Support and discussion for all of Akai’s modern standalone MPCs including the MPC X / X SE, MPC Live 1, 2 & 3, MPC One / One+, MPC Key 37/61.
By Planemo Fri Apr 14, 2023 3:23 pm
Guys I'm pulling my hair out here, first time I have seen this. I have fired up an old project I am working on and in the drum track (on grid view) I am seeing thin vertical yellow lines at the start of every bar. Very weird mutes are happening to the drum events too, although all pads play fine manually. I have checked to see if there are any mutes on in both grid mode and in the pad mute (shift+track mute) section but nothing. I cant help feeling its something to do with the yellow lines but I have no idea what they mean! Cant see anything in the bible either..
By Planemo Fri Apr 14, 2023 3:30 pm
Sorry guys found it! In the main screen I saw the track length was set to 8 bars but in all the other tracks it was set to 'Seq'. Man that caused some weird mute stuff to happen!
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By hyena Sat Apr 15, 2023 8:15 am
yah,it is in fact a cool feature, you can do polymetric stuff with that, example: make your beat in regular 4/4 time sig, add a percussion track, record some stuff, then set the length to something like 5 or 7 beats, very cool way to spice things up. its a feature you have in elektron machines, where each track can have its own length. on the mpc it is limited tho: the odd track will reset when the sequence loops, so its not fully polymetric, you can experiment with polymetric and polyrhythmic stuff tho if you set your sequence length to a very high number (999 bars?) then use a different track length for all your tracks (example: kick 5 beats, snare 8 beats, hats 11 beats, percussions 6 beats, bassline 13 beats, melody 23 beats and so on....)

then when you find some interesting rhythm you can bounce the whole sequence, use it as a loop, chop it up or place it anyway you want in your regular time sig\length song.
By Planemo Mon Apr 17, 2023 3:20 pm
Interesting! Prob a little bit over my head at the mo though! But at least I think you have explained it's purpose which wasn't obvious to me at all.
By pedro_oliveira1993 Tue Apr 18, 2023 1:14 pm
hyena wrote:yah,it is in fact a cool feature, you can do polymetric stuff with that, example: make your beat in regular 4/4 time sig, add a percussion track, record some stuff, then set the length to something like 5 or 7 beats, very cool way to spice things up. its a feature you have in elektron machines, where each track can have its own length. on the mpc it is limited tho: the odd track will reset when the sequence loops, so its not fully polymetric, you can experiment with polymetric and polyrhythmic stuff tho if you set your sequence length to a very high number (999 bars?) then use a different track length for all your tracks (example: kick 5 beats, snare 8 beats, hats 11 beats, percussions 6 beats, bassline 13 beats, melody 23 beats and so on....)

then when you find some interesting rhythm you can bounce the whole sequence, use it as a loop, chop it up or place it anyway you want in your regular time sig\length song.



Thanks for this! I'm way too stupid to understand what you said but yesterday I dove into that and got some cool results!
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By hyena Wed Apr 19, 2023 6:43 am
pedro_oliveira1993 wrote:
hyena wrote:yah,it is in fact a cool feature, you can do polymetric stuff with that, example: make your beat in regular 4/4 time sig, add a percussion track, record some stuff, then set the length to something like 5 or 7 beats, very cool way to spice things up. its a feature you have in elektron machines, where each track can have its own length. on the mpc it is limited tho: the odd track will reset when the sequence loops, so its not fully polymetric, you can experiment with polymetric and polyrhythmic stuff tho if you set your sequence length to a very high number (999 bars?) then use a different track length for all your tracks (example: kick 5 beats, snare 8 beats, hats 11 beats, percussions 6 beats, bassline 13 beats, melody 23 beats and so on....)

then when you find some interesting rhythm you can bounce the whole sequence, use it as a loop, chop it up or place it anyway you want in your regular time sig\length song.



Thanks for this! I'm way too stupid to understand what you said but yesterday I dove into that and got some cool results!

nah man you are not stupid, it's just scary big words like "polymetric" :D
lets think visually:
000-000-000-000-000-000-0 kick
00000-00000-00000-00000- snare
0000-0000-0000-0000-0000 high hat
0000000-0000000-0000000 tom
see how they don't line up? this can give very interesting rhythms you will probably never write in a regular fashion :)
please remember that in the mpc the track length is expressed in beats (1/4) so if you want more intricate\granular stuff you better double or quadruple your tempo (example: try switching from 91 to 182 bpm's)