Essential changes to Keygroups

Hello. I'm bothered by lack of updates to Keygroups and even breaking of stuff within this essential type of instruments within MPC ecosphere.

1. No global automatable filter. You can automate single key group's filter, but what if you have 25 keygroups? You'd have to automate each keygroups filter separately. What are you even talking about? S6000 and z8 had nice automatable filters. 20 some years later we cannot get same functionality from modern AKAI sampler. What's going on here?

2. No way to legato play single sample. This one is very bad when it comes to long evolving pads but also 808 or other type of continuous synthetic sound. Why it has to retriegger when receives new midi note? Couldn't it just slide the looped portion to new note when "legato" is on ? It seems pretty logical to do it, yet it still re-triggers sample. For me it limits many uses of the keygroups.

3. No way to automate keygroups through midi. There is LFO that could've work around this limit, and potentially create modwheel > cutoff automation, but unfortunately there is no way to set LFO to retriegger at new note + super slow speed. So LFO's speed is random and so is modulation. ITS THE OPPOSSITE OF HOW A MUSICIAN WOULD SET THESE THINGS UP. Adding to that, you can modulate filter with aftertouch, but with FKIN POLY AFTERTOUCH. Good luck finding keyboard that supports it and is still somewhat affordable. Yet 99% of keyboards use channel pressure aka mono aftertouch.

4. No way to implement mixing of layers within keygroup. A lot of variation within keygroups could be done by sampling sounds with different settings or fxs and then crossfading between different versions. Some hardware that mixed 4 sources would call it 'vector synthesis' and sometimes it could be super-effective. Especially if longer evolving samples are used, 4 different versions and constant morphing between them could create magical effects. But for some reason on pathways to creative sound design are limited and closed. Why?

I hate the fact that we have 4 oscillators and 1 route beyond it. It'd be nice if each osc had its on timbre... i get that it is how it is because thats how it *used to be* in hardware and by all means keep the monotimbreal functionality but give us a switch or something. my desires may be too resource intensive though.

indirect wrote: But for some reason on pathways to creative sound design are limited and closed. Why?

Because the MPC is turning into a plugin machine, and plugins = endless $$$ for Akai? Maybe a bit cynical, but until Akai start taking notice of these keygroup related feature requests it's difficult to come to any other conclusion.

Recently I've seen posts on social media state that they are buying the MPC for the plugins, and are 'not interested in sampling'. I suspect the many just want loops, ready-built one shot sample kits and plugins. MPC sound design is ln danger of becoming a lost art.

Yeah last few updates, nothing but new plugins, and fixing bugs related to the plugins. No workflow improvements, not a single update for the 'sample playback machine' you can't do anything with, they STILL haven't even fixed the MIDI note off bug, etc...
I don't even remember the last time I turned mine on, pretty much moved back to Cubase with Groove Agent and Halion running the show with the rest of my hardware now.

Man Danoc thought it was getting bad a couple years ago when we still had a somewhat recognizable MPC, what would he be saying now hah..

indirect wrote:Why?

Because changing it would not bring more money to Inmusic. More like the opposite - if keygroups were better, it could reduce the sales of paid plugins, but it wouldn't sell any new MPCs either. And who even makes their own sample-based instruments anymore these days? If you look at new music that's published now, something that has a legato synth lead, how probable is it that it's a sampled instrument created by the music producer? Almost certainly it's a synth plugin in a DAW. That's what people use now.

Can you imagine someone at Inmusic figuring, "keygroups are the future, making your own instruments, complex programming of sounds, it's so powerful, this is so going to be a Big Thing on social media... Youtubers gonna stop their attention drama crap and start making LET'S PROGRAM videos." No. Things have to be DUMB to succeed on social media. Buy this product, click this, watch this, big emotions, drama, instant gratification. DUMB stuff is what sells.

But yes, I support your cause. Better keygroups would be very nice.

I bought MPC to essentially auto sample my keyboard collection. And I've mastered this stuff along with creating [previews] folder. So I got my library with more than 100 presets from synths / keys / organs from 70-80. And this library has served me well and also much more direct than Ableton's. Same with drumkits. I imagine I'm not the only person auto sampling their instruments and essentially treating MPC as composer's sketchbook of sorts. By default its my first go to when taking on new projects. I even do films and chamber music on MPC now. I've tried studio strings and it's not for me, despite that I needed to write for string quartet. The plugin provides vibrato-ed sustains which is total no-go for me and ensemble sound is not real sounding. I suppose they haven't recorded real ensemble, just some fxs on single instrument.
Another thing would be sampling modular / analog synth. Some sort of layer modulation could do great things for such use case. As of now, I just duplicate key group for very specific note and build envelopes, mixing layers , filters etc. That's why I may end up with 2-3-4-5-6 variations of same key group.

If there would be plugin of some sort that would load my key groups / samples on the other hand... But there is none atm.

I don't think that there is even crossing point between plugins as polished iconic sounds and key groups as raw sound design workbench.

