, basslines from a real bass guitar & old songs. If you don't have a turntable, start by sampling off Youtube. Sample it all into your MPC, make some sequences. Play & have fun. Track out to FL Studio & do your eq'ing & stuff in FL. Use your MPC for the creative process & FL Studio for mixing & mastering.

If you still don't enjoy your MPC sell it & learn a lesson from the experience.

Sharris wrote:DAWS make things a little easier for you, so you don't have to work as much. Going backwards is hard.

I personally don't use a DAW, I love hardware & working on MPC's. But I also didn't start in a DAW, I started with an sp404. I started NOT using a sequencer, only made beats in resample mode (meaning I made my beats by sampling myself playing & layering the loops I made). I did this for about a year before getting an MPC, so when I got an MPC, I actually moved up, gaining more features & making things easier.

I love a challenge, I do this because it's fun & I love it, I love making everything from scratch, no presets, no sample packs, I want to be proud of what I made, because I MADE IT. The quality of my beats isn't as important as the process for me. Because of that my beats just naturally got better & better & better. Because I feel it deeply.

If you don't really like to be challenged & just want to make "bangers" as easy as possible stick to your DAW. If you want to love an MPC because it's cool, it just won't happen. I get it tho........ it happened to me with guitar.... I wanted to know how to play guitar SO BAD, I thought it would be SO COOL......... but I didn't enjoy the process. So I never got good at guitar.

If you really really want to love your MPC, give it a chance. Like eclipxe said, use both. Whatever you feel the MPC lacks in, use FL studio for that.

Don't use presets, chop up some drum breaks, basslines from a real bass guitar & old songs. If you don't have a turntable, start by sampling off Youtube. Sample it all into your MPC, make some sequences. Play & have fun. Track out to FL Studio & do your eq'ing & stuff in FL. Use your MPC for the creative process & FL Studio for mixing & mastering.

If you still don't enjoy your MPC sell it & learn a lesson from the experience.

That sounds right my man. Nah, I'm not interested in making beats for money or reputation or anything if thats what you meant with making bangers. I just do it for fun, for my enjoyment, maybe also for my friends a bit, because its fun to show them and make beats with them.

What is funny is Im actually a guitarist, so we have kinda opposite situations here haha

I'll try to master the MPC as good as possible. Finding good tutorials is hard though. There's a guy called TubeDigga that makes pretty good ones, I guess I'll sit down and watch them.

That's awesome you play guitar What I meant by "bangers" was just caring more about making amazing beats than enjoying yourself.

It's possible that MPC's are just not for you, but I think you should give it some time........ I think maybe you got it in your head that MPC's are amazing & put it on a pedestal, then when you got it, it couldn't live up to your expectations.

Try combining the MPC with FL.......... & be patient....... I think if you give it a little time, learn it better, get better at it & combine it with FL you'll have a really good thing going.

I have the 2500 & 500.......& I know you mentioned maybe getting a more "limited" old school MPC might be better, but it sounds like your struggling with the limitations already.........

Doesn't the Live come with the MPC software? Have you tried playing the Live with the MPC software & using it with FL?

Try out different things & just learn that MPC! If you're still new to it, of course it's not going to be as smooth as FL! Yes, watch tutorials, try reading the manual, press buttons on that MPC, experiment & just play!!!

gheddi wrote:What is funny is Im actually a guitarist, so we have kinda opposite situations here haha

Yeah, me too. New to MPCs and it's a bit confusing at first but after about 4 months I feel I'm getting somewhere (enough to use the MPC in a band situation, while I'm singing and playing too). Sequence variations and the Next Seq menu are my main thing at the moment. Maybe bad form to quote yourself, but I posted this at Gearslutz the other day which sums up where I'm at:

This machine has so many nooks and crannies, and to an MPC newcomer like me it can be a bit bewildering - often it seems there are numerous ways to achieve the same ends, with a mini-system to master for each one; also, the relative merits and limitations aren't clear at first.

I've had to relax and just take the 'if it works, it works' approach, rather than sweating about finding the 'best' way to do something.


