Clips Mode is actually kinda dope

The MPC Live is a strange beast.

I decided to spend the weekend exploring clips mode. Coming from the legacy background it was not really a feature set I was interested originally. I've also been having mixed feelings over the Live experience in general due to having to use the touch screen to jump between modes, especially for the more "live" performance type modes. Anyway, I largely ignored clips mode because for ableton style clip launching its feels clunky.

My more recent experiments revealed for me an interesting way to work with looped material, specifically, percussion and drum breaks. The pitch and stretch algorithms are much nicer in that mode. Its pretty quick to adjust the BPM to match sequence length. Once things are looping correctly, tweaking the pitch yields some nice results. It gets more fun if from the main screen adjusting the track length. One feature that requires the software is the doubling or halving the loop bpm with a mouse click. I need that one on the hardware.

You can go deep into customizing the loops on each pad with their own fx obviously. So having done that and setting up qlink assignments for pad parameters and program parameters to things like reverse, pitch, delay settings, and sends in project and program mode you can rock the xy pad and tweak the qlinks while launching all the mangled clips. Excellent.

Because of all the jumping around, its not the most fluid experience but after an hour or so it was feeling better. I forgot to mention that recording the clip launches and adding automation tied the whole jam together. The whole thing had me reliving some of my monome and mlr fun but with more control. Obviously once clip performance was recorded changing to a regular drum track or keygroup introduces the other elements I love the MPC for.

So I see myself using clips in this way and doing lots of resampling to and from. I wish it had some of the features from the software ported over. And there definitely some bugs that I hope get fixed.

I have plenty of negative rants about the live so I wanted to give some praise... dont sleep on clips mode

Yes, ok, but as I switch to another mode, the clips stop playing.
WTF? It's not useable this way....

Frisbi wrote:Yes, ok, but as I switch to another mode, the clips stop playing.
WTF? It's not useable this way....

Yes I know... which is why I’m not using it that way. Don’t think of it in terms of how it was marketed. Think of it as a different mode.

If you ever used JJOS 3 you may know that there are xtra trigger
Modes for the pads to repeat by a specified quantisation. So It’s sort of like that. If set up right, the behavior of all the features I mentioned reminds me a lot of the MLRv app for the monome grids.

I actually think the clip launch hiccup will get sorted but to be honest I wouldn’t use it much that way. It should work the way people want it. Launch clips select other program and jam.

But the way I’m finding useful actually fits much better into the way I usually make tracks on an MPC. I Just treat it like a different type of program mode.... one that was tailor made for pitch and time tweaking and can be sequenced, processed and of course, resampled. Also, 128 clips per clip program!

I like this idea. I already use drum program mode in a similar way to this. I wanted to use clip mode to rebuild tracks that I had previously composed in my DAW, so that I could play them live. Then I read about the clip mode issue (when they stop after exiting the mode), and I changed my mind. I will try out clips as you've described and see how I go. Cheers

manton wrote:I like this idea. I already use drum program mode in a similar way to this. I wanted to use clip mode to rebuild tracks that I had previously composed in my DAW, so that I could play them live. Then I read about the clip mode issue (when they stop after exiting the mode), and I changed my mind. I will try out clips as you've described and see how I go. Cheers

I have a track with a clip program and I have been able to keep the clips going even after exiting to main screen and going to the next track with a keygroup. No issues.

And check this out... when I stop the sequencer the clips keep playing til I hit stop again! Clips Mode!

EDIT: So after trying a bit more I think the issue depends on what type of audio file im using. Some of my loop libraries work flawlessly and others cut off when switching tracks. Im almost 100% sure on this. I loaded 16 files from one of my sample libraries and assigned each to their own mute group. I had all 16 clips playing and was able to switch to a keygroup with no issue. I'll keep digging.

This feature it's almost perfect for what I want to do, but the stopping thing is a workflow killer. The Live is so close to be a perfect tool it almost hurts...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yg8mvze6ce9x0lm/clips.zip?dl=0

Zip file has 4 clips. I have a bunch more from these particular libraries that continue to play when switching tracks. Make sure the track you switch to has a regular drum program or keygroup on it.

It cant be a random thing and Im sure someone smarter than me can figure out why these loops behave differently than others.

OK I figured it out sort of. I opened a bunch of loops in sound forge. I noticed that the loops that operate correctly are set to sustaining loops. This sustain loop is in the metadata of the file. Sound Forge allows for editing of the file metadata. SO I set the metadata of a bunch of loops to "sustaining loop" and BOOM. They all keep playing upon switching tracks! YES!

