Akai Force Forum: Everything relating to the Akai Force, the iconic 64 pad, clip-based standalone sampler/groovebox from Akai.
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By K. Rah Sun Feb 16, 2025 10:49 pm
Hi, I’m trying to simplify a problem I’ve got trying to put a live set together on the force, I wonder if anyone might have an idea..

I want to keep my pads in split format (top half matrix, bottom half current drum program) through my entire song. I have a bass plugin on a channel with 4 clips to trigger (4 bass sequences) and I tap the clips in time while playing the drums on my drum program. Now I realize I need to make 4 more bass parts (clips) so in order to keep from having to scroll down my matrix on the bass channel (because I can only access a column of four at any given time) I’ve decided to copy that bass channel and place it next to it. But now when I select a bass clip from the new channel, the two bass parts in the launch row overlap at some point and screw everything up. I’m aware I can do some sort of “clip stop” move in between but it’s so tricky. Is there any way to make one channel mute another, the same way I can make mute groups among pads within a drum program? Thanks,
-k
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By K. Rah Sun Feb 16, 2025 11:10 pm
Also forgot to add: I wonder if it possible to select individual pads to be unaffected when in ARP mode, because I’d like to trigger one pad in a group using note repeat while the other pads in the program set to “note on” duration remains unaffected by it when held down.
By B-Wise Mon Feb 17, 2025 2:05 am
K. Rah wrote:Also forgot to add: I wonder if it possible to select individual pads to be unaffected when in ARP mode, because I’d like to trigger one pad in a group using note repeat while the other pads in the program set to “note on” duration remains unaffected by it when held down.

I'm gonna need more time to think about the first part, but for this ARP issue, maybe you can the pad playing the ARP & then keep the ARP off & just trigger those pads. Would that work?
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By K. Rah Mon Feb 17, 2025 3:55 am
B-Wise wrote:
K. Rah wrote:Also forgot to add: I wonder if it possible to select individual pads to be unaffected when in ARP mode, because I’d like to trigger one pad in a group using note repeat while the other pads in the program set to “note on” duration remains unaffected by it when held down.

I'm gonna need more time to think about the first part, but for this ARP issue, maybe you can the pad playing the ARP & then keep the ARP off & just trigger those pads. Would that work?


Thanks for responding B-Wise. If you mean that i should try holding the pad and deselecting ARP, then get to the pad that needs attention without it, i gave it a shot and it turns out that I have to have ARP on the whole time. My first idea was to just leave a little air at the beginning of the samples that need to ring out and set them to monophonic, so i could hold it and there would be silence until i let go, kind of like NOTE ON.

But since my first post I do think I’ve found a workaround that solves both problems, I’ll share it..


So I have 4 pads in my bank that always need to be in ARP mode (repeat) when I hold them, and the rest of the pads in the bank need to be NOTE ON and XFADED with a slow release ADSR-wise. Then I have the bass channel positioned above those pads in a column for easy access to trigger the different bass clips in the top half of the pad section while in split mode so I can reached the held pad. I also need to be able to have manual control over the mixer volume of the ARP-pads. There are four mains parts of the entire song, and for each “part”, one of the ARP pads remains held and the volume is raised and lowered. Basically the ARP-pads are like ambient chords. The bass clips are recorded without a metronome, just a brief phrase with a lot of extra empty bars to make sure it doesn’t loop, and then the following clip is triggered quickly, quantized to 64th. so I’m my own metronome, and there’s no drums.

So what I ended up doing is, I made four clips, each one is just a one bar clip of an individual ARP pad repeating throughout, nothing else in the clip. I set the AB fader to control the volume of these, grouped together as a sub mix. As for the bass, I’m just going to resample each part in the sampler, and assign them to another row of pads on the same channel as everything else and make those into their own sub mix. If I need more bass parts, I can just round-robin similar parts on the same pad. Now ARP is off but it’s always ready to go by raising the fader and all the other parts are pretty much in a single 16-pad arrangement. Also controlling the wet/dry of my sub mix’s delay with a macros knob so the volume does chop around because I’m not so smooth with the fader yet haha.

Anyway thanks for reading, if you have any other ideas for this setu I’d be interested to know..