Been rocking the force now for ab 6 months.
Made a pretty huge leap of faith in buying this dude. Hardware journey was microkorg, Electribe EMX, Minilogue, SV1 (sensing a pattern?) and then force. Theres a few refaces, decks, and ton of midi controllers scattered in there.
Now, because of mistakes and life I only have the EMX, the SV1, and the force. Sometimes, you don't have the luxury of dropping your force for a couple weeks to groove with something else.
The first 3 months were frustrating. I didn't really see how the force fit as it was being presented. The hype and tube synths are great for stand ins and ideas, but really they just dont do the trick for PRO audio textures. Some digital sounds work amazing tho. Perc? I mean its amazing. 64 pad mpc. I've been making 64 pad kits for months. Game changer. Every time I have a track in a daw im like, needs some english on it. Bounce everything to a single stem and get to adding drums on force.
However, for live use I found I was just trying to get every song I've written into clips to launch. Here's the breakthrus that I think I needed to make in order to really start falling in love with my force:
1. Buy a mixer.
Yep. Two ins on a device with this functionality is straight up not enough imo. I understand that its prolly not feasible to add more, but thats my opinion. Sending a stereo out of a larger board was absolutely night and day. I sample or record whatever is coming out of the mixer, and when I've got that set I just scoot on over to another instrument and lay it down the same way. So much better than ripping cables out and patching everything as needed. Really opens things up creatively. Get your computer sending desktop volume to it too, sample that. I've got guitar rigs and keys, and vocal mics, lots of options to get grooving.
2. Don't sleep on the looper
Its NOT the most amazing looper, I get it. But combined with the forces functionality the looper is kinda super dope. Unlimited overdubs, no need to sync midi to another device, great monitoring control, cue functionality, and the loop can be exported to a clip, and then you can get to starting a new loop. Great way to start getting creative and building tracks.
3. Create your own plugin presets
The presets, especially in hype, are esential to the way this device functions. However, theres really a lot of them. If you save a preset in a folder on one of your storage options, something kinda magical happens. When you load one of the presets IN the folder you just created, the dropdown menu that you can use the main rotary for displays all of the other presets IN THAT FOLDER. That way, you can create folders in any way that suits your live performance or workflow. You can set up templates for a bass, pad, lead, and fx hype instance in four different folders, and then each of those plugin instances will be loaded from individual folders that would correspond with the the type of synth. That way you can tap on a channel on the screen in matrix view, or hold one of the dedicated track buttons on the force to select the channel. Then shift clip will bring up plugin controls, and you can just use the rotary encoder to select between a select GROUP of presets.
4. Use the arranger
Akai force 3.0.5 ( i think? maybe 3.0.6?) introduced the arranger view. It is a godsend. This is the solution to my building every song ive written in clips for NO REASON. If you're just going to launch them in the same exact sequence every time, theres litterally no reason to add an extra point of failure. Instead, build your track out of stems in the arranger, and add performance effects that take advantage of the fact that you can run w stems in a live environment. WAY more milage. I get that it can feel weird and close to the "press play, walk away" vibe. Make it so that that isnt the case! automate changes in vocal chain! send voice thru channel 1 and instrument thru channel 2! Add multiple hype instances for performance! Go wild with macro performance effect mappings! dont tie yourself down to the clip launching page all the time, as you may be doing something more impressive, but the listener cant really tell the difference. Spend your energy on adding to the live performance.
5. Build your own kits.
The akai provided kits actually come with some good samples. However, when you try and select them they SCREAM an entire melodic beat. Horrible if you've already got a beat running, you're playing live, and you cant stop playback but need to find a new kit.
First, the akai kits most all have melodic componants. There's no way to know what key they're in unless you play them in cue and have perfect pitch or VERY good relative pitch. Also, I find that there's some components of kits that I can get more milage out of if I seperate it into another kit. Alt percussion, cymbals, risers, lifters, fx, vocal chops, melodic instruments. All either in keygroups or their own properly organized kit or keygroup.
That way too, you can organize by key, genre, and more. It also lets you apply effects to individual drum tracks, so you can do things like throw modulation on just alt percussion. Very, very good.
The other problem with the akai kits is that they only use 4x4 layouts. Litterally do not know if this device is really worth it without larger kits than 4x4. It's really what pushes this thing over the edge into love territory for me. Before anyone says it, yes, i know that you'd be sacrificing advanced 16 levels, but having a MASSIVE comprehensive kit for each style of music that I like to perform? playing a 8x8 kit feels 100% different. New instrument. Cannot overstate this.
Dunno if this helps anyone. Might start making force videos at some point!