'KeyGroup' Chapter in the MPC Bible, I don't follow

I'm using the MPC Bible 2 Edition revision 11. My MPC-X is firmware 2.8.

Up to chapter 10, everything on my MPC has tracked perfectly with the book's explanation. But I'm running into problems in the Keygroups chapter. The earliest deviation occurs on page 239.

With pad bank C still selected, start playing the pads starting at pad C01 (i.e. pad
01 in bank C) – when you reach pad C08 and beyond all the pads are silent – it’s
the same for banks D to H.

In fact, pads beyond #8 still make sounds, as it does for the other banks too.

The final triangulation is: "I reckon the last pad worth using is pad B09, which if you look at
the virtual keyboard in GRID VIEW is showing as a C0."

When I look at Pad Perform, my pad B09 is 'blank' labelled, although it makes a sound, it's between G-1 and A-1.

Generally it seems like every pad bank from A:H has the pattern of the 01 pad being a C, incrementing on each bank (on bank A) C-2, C-1, C, ... C5 (on bank H).

I thought "maybe I shouldn't be set up as Chromatic" and tried "Notes" instead, but that leaves B09 as "d1" instead of the expected C0.

I'm attaching screen shots of how I've tried to set it up -- don't know where I am deviating from the procedure



https://photos.app.goo.gl/fKVaujV6BVSK36nT6 This is a link to some 'screen shots' of my MPC-X showing what I see.

Hi, I've answered your support email about this. The problem is that you have pad perform enabled when trying to build a keygroup program, this is (by design) going to mess with the pad assignments of your keygroup program so you should definitely switch this off until the program has been fully built. With it turned off, the tutorial works as expected.

The other issue beyond this is that in CHROMATIC mode, the MPC disables any pad that doesn't relate to the scale you've selected. So with C major, the pads that relate to irrelevant notes (e.g. Gb, Bb etc) are disabled rather than completely removed like they are in NOTES mode (where all 16 pads are available, but only contain notes relevant to the selected scale).

Thanks for this post, OP, and thank you for the quick answer, Tutor.

I did this same tutorial five times last night back to back trying to get it right and ran in to the same issues. Glad I'm not crazy, and repeating the tutorial multiple times was great practice!

MPC-Tutor wrote:Hi, I've answered your support email about this. The problem is that you have pad perform enabled when trying to build a keygroup program, this is (by design) going to mess with the pad assignments of your keygroup program so you should definitely switch this off until the program has been fully built. With it turned off, the tutorial works as expected.

The other issue beyond this is that in CHROMATIC mode, the MPC disables any pad that doesn't relate to the scale you've selected. So with C major, the pads that relate to irrelevant notes (e.g. Gb, Bb etc) are disabled rather than completely removed like they are in NOTES mode (where all 16 pads are available, but only contain notes relevant to the selected scale).

haha oh dear -- I didn't realize this site and the book were the same origin. Yes, you answered very promptly, and this fixed my issue instantly.

Many people have contacted me about pad weirdness and every time it's because pad perform has been accidentally enabled. I think akai need to add some kind of indication on the top of every very screen whenever pad perform is enabled. This wasn't an issue before 2.8 as pad perform couldnt run independently like it can now.