Force 3.1 firmware is out: HELLO DISC STREAMING!!!

I am now very impressed with the Force. Apparently I missed the whole procedure of setting loop length for some reason, even after working with it for a couple of days to try to get a two bar 3/4 sequence into it. I think I really had a brain fart at 79 (my age then).

I purchased the LIve 3 Standalone (mostly to support Ableton in my old age before Mother Nature catches up to me), and while I am not wealthy, I can spend money on an occasional toy, There is not much call for a Flamenco guitarist anywhere (at least locally) - the last gig I had was about 10 years on Saturday nights at a local bistro, where the owner knew Flamenco and really loved the traditonal chops I was playing. But after Covid, he had to close down, and now most places are Doordash and Instacart, and to tell the truth, I wasn't that much into entertaining anyway.

But then I discovered I had purchased MPC Live some years ago and recovered it from the back of the closet where it was hiding. To my delight it fired up, and even controlled MPC on my PC with no issues. So I programmed some of my Flamenco stuff to a flash card, and it came right up....

It looks like MyVolts will be producing a 19 v + Ripcord for the Force shortly, which would add portability. So I'm looking into it, and if I can find a way to delete my old posts, I will; Akai doesn't deserve the negative reviews.

And it might get at least a glimmer of my creative juices going again with a new toy, even if there is no place to play any more..

I am now very impressed with the Force.

BuleriaChk wrote:I am now very impressed with the Force. Apparently I missed the whole procedure of setting loop length for some reason, even after working with it for a couple of days to try to get a two bar 3/4 sequence into it. I think I really had a brain fart at 79 (my age then).

I purchased the LIve 3 Standalone (mostly to support Ableton in my old age before Mother Nature catches up to me), and while I am not wealthy, I can spend money on an occasional toy, There is not much call for a Flamenco guitarist anywhere (at least locally) - the last gig I had was about 10 years on Saturday nights at a local bistro, where the owner knew Flamenco and really loved the traditonal chops I was playing. But after Covid, he had to close down, and now most places are Doordash and Instacart, and to tell the truth, I wasn't that much into entertaining anyway.

But then I discovered I had purchased MPC Live some years ago and recovered it from the back of the closet where it was hiding. To my delight it fired up, and even controlled MPC on my PC with no issues. So I programmed some of my Flamenco stuff to a flash card, and it came right up....

It looks like MyVolts will be producing a 19 v + Ripcord for the Force shortly, which would add portability. So I'm looking into it, and if I can find a way to delete my old posts, I will; Akai doesn't deserve the negative reviews.

And it might get at least a glimmer of my creative juices going again with a new toy, even if there is no place to play any more..

Man after all that shit you was talking this is an amazing turn around. You couldn't resist the Dark-Side.
You said you missed the loop function, but Koekepan mentioned that's what you have to do. Post a Flamenco track!

It was the loop length functon I missed. I don't kno why; it was because I loved the Force so much that I was frustrated not to be able to use it, my bad, for sure. Just ordered a Force via Reverb, and it has gone through a number of major updates since I last looked at it. I doubt it will replace my Push 3, but it will certainly add to my projects.

I use loop lengrh in all my other DAW's. In retrospect, I think it was because ussrs were telling me to calculate tempo change from a 4/4 track (which would be dificult to sync with BPM) rather than pointing out my confusion about loop length which caused me to reactd so strongly, so from that I just assumed that the Force didn't have that capability natively. And Akai Tech Support weren't any help either, even after I extensively asked them about the issue.

And Akai does sometimes omit fundamental functionality; e.g., tempo control on the APC Mini, Note Repeat on the APC64, step transpose on any number of Midi keyboard controllers. Arturia FINALY added it to their keyboard controller. I just ran into another one on the Touch, where the screen wouldn't come on under computer mirroring (which I think was because I was using two monitors), so I had to return it to Reverb. (My Akai Live worked fine.)

So I am particularly sensitive to being burned over "gotchas" that noone mentions in the marketing. And I'm 83+ and hate to waste time on unnecessary gotcha's. (Note that the manual doesn't mention time signature, which would have been very helpful. since loop length is their way of achieving it, even if they or anyone else actually know didn't know it.

I do have some very basic Flamenco loops on my website which I creqted over 40 years ago; the only drum machine that has even one is Beat Buddy and I don't think they even know it is Flamenco.....

