Exchange tips and tricks for the Akai MPC4000
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By ArKyve-31 Sat Dec 24, 2011 12:30 am
So i was feeling froggy and literally chopped hundreds of breaks i've aqcuired over the years in Recycle, now I know recycle exports as a keygroup, so the plan was to convert to drum pgm......then i realized after hours of work, I can make the midi pgms chromatic (as far as pad #'s go) but can't do it in a drum program...hours wasted, my fingers are trained for the drums to be were they normally are, now i have snares and kicks spread through different banks. I mean I have one bank all silence except one pad.

If there is way to change the pads to chromatic while in drum pgm mode let me know, Ive toyed with the 4k all night, and searched the forum with no responses. Sometimes I think they over thought the 4k a little to much, I'd much rather have drum pgms set up correctly the keygroups, thats also a flaw on propeller heads side of things to.
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By Mike Boogie Sat Dec 24, 2011 3:12 am
Well damn!!!

Have you tried going back into a KG?

Try the Pad Assign button and flip the layout back to Chromatic.
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By ArKyve-31 Sat Dec 24, 2011 4:30 am
yeah, but I chopped most of the breaks to have only 16 chops so I could finger drum all in the same bank and of course when you load the keygroups they post the first sample on the 5th pad so that the last samples are in bank b. Not a huge deal but a major inconvenience
By nyarlathotep Sat Dec 24, 2011 5:37 pm
I have tried this myself and The 5th pad (corresponding to C1 in the chromatic scale) is the begining of the recycle note/sample associations. Assumably there is a way to tell recycle where to begin its note/sample associations ahead of exporting... In other words you'll be wanting the sample map to begin at note G#0.

The GM map in pad assign (also note assign/set up) is all but meaningless in the context of keygroups for most practical purposes (as far as I can tell anyway).

Another way round this is to pass the mpc's midi out through a daw midi track and use a midi modifier to increase the outgoing midi notes by 4 semitones (G#0 now becomes C1). In midi options you'll need to configure the mpc midi-in-1 > sequencer / drum pad > midi out-a (being the only option). The mpc can now pass through the daw and the notes are corrected. In my tests there was no latency and the mpc played exactly the same :)
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By ArKyve-31 Sat Dec 24, 2011 6:04 pm
^^^yeah but thats just even more work added to it, plus in keygroup mode you cannot just push a pad in the program matrix and have the sample highlighted, which makes it difficult as hell to edit a specific snare or kick when you have several of them.
By nyarlathotep Sat Dec 24, 2011 8:17 pm
Keygroup is really geared toward key parts arranged as 'key groups' (usually called kb zones) consisting of up to 4 velocity 'zones' (usually called layers). Why akai decided to re invent the terminology is a mystery...

I am not sure KG was really conceived to work with arbitrarily sliced recycle files consisting of mainly transients and drum hits. That said, I find the method I described above pretty easy to get on with for this purpose. Changing samples and setting key zones (groups) is easily done in the program kg mix page. It depends how much time you want to spend preparing the machine for use and if you want to use it in a variety of different ways...
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By ArKyve-31 Sat Dec 24, 2011 9:10 pm
Well I do have hundred of breaks so its not worth loading each and re assigning, the point was to improve workflow, I'm just keep doing the old fashion way, load what I want and chop it down to the pads I want them on.
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By Lampdog Sat Dec 24, 2011 10:34 pm
IMO KG was designed to work with keyboard range of multisamples. Making KG's do something else may be doable but you also run the risk of problems
that aren't normal for what you wanna do. Did that make any sense?
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By ArKyve-31 Sat Dec 24, 2011 10:40 pm
Lampdog wrote:IMO KG was designed to work with keyboard range of multisamples. Making KG's do something else may be doable but you also run the risk of problems
that aren't normal for what you wanna do. Did that make any sense?




na, you're right, they are meant for that, I just thought the conversion would be more logical, or Recycle give you an option of keygroup or drum
By nyarlathotep Sat Dec 24, 2011 11:46 pm
Doing it 'the old fashioned way' is probably going to be the easiest solution here. Export from recycle in wav format or just use the existing akai pgm file export and use the samples only.

KG's can be used to good effect for this kind of work so long as you don't over complicate the sample list/kg assignments...

16 samples>16 pads=1 KG. This should be fine for practical purposes...

Hundreds of samples>128 pads=1 KG. This is going to mess with your sleep patterns! :lol:
By rogue scrunt Sun Dec 25, 2011 8:28 pm
pad assign = chromatic
go to bank B
press pad 1, this will highlight the midi noite number
scroll to 36

this will start your chops on the first pad of bank B
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By ArKyve-31 Sun Dec 25, 2011 11:32 pm
rogue scrunt wrote:pad assign = chromatic
go to bank B
press pad 1, this will highlight the midi noite number
scroll to 36

this will start your chops on the first pad of bank B



hmm, see i now that will suffice. Simple yet overlooked. much appreciated. 8)
By nyarlathotep Mon Dec 26, 2011 7:59 pm
You can use the pads to set the KG's! Go to program pitch>cursor to note span low/hi field> window key> Set keyrange via midi: YES.

Now you can hit the pads, 2 times for a single note range (one for start one for end).

Don't forget to switch the 'set keyrange via midi' option to No once finished otherwise when you go to program again your recorded beats will set new keyranges if you are in the span field.
By nyarlathotep Tue Dec 27, 2011 4:08 pm
nyarlathotep wrote:Another way round this is to pass the mpc's midi out through a daw midi track and use a midi modifier to increase the outgoing midi notes by 4 semitones (G#0 now becomes C1). In midi options you'll need to configure the mpc midi-in-1 > sequencer / drum pad > midi out-a (being the only option). The mpc can now pass through the daw and the notes are corrected. In my tests there was no latency and the mpc played exactly the same :)


Apologies for self quote but I have found how to do this on the 4k...

So, yet another way to do this> Program>Misc>Midi block>Transpose program up by 4 semitones... Recycled drum KG's now start on pad 1.