MPC X, MPC Live, MPC One & MPC Key 61 Forum: Support and discussion for the MPC X, MPC Live, MPC Live II, MPC One & MPC Key 61; Akai's current generation of standalone MPCs.
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By handed Thu May 12, 2022 10:16 am
Has anyone else noticed this? When a key group program is set to Mono with Portamento and Legato turned on, the Legato toggle doesn't seem to do anything. Hold down C3 and press D3 and the sample retriggers from the beginning when it should seamlessly glide to a new pitch. Expected behaviour is that it should glide the pitch without retriggering the sample. If not, then what is the Legato parameter supposed to affect?
By Elijah Thu May 12, 2022 10:45 am
In Portamento, notes always glide. In Legato, the note glides only when the notes overlap. (The first note does not glide.)
Last edited by Elijah on Thu May 12, 2022 10:50 am, edited 4 times in total.
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By MPC-Tutor Thu May 12, 2022 10:48 am
With legato 'on', you can control when the glide occurs; overlap the notes and they glide into each other, separate the notes and no glide occurs. I haven't experienced any problems with this, it seems to work as intended.

Are you saying that setting a program specifically to 'mono' playback is causing this to not work? This is not what I am experiencing, could you provide more details, maybe a video of it, make sure it shows/confirms all the relevant portamento and poly settings
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By handed Thu May 12, 2022 11:04 am
Aha, I get it. That is super disappointing. So maybe it's not a bug, just a missing feature that is pretty standard elsewhere.

In other samplers I've used (Maschine, Ableton, others) the legato setting when used with portamento means that the pitch slides between notes without retriggering the samples or envelopes from the beginning, allowing for a smooth fade between pitches. Kind of like a smooth automatic pitchbend between notes. Works super well in Maschine and sounds great, so definitely missing it in MPC land.
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By MPC-Tutor Thu May 12, 2022 11:58 am
Yes I don't think it's a bug, it's just how it's been implemented, envelopes are retriggered on each note, so currently you can't for example just alternate between two notes while the filter envelope continues to open up independently (you'd need to use filter sweep FX inserted across the program instead).

I remember they accidentally left reference to an abandoned feature in one of the official MPC Software releases which gave the option of not re-triggering LFO (it didn't actually work and the option is removed now), so I suspect the underlying issues are probably related to this general 'category' of re-triggering features, perhaps these kind of things will eventually appear once they work out all the issues.
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By handed Thu May 12, 2022 3:28 pm
Cheers for the response. Would be fantastic if they had free-running LFOs (as well as more LFO destinations) plus the aforementioned “proper” legato. Bummer they haven’t focused on it as a priority.
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By Monotremata Thu May 12, 2022 6:32 pm
The slide works the same way it does on the OG TB-303 when you trigger it with MIDI. If you want it to slide into the next note, they have to overlap otherwise it will just stop and retrigger the next one. The Behringer TD-3 is the same was as well. If you make a sequence using the internal sequencer and then dump that to your PC/Mac and check out the MIDI data, all the slide notes will be overlapping with the next one.
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By hyena Sat Mar 25, 2023 6:55 pm
i noticed a possible bug: it happened that after creating a new keygroup program (with the auto sampler feature by the way, but i don't think its relevant) the legato portamento mode wasn't working: it always glided, even when playing staccato. i saved the program, created a new project, reloaded the program and it worked. it happened a couple of times, still not sure if its always happening (have to do more tests).


handed wrote:Aha, I get it. That is super disappointing. So maybe it's not a bug, just a missing feature that is pretty standard elsewhere.

In other samplers I've used (Maschine, Ableton, others) the legato setting when used with portamento means that the pitch slides between notes without retriggering the samples or envelopes from the beginning, allowing for a smooth fade between pitches. Kind of like a smooth automatic pitchbend between notes. Works super well in Maschine and sounds great, so definitely missing it in MPC land.


i know it's an old post but i wanted to point out that the legato mode of glide\portamento is a different thing from the legato\retrigger behaviour of envelopes, the two distinct features are usually kept separated in different areas of the synth\sampler. example: in Ableton's Analog synth you find the legato option for glide on the right of the synth, last panel (global),just underneath the glide parameter, while the legato\retrigger option for envelopes is located in the various envelope areas of the black central display (amp 1 & 2 envelopes, filter 1 & 2 envelope).