Exchange tips and tricks for the Akai MPC4000
By foge1 Sat Oct 17, 2009 6:54 pm
In the SEQ EDIT view there is a really great view for control change and I think its really rather brilliant however..... is there anyway to apply this kind of edit view to note velocity????

i.e. its easy to assign a CC to amplitude of a patch/pad or a qlink to amplitude of a patch/pad
and then edit this in the control change/q-link event section of the SEQ EDIT however no velocity offset parameter.

The velocity would be much more useful for coming up with interesting snare patterns etc. triggering a multisampled snare.

It seems absolutely crazy that AKAI didn't put velocity in SEQ EDIT as a seperate section which could be viewed and edited.

Am I missing something????
Is there a work around to get the Q-link sequence or SEQ EDIT to tackle velocity???
Cheers
G
User avatar
By McSmooth Sun Oct 18, 2009 3:04 am
I wouldn't say it was crazy this wasn't included, more that it would have to work differently from the way that view is used for other events. Figure velocity is not a MIDI event, it is a property of note on (and note off) messages. So it is not possible to insert velocity events, only note on/off WITH velocity.

Technically there is a graph for velocity that has been on MPCs for a long time... which is on the step edit page. Granted, its not as cool, but does help visualize what you are trying to do (and can show a lot more notes at once than the older MPCs). A technique I learned back on the XL is to fine tune a snare track by scrolling down each note in step edit and modifying velocities to get more variation.

There is a work around for some situations when you consider how velocity is used in the 4k. It is available as a source in the modulation matrix that is often applied to amplitude (by default), cuttoff, pitch, etc. You could reassign those modulations with a CC or Q source. The same thing could be done with multisamples utilizing zones and a CC or Q source for zone select. No such luck for multisamples utilized over keygroups or multiple programs.
By foge1 Sun Oct 18, 2009 12:37 pm
Still think its crazy if they had included velocity it would be like the hyper draw in logic where you can quickly draw in or edit velocities of a note visually as a bar graph.

i.e. it would be amazing to use a q link slider and the step forward back buttons to quickly draw in velocities with the corresponding note on /off added. That would have been really cool and made nice use of the hardware controls.

but yeah I am thinking setting the same cc to control amplitude and zone select could achieve similar results.

cheers
G