I use DAWs still - Reaper for mixing/mastering, Ableton for a lot of creative stuff - but the MPC is self-contained, really playable and, importantly, solid. I have an old but reasonably powerful Lenovo laptop and I wouldn't trust it to handle things live.

Memory-wise, I have a 64GB card and mini-usb stick, one for samples and one for projects/programs, which is plenty for now.

Yes to TubeDigga - learned a lot from him (plus he's very funny), and the MPC Bible too. Good luck!

Ditching the DAW is entirely subjective. I feel people should use whatever gear, be it hardware or software, that helps them get music out. In the 80’s and 90’s I was all about hardware, the went with DAW music making and everything In The Box on PC for 14 years. I just got sick of sitting in front of a computer and wanted some physical interaction with synths and samplers again (I’m a guitarist also and got my first groove box in the 90’s to ditch flaky band members) and find the hardware limits and physical interaction of hardware pretty rewarding. I can’t find a single box that does absolutely everything for me that I need, so I use a combination of stuff. MV8800, Spectralis 2, Quasimidi Polymorph, Synthstrom Audible Deluge, Zaquencer all for sequencing, arranging, and recording, then still like my iPad for final mix and uploads to websites (lots of good multi trackers and editors plus cool sound modules). I sit in front of a PC for work all day long and absolutely need to get away from it at home.

If FL Studio gets you production quick and is easy to work in (and your not sick of DAWs and PC work), then use it. Half my stuff I don’t record anymore or sequence so I can play it live or tweak it while making it. I rehearse it, then my mixer has a nice recording feature and USB port for a thumb drive and spits the master output to a wav file I can bring into an editor for finalizing later. I chose that path though because I felt it sterile to sit at a DAW and meticulously tweak stuff in between pressing play without interacting with it Live. Even using Ableton Live and controllers mapped up still didn’t do it mentally for me. Had to have hardware to satisfy.

Again, all very subjective. One person’s recipe is not necessarily going to fit the next, even though sometimes watching the way people work stuff makes you want to duplicate it.

Oh yeah - I don’t use all those sequencers at once. Sometimes just one of them, sometimes a combination of them. I just ordered another sequencer too. A Future Retro Orb. It looked like fun, so I got it and it should slave to any of my three major sequencers (Spectralis 2, mv8800, or Deluge).

Sometimes it’s just one multitimbral synth and one Master sequencer. This weekend has been Deluge + Virus Ti + TB-03. Multitimbral synths are like having several synths in one box (like several vst’s) and make good use of space.

"Today I made a beat on the MPC, it sounded complete bad, was only 8 bars, one sequence, but it contained a soul sample, AKAIs annoying stock drums and a baseline that wasn't in tune. So it sounds kinda okay, but not really where I wanna be at. "

You can't really blame the MPC if that sounds bad to you. That is all up to you.
As you know, it's the man using the gear, not the gear itself.
The Live/X won't change the sound for better or for worse, as it's a modern device.
What you put in, that's what you get out.
If you put weak sounds in, you'll get weak stuff out.

In terms of making a beat that sounds good, it's about sample selection, leveling, basic EQing and filtering, arrangement of sounds…and all that can be done with Live very easily. If you can make stuff that sounds good on FL, you should totally be able to do that with the Live.

Put some dope samples in, some crispy drums…and you're golden.

My bottom line is, if it doesn't sound good, you just need practice. The reason pro beatmakers can easily make a beat sounds good is that they've done it a million times, and they know how to pick good sounds. If stock sounds are "annoying", don't use them.

I'm new to the whole producer side in general, i've always been a live musician. Before getting the MPC X, I didn't understand how any of it worked. I purchased the bible and took some time to learn my way around the X. (I still have so much to understand)

Just the other day I downloaded the trial version of Ableton 10. I am having so much fun making tunes, beats and hooks. Some stuff sounds cool, some stuff sounds bad, but man am I enjoying the journey!!! I need to work on sequencing and editing, but its fun to try and turn ideas I have into songs.

I want a MPC live too!!! If you're feeling generous one day and want to sell your live at a huge discount price, PLEASE look me up