All tracks in intro seq muted after convert>seq in song mode

This is bugging me for such a long time now. But today it drove me mad. What works in Song mode with track mutes does not work anymore after I have converted the song to a sequence. Namely that all tracks and pads in the very first sequence that went into the song are always muted in the sequence that the song gets converted to.

Let’s say the following:

- I have a Main sequence with 5 tracks.
- The sequence gets copied into: Intro (4bars), verse, hook, bridge, outro
- now I start adding track mutes in each of the copied sequences or record them via overdubbing - in the Intro I mute 3/5 tracks so 2 should play
- then I arrange them in Song mode
- playback works fine, the intro starts with 2 unmuted tracks
- convert song to a sequence and boom the first 4 bars of all tracks in that song-sequence are now muted.
I now go about and delete the track mutes manually for the first 4 bars but this is tedious especially on more complicated songs. Is there a way to prevent this other than just not using mutes in song mode?

Yes, this is one of the many issues with song mode, the handling of track and pad mute automation is flakey to say the least.

As you say, one option is to manually remove any unwanted mutes, typically they only appear at 01:01:000.

Another is to not mute at all until the song is converted. Another is to use erase. Another is to skip song mode entirely and build your song from one long sequence.

None of these are ideal, they should just fix these bugs and generally overhaul song mode entirely, especially as it's such a cornerstone of the MPC workflow.

I'm going to revisit this and compile a detailed bug report of all the mute related issues.

Hey Lampdog. Except for the audio export (which would not work because I work with 50-70% midi data until down mix) the way you describe is exactly the way I do it. It was even worse for some time (2.9/2.10) where mutes where even ignored between sequences creating a real mess. Maybe resorting to deleting the parts from each sequence instead of muting it is still the best way. Even though that slows down the arrangement process quite a bit.

Hey Tutor. Yep that is what I have figured. One long sequence is flakey, too. The longer the sequence gets the more often my X starts to misbehave when I try to edit notes there. Yesterday I was working on a new arrangement and deleted some notes from some drums tracks and the X froze for up to 2 minutes on me when I tried to select individual notes in a 30bar range. Was able to test the Force arranger lately and I think it's really nice. But I don't think that we need the exact same thing on the MPC. But Akai should give the arrangement process more love. Maybe this "convert to seq" would not even be necessary if the arrangement/song mode in the MPC would behave somewhat more like the arrangement view in the Force. Especially the Software. Tried to circumvent the issues by using the X in controller mode for a change but the arrangement view in the software is so basic ...

Thank you for your work Would be nice to have some of the mute bugs fixed.

I have been frustrated by this too.
It seems like it's related to how many bars a sequence has.
The only workaround I've had success with is to put the longest sequence (with the most bars) as the first sequence of the song, then convert > sequence
After exporting and loading it up in my DAW, I delete that first sequence section so my actual intro is my intro!

mrmarbury wrote:One long sequence is flakey, too. The longer the sequence gets the more often my X starts to misbehave when I try to edit notes there. Yesterday I was working on a new arrangement and deleted some notes from some drums tracks and the X froze for up to 2 minutes on me when I tried to select individual notes in a 30bar range.

In that case try making smaller long seq's all with the mutes added later, than put all parts together in song mode. Still not ideal & the type of problem users should be dealing with in 2023!
Get it together Akai. Not everyone is using the MPC for YouTube demo beats. They did make the Force which is a better sequencer, even with its limitations.

It’s annoying for sure. Easiest fix is to just delete the mutes from each track on the bounced sequence