MPC 3 -- Let's GO!!

MPC-Tutor wrote:

IvoryBlack589 wrote:Someone on the Elektron forum pointed out how unpleasant and unwieldy managing a project with a ton of different sequence variations is. I'm dealing with this at this very moment lol. I don't think the arranger looks good right now, but a solution to this particular problem would be very welcome. Modern music is dynamic in a way that isn't easily implemented on the MPC imo, it'd be great if they somehow squared that circle.

The arranger has no real bearing on a project containing many individual sequences as the arranger is just an alternate way of managing a single sequence. What they need to work on is improving song mode, which is what the 'arranger' should have been IMO, i.e. a place to piece together and 'arrange' all the different sequences into a song, with multi-track view, 'blocks', ability to record audio tracks & automation across a song (without having to 'destructively' convert it to a single sequence), and so on.

Exactly

IvoryBlack589 wrote:Someone on the Elektron forum pointed out how unpleasant and unwieldy managing a project with a ton of different sequence variations is. I'm dealing with this at this very moment lol. I don't think the arranger looks good right now, but a solution to this particular problem would be very welcome. Modern music is dynamic in a way that isn't easily implemented on the MPC imo, it'd be great if they somehow squared that circle.

I think I was that someone, talking about my MPC workflow & how tedious it became trying to edit stuff across sequences after you edit something.

My solution was the Force, its workflow is made for speed & efficiency. It's when create a clip it get automatically named after the track name & scene number, so just the track first & all the clips will have that name, but you can still change it later. The clip-matrix makes it so fast to move clips around to make scenes. I mainly use the arranger only after I made the song the way I wanted in the matrix

The Force song is the 999 scenes in the matrix & you can you use a scene with unnamed blank dummy clips to separate different songs or sections of scenes. The way I name song & scenes is by making a dummy track (you can name it seq names) & name the clips after a parts of a song like; intro, verse1, hook1, break1, outro, no drums, bass-kick (meaning only the bass & kick is playing on that scene). Here a basic demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ankzrt01JZ4

Did AKAI remove Ableton Control Mode in MPC 3.0 by the way?

MPC-Tutor wrote:

IvoryBlack589 wrote:Someone on the Elektron forum pointed out how unpleasant and unwieldy managing a project with a ton of different sequence variations is. I'm dealing with this at this very moment lol. I don't think the arranger looks good right now, but a solution to this particular problem would be very welcome. Modern music is dynamic in a way that isn't easily implemented on the MPC imo, it'd be great if they somehow squared that circle.

The arranger has no real bearing on a project containing many individual sequences as the arranger is just an alternate way of managing a single sequence. What they need to work on is improving song mode, which is what the 'arranger' should have been IMO, i.e. a place to piece together and 'arrange' all the different sequences into a song, with multi-track view, 'blocks', ability to record audio tracks & automation across a song (without having to 'destructively' convert it to a single sequence), and so on.

Agreed, though I was referring to the arranger as potential alternative to many individual sequences (i.e. making a few key sequences representing each section of the song, repeating them via song mode, converting that to a single sequence and then adding and removing events via the arranger to create variations that way).

IvoryBlack589 wrote:Agreed, though I was referring to the arranger as potential alternative to many individual sequences (i.e. making a few key sequences representing each section of the song, repeating them via song mode, converting that to a single sequence and then adding and removing events via the arranger to create variations that way).

Yes, the arranger is likely to encourage less focus on getting all those individual sequences perfect before entering song mode, and possibly might convince many to forgo song mode entirely and just make everything from a single sequence in the first place.

Others have pointed this out but I wish they'd put midi events in 'blocks'/containers like audio (with the ability to slice, copy, paste etc). Feel like that'd make working at the arrangement level in the grid much easier, and it'd feel closer to a true DAW timeline.

IvoryBlack589 wrote:Others have pointed this out but I wish they'd put midi events in 'blocks'/containers like audio (with the ability to slice, copy, paste etc). Feel like that'd make working at the arrangement level in the grid much easier, and it'd feel closer to a true DAW timeline.

This is how I work.
Each track in my sequence is a block. Duplicate program/plugin and another variation.
Rather than placing it in a timeline I'm muting it.
A whole song in 8 bars.
Well the skeleton of.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjljgCD ... ZPlRDwiLZT

Copy the sequence out. Mute and edit as required to build an arrangement.


Well. I did until recently.

That's slick. I gotta start using track mutes. Been using MPCs since 2019 and never knew of that feature.

IvoryBlack589 wrote:That's slick. I gotta start using track mutes. Been using MPCs since 2019 and never knew of that feature.

Uh ? There is another way to use an MPC ? Wow... The world is bigger than I thought !

mpc_fan_2022 wrote:Did AKAI remove Ableton Control Mode in MPC 3.0 by the way?

Nope, Live Control mode is still there, it’s just been simplified to “Control”. Which I’m glad about because I use that all the time. I hope Ableton will allow the Push 3 to use the Akai Network MIDI so I can control my friends Ableton sets in standalone mode.

eLuSiVeMiTe wrote:

IvoryBlack589 wrote:Others have pointed this out but I wish they'd put midi events in 'blocks'/containers like audio (with the ability to slice, copy, paste etc). Feel like that'd make working at the arrangement level in the grid much easier, and it'd feel closer to a true DAW timeline.

This is how I work.
Each track in my sequence is a block. Duplicate program/plugin and another variation.
Rather than placing it in a timeline I'm muting it.
A whole song in 8 bars.
Well the skeleton of.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjljgCD ... ZPlRDwiLZT

Copy the sequence out. Mute and edit as required to build an arrangement.

Well. I did until recently.

if you do this, your song never changes key and it becomes really annoying. better off cloning your sequence erasing a track and then writing another version in the cloned segment. songs contain different components like intro, chrous, tag, bridge, verses, outro and in those your song should move from melody to melody. like "mini songs" in key with your song but perhaps shifting key to a complementing key. otherwise it comes out brick walled and flat and repetitve.

MPC-Tutor wrote:

IvoryBlack589 wrote:Agreed, though I was referring to the arranger as potential alternative to many individual sequences (i.e. making a few key sequences representing each section of the song, repeating them via song mode, converting that to a single sequence and then adding and removing events via the arranger to create variations that way).

Yes, the arranger is likely to encourage less focus on getting all those individual sequences perfect before entering song mode, and possibly might convince many to forgo song mode entirely and just make everything from a single sequence in the first place.

I want to do this but I found a very interesting paradigm since my friend has the Akai force. If I save the same tracks to separate sequences and name them, I can open the MPC project on the Force and the Sequence names show up as scenes. Furthermore, I can export the force project as an ALS file and open it in Ableton in Session view with the same scenes and tracks. 3.0 is going to make this workflow very interesting.

@Ultros, agreed. I often use the transpose sequence feature to Modulate in the middle of a song. Very good point.

@IvoryBlack Elektron is whole nother world and workflow entirely.