Life on the Bleeding Edge of Technology ...........

Ok, I just ordered my Force. I was watching a video by Pink Buddha comparing the Force to Maschine+ where he specifically mentions that the Force only has 4/4. I dimly remember now that the Loop Length control may have had only 2 and 4 in the NUMERATOR which is why I couldn't enter 3/4.

Damn! I may have been screwd again. I'm going to try to stop shipment on the Force, but I may be out close to $800 again.

Ok, I was able to get a refund from Reverb before the very nice seller shipped it. (Whew!)
So - looking at the clip view in the manual (to which I assume you were referring), it does seem to have a clip length with the ability to change the number of beats in a bar. Is this for bothe audio and video clips?. So it seems one can change the time signature on a clip by clip basis - I never looked at that, because such a limitation would seem to be inconsistent with MPC 2.0 on the computer, and, of course, Ableton Live, etc., etc., etc.d

I had been looking for a global time signature.

1. Can one set a default time signature for all clips (which would effectively be a global, or does one have to set it individually for each clip? I guess that would allow one to mix clips of different time signatures in a track (which was only recently added to Ableton; I had been using Clyphx to do it when I needed, which was very, very seldom. I usually set my project file to either duple meter or triple meter.

Still, if you can verify that that is what Force is doing, I may try to order it yet again (from the same guy, who was very decent in my refund).

You do know the Force manual is free right?

Maybe soo, but I don't see anything about time signatures (especially default time signatures for projects). I would be delighted if you could enlighten me.

- There is no time signature support. In the Force, every bar is always 4 beats
- But you can ignore what the Force considers a "bar"
- You can set clip loop lengths with arbitrary precision, for example 7/16. Or 3 bars, which happens to be equal to 12 beats, which would be 4 bars in 3/4 time.
- And you can set clip Launch Quantize to, for example, 2 bars, 1 bar, 1/4 bar, 1/8 bar, ...

So in practice, you can hack with this make it sound like 3/4. But you'll have to use 1/4 launch quantization, meaning that you have to launch clips and scenes during the last beat before the next imaginary 3/4 bar would begin. It's easy to mess up, and in MIDI editors, the grid lines will be completely wrong.

Then again, you CAN do weird poly-meters. 7/8 against 6/8 against 5/8 etc., all happening at the same time. And the clips won't reset to zero when the sequence resets, like what happens on the MPCs.

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:- There is no time signature support. In the Force, every bar is always 4 beats
- But you can ignore what the Force considers a "bar"
- You can set clip loop lengths with arbitrary precision, for example 7/16. Or 3 bars, which happens to be equal to 12 beats, which would be 4 bars in 3/4 time.
- And you can set clip Launch Quantize to, for example, 2 bars, 1 bar, 1/4 bar, 1/8 bar, ...

So in practice, you can hack with this make it sound like 3/4. But you'll have to use 1/4 launch quantization, meaning that you have to launch clips and scenes during the last beat before the next imaginary 3/4 bar would begin. It's easy to mess up, and in MIDI editors, the grid lines will be completely wrong.

Then again, you CAN do weird poly-meters. 7/8 against 6/8 against 5/8 etc., all happening at the same time. And the clips won't reset to zero when the sequence resets, like what happens on the MPCs.

Like I said, (IMNSHO) a really dumb design decision by Akai, unless the only genre you want to work in is "4-on-the-floor" with the "Amen" break. (Well, ok, there is "Rumba" ..

If you set global launch quantize to 1/4, then you can ignore the Force's internal time signature, and act like you're recording and playing 1/4, and it works as if the Force actually understood 1/4 time. Except it will place gridlines in funny places in the MIDI editor, and metronome count-in won't be there for you. Overlay 3/4 or whatever you actually want over the 1/4. It's just a bit more difficult to time the start/stop presses.

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:If you set global launch quantize to 1/4, then you can ignore the Force's internal time signature, and act like you're recording and playing 1/4, and it works as if the Force actually understood 1/4 time. Except it will place gridlines in funny places in the MIDI editor, and metronome count-in won't be there for you. Overlay 3/4 or whatever you actually want over the 1/4. It's just a bit more difficult to time the start/stop presses.

No vale la pena... No Force for me. Back to Ableton and Maschine+ (with Jam).