Again, I would love to see some sort of granular plugin that allows me to load my own material and be like "super-key group".

indirect wrote:3. No way to automate keygroups through midi. There is LFO that could've work around this limit, and potentially create modwheel > cutoff automation, but unfortunately there is no way to set LFO to retriegger at new note + super slow speed. So LFO's speed is random and so is modulation. ITS THE OPPOSSITE OF HOW A MUSICIAN WOULD SET THESE THINGS UP. Adding to that, you can modulate filter with aftertouch, but with FKIN POLY AFTERTOUCH. Good luck finding keyboard that supports it and is still somewhat affordable. Yet 99% of keyboards use channel pressure aka mono aftertouch.

luckily for us the MPC pads themselves generate POLY aftertouch/pressure themselves

wavejockey wrote:luckily for us the MPC pads themselves generate POLY aftertouch/pressure themselves

Have you ever had any success getting this to work properly (specifically in keygroup programs)? The filter modulation never seemed to work for me.

It works well in Fabric with a keyboard, but I found aftertouch from the pads (on my MPC Live at least) is sent the moment you touch the pad, even if it's a quick stab, there's doesn't seem to be any pressure threshold on this. Surely the whole point is to only activate the aftertouch when you purposely apply sustained pressure down on the pad?

MPC-Tutor wrote:

wavejockey wrote:luckily for us the MPC pads themselves generate POLY aftertouch/pressure themselves

Have you ever had any success getting this to work properly (specifically in keygroup programs)? The filter modulation never seemed to work for me.

It works well in Fabric with a keyboard, but I found aftertouch from the pads (on my MPC Live at least) is sent the moment you touch the pad, even if it's a quick stab, there's doesn't seem to be any pressure threshold on this. Surely the whole point is to only activate the aftertouch when you purposely apply sustained pressure down on the pad?

IT WORKS PER KEY IN ABSOLUTELY BONKERS WAY (user dev npc). So you have to hit your pad WHILE YOU EDIT AFTERTOUCH IN YOUR GRID VIEW and hitting new pad will change your automation. There is no way to select it besides hitting pad you want to edit. If you want to change note then you lost your aftertouch data. I mean its MPE, but at the same time it's esoteric that probably 1% would ever discover let alone use it. Yet this implementation is ... let's say reminds me a bit of Alesis mmt8 and that ilk of "fuk-UX" machines, Yamaha QY series had it better in mid-90ies.

It's good enough to add on a feature list somewhere to sell hardware units, but not good enough to hurt plugin sales. Mission accomplished.

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:It's good enough to add on a feature list somewhere to sell hardware units, but not good enough to hurt plugin sales. Mission accomplished.

It nothing stopping them from catering to both by making a simple mode & a advanced mode. I don't think adding better keygroup features would hurt plugin sells because the people that don't want to make there own sounds won't use it & the users that do make their own stuff will be able to turn plugin sounds into keygroups way easier. Think win-win!

B-Wise wrote:

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:It's good enough to add on a feature list somewhere to sell hardware units, but not good enough to hurt plugin sales. Mission accomplished.

It nothing stopping them from catering to both by making a simple mode & a advanced mode. I don't think adding better keygroup features would hurt plugin sells because the people that don't want to make there own sounds won't use it & the users that do make their own stuff will be able to turn plugin sounds into keygroups way easier. Think win-win!

EXACTLY

Even if the availability of keygroup instruments as good or better than plugins wouldn't hurt plugin sales, spending developer resources on developing keygroup functionality instead of making new plugins will hurt plugin sales. Better be safe and spend the resources on new paid plugins, because that WILL make money. Seems like a more plausible scenario to happen.

I just don't see much hope for more advanced sampling features because a) most end users seem uninterested, b) Akai themselves don't need them as they can just create premium plugins instead, and c) Akai show very little interest in accommodating third party developers needs (certainly not in recent times).

MPC-Tutor wrote:I just don't see much hope for more advanced sampling features because a) most end users seem uninterested, b) Akai themselves don't need them as they can just create premium plugins instead, and c) Akai show very little interest in accommodating third party developers needs (certainly not in recent times).

That's a shame, because they could've take down Elektron with some effort towards sound-design features and modulations. Also multisampling is one of those closed-source features for most part. So we have pretty healthy ecoshpere within piano book and decent sampler. There's nothing except MPC that could play It back really (you need to convert it though). As far as I see it, they could've easily takedown even MODx / fantom / keyboard workstations with better and more open multisampling engine. If you've ever tried to import your library into some keyboard workstation you know what I mean. In 2023 they still make it pure hell. And software solutions don't make it easier in any way. So it's either you're locked to presets companies did (maybe slight tweaking is possible, but mostly it is what it is) or left with custom sounds , but absolutely inhuman interface to access them (Ableton, bigwig, even stuff like MainStage or Cantabile or Carla is just time drain without much result). MPC key is step in the right direction. I think even opening up Fabric to custom multisamples would be instabuy for me. And I imagine many people gone through same process of converting their studio work into live set and stumbling upon same blocks. So I wanted to bring my stuff from studio to live and somewhat cheap/easy way was surprisingly Korg LE/TR. Outdated software/ media , but enough tweak ability ( 4 macro knobs freely programmable ) and programs easily set up. You know even sourcing old SIP ram memory was ok, all because I could import my samples and still have cutoff control.