I aint about to do that to all my loops... shite would take forever! But its a start at least. I want more of the forum heads to be on this workaround.

EDIT: one last thing to note is that going back to the clips track, active clips arent flashing... its like the mpc does not realize they are still playing. Tapping the clip pads triggers them again.

EDIT 2: poking around some more I find that if I take a sample and go to sample edit mode, set the sample to loop, press the assign tab... set it to "assign slice to pad" and pick a pad in your clip program. It works the way I've been describing.

Yes clip mode is the last thing I tried, I never thought about using it until I transfered my Ableton projects to Mpc.
After an hour I also started to really have fun with it. The workflow is not so bad once you get it. I just switch to Program edit to trigger clips, qlinks mode to tweak effects, xy mode and so on.
The only downside is that once you choose to play a project with clips, you have to stay in that.
When they will allow you to switch between clip mode, drum programs and keygroup, well, we will have the dream device we've been waiting for.

JeriKo Jackson wrote:OK I figured it out sort of. I opened a bunch of loops in sound forge. I noticed that the loops that operate correctly are set to sustaining loops. This sustain loop is in the metadata of the file. Sound Forge allows for editing of the file metadata. SO I set the metadata of a bunch of loops to "sustaining loop" and BOOM. They all keep playing upon switching tracks! YES!

I aint about to do that to all my loops... **** would take forever! But its a start at least. I want more of the forum heads to be on this workaround.

EDIT: one last thing to note is that going back to the clips track, active clips arent flashing... its like the mpc does not realize they are still playing. Tapping the clip pads triggers them again.

EDIT 2: poking around some more I find that if I take a sample and go to sample edit mode, set the sample to loop, press the assign tab... set it to "assign slice to pad" and pick a pad in your clip program. It works the way I've been describing.

You, sir, are a genius, a gentleman, and a scholar.

Quick question as you gurus have Q-Links and clip programs working!

I have been struggling for 2 days to program the Q-Links for a Clip Program. I manage to use learn mode and map for example Volume in Pad Scene to all the pads but the minute I move choose a different tab such as "Program"and then come back to Pad Scene, the mapping is gone.

What's the trick to save the mappings?

Siddhu wrote:Quick question as you gurus have Q-Links and clip programs working!

I have been struggling for 2 days to program the Q-Links for a Clip Program. I manage to use learn mode and map for example Volume in Pad Scene to all the pads but the minute I move choose a different tab such as "Program"and then come back to Pad Scene, the mapping is gone.

What's the trick to save the mappings?

Enter qlink mode, enable project mode, assign the qlinks on the left of the screen to parameters on right.
Save the project.

Frisbi wrote:

Siddhu wrote:Quick question as you gurus have Q-Links and clip programs working!

I have been struggling for 2 days to program the Q-Links for a Clip Program. I manage to use learn mode and map for example Volume in Pad Scene to all the pads but the minute I move choose a different tab such as "Program"and then come back to Pad Scene, the mapping is gone.

What's the trick to save the mappings?

Enter qlink mode, enable project mode, assign the qlinks on the left of the screen to parameters on right.
Save the project.

Hi Frisbi, - the mappings stay persistent on the Project Page and Program Page BUT not on the "Pad Scene" & "Pad Parameter" tabs.

It's super frustrating as I have all the Elektrons and I want to incorporate the MPC Live into our new updated live show but this is a deal breaker as I need to be able to quickly control sends and levels for each clip the way I am able to on our other pieces of gear.

You can see one of our Studio Sessions vids here to get an idea of what we are doing so you see we are serious about our all hardware live show. We are super excited to use the MPC Live as it allows us to use longer loops for builds and textures as the Octatrack for all practical purposes is limited to 4 bar loops. NOTE: You can play much longer audio files, they just don't loop - they play as one shots.

Check my tip:

Yorgos Arabatzis wrote:Ever wanted to switch back and forth from a clip program to a drum program and your clips keep looping?Until AKAI implements it properly a poor man’s workaround is this:
In a clip program hit the pad you want to keep looping and then Menu -> Sample Edit -> Enable Loop mode inside Trim menu -> Main -> Edit Clips -> Switch to another sample and again back to the one you had and voila!!!...That’s it!
Now you can keep looping without any distractions!

Cheers