Exchange tips and tricks for the Akai MPC4000
By 1881 Thu Mar 24, 2011 1:32 pm
I cant seem to get this feature to work.

Whatever scale I select for a program seems to make no difference to the pitches I get when I hit the pads.

I know how it should sound because I am familiar with pitch tables from Ensoniq and Yamaha gear.

Does anyone on this board use this feature successfully?

(I have the latest OS installed)

Thanks

Paul
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By dabmeister Thu Mar 24, 2011 6:21 pm
1881 wrote:I cant seem to get this feature to work.

Whatever scale I select for a program seems to make no difference to the pitches I get when I hit the pads.

I know how it should sound because I am familiar with pitch tables from Ensoniq and Yamaha gear.

Does anyone on this board use this feature successfully?

(I have the latest OS installed)

Thanks

Paul


Maybe try hooking up and using a midi keyboard/controller and see what happens.

Also I think there's a chromatic setting in the 4k that will make the pads respond to what you're looking for.
Last edited by dabmeister on Fri Mar 25, 2011 11:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
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By Blue Haze Fri Mar 25, 2011 11:39 am
1881 wrote:I cant seem to get this feature to work.

Whatever scale I select for a program seems to make no difference to the pitches I get when I hit the pads.

I know how it should sound because I am familiar with pitch tables from Ensoniq and Yamaha gear.

Does anyone on this board use this feature successfully?

(I have the latest OS installed)

Thanks

Paul



Go to zone page and make sure the sample isn`t set to constant. It should be set to track you will find it under pitch in the pitch page of programs or pitch parameter in zones.
By 1881 Fri Mar 25, 2011 12:05 pm
Thanks for all the suggestions,

The samples are already set to track note pitch and the pads are set to chromatic, so its not that.
(playing a note sequence internally in the MPC and changing the scale has no effect).

I will check later how it responds to external MIDI, (I guess it should be the same as the inbuilt sequencer - but I will try anyway).

Its a shame if it doent work - I could turn pitch tracking off, assign the same sample to each key and tune samples assigned to each key individually - but thats way too much messing about for me..........
By 1881 Tue Aug 02, 2011 12:35 pm
I never got it to work......

It "should" be like the pitchtables on ensoniq samplers, (custom tuning per note - not force to scale).
By nyarlathotep Tue Aug 02, 2011 1:38 pm
There is also the pitch corrector in the effects section which lets you select scales for pitch correction/shifting but I haven't tried it yet. I did notice that there is a midi option in the scale selection which is not mentioned in the manual, does anyone know what this is for?

The force to scale functionality of the p3 was really useful as it could be combined with a random pitch entry. The randomness of the pitch entry could be set between 2 note values (eg: c3-c5) and then forced to scale, all in realtime. It was possible to come up with some suprising patterns. You could then run a midi k'bd through the p3 with force to scale selected for incoming note data and play away over your newly created step sequences without error (well, almost).

I have my eye on the cirklon, which is the newer version of the p3.
By nyarlathotep Tue Aug 02, 2011 2:29 pm
Pitch corrector scale seems to work. You need the effect 100% ratio and the original signal needs to be silenced.

So there is a force to scale function available (sort of). Set up is somewhat annoying as it is working on samples as opposed to the actual midi data, unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a way to send changeable scaled midi data to outboard devices (post record/real time).

This isn't a big deal if you have a modern computer DAW at the centre of your set up as most have force to scale functionality for midi events, but it would be nice if it were possible in the 4k just for the possibilities of pre record experimentation.
Last edited by nyarlathotep on Tue Aug 02, 2011 2:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
By mQueue Tue Aug 02, 2011 4:33 pm
nyarlathotep wrote:Program scale does work. As it is a Temperament scale not a musical scale differences in pitch are far more subtle. If you go into the program scale set up window you can experiment with the effectiveness of the harmonic ranges by pressing the corresponding key and sweeping the range -50 - +50.


yep .. just played around with this.. kindve cool