Pad Performance tips for MPC Live

Hi all,

First up, amazing community here, love it.

So I got MPC Live due to standalone, this seems unbeatable for live performance. I really want to make ambient, chilled music like Bonobo's early stuff.

I know that MPC has origins away from this style of music but a lot of the marketing made me feel like the Live was still great for this.

Onboard instruments are pretty rubbish so I've already conceded that I'm going to rely heavily on VSTs etc.

Is there a resource that can help me improve my use of pad performance mode? I've managed to get some nice things going but nowhere near as effective as what I see in videos etc.

Thanks!

There isn't much to pad performance mode, it maps out either a chord progression or notes from a scale across your pads thus taking away the need to understand musical theory. The performance itself is just down to trial and error (and practice). Could you link to one of the videos you are talking about?

I heard Pad Performance mode doesn't work for midi programs. Is this true? That would be a bummer...

Apparently it doesn't work when controlling external hardware.

Edit: Dan just confirmed that Pad perform mode works in midi programs, which is good news.

It looks like the PAD PERFORMANCE MODE is not stored per Sequence or Program. Can anybody confirm this?

So in an live performance, when the Pad Performance Mode is set to "chromatic" in programm X and sequence Y, it is not possible to have it always set to "notes" with a defined scale on programm Z for the same or any other sequence.

Thanks for your help!
Christian

Pad perform settings are saved in the project itself, not in programs. Specifically in the 'Project Settings.xml' file within the 'ProjectData' folder.

This IMO makes more sense as your pad perform 'scale and key' settings would typically be the same for all instruments in a specific project. You would just need to adjust between 'notes' or 'chords' etc depending on the instrument.