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 moonlake Wed Aug 07, 2024 10:32 pm
whats the English word for "Rückung"?

In German this means what transpose does, shift / transpose but dont change any intervalls
so major or minor stay major or minor.
As opposed to harmonic modulation.

I am a huge fan of repetitions and "Rückung".

Wether or not a track needs harmonic modulations really depends on genre etc, on what kind of impressions you want to achieve.
Classic modulations in classic harmonic song structures often sound cheesy to me.
By eLuSiVeMiTe Wed Aug 07, 2024 10:41 pm
Ultros wrote:
eLuSiVeMiTe wrote:
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.


It's the skeleton of a track.
It gets copied many times and edited in each individual sequence to suit different parts of the song. Not sure how this would stop me changing key? Lol.

The point for me is being able to sketch out my ideas quickly in one place and trial arrangements on the fly.



It also means my track hierarchy is structured the same through every sequence.
Takes barely any time to copy and rename seq. Mute/unmute components needed for the next section double the size if needed for the part.

Listening through in song mode I hit main when I want to make an edit and I'm already on the right sequence.

Never start a song at the begining. Might be a baseline or arp or a sampled drum loop. Working this way helps me find a direction before I start laying it out
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By Ultros Thu Aug 08, 2024 2:16 am
eLuSiVeMiTe wrote:
It's the skeleton of a track.
It gets copied many times and edited in each individual sequence to suit different parts of the song. Not sure how this would stop me changing key? Lol.

The point for me is being able to sketch out my ideas quickly in one place and trial arrangements on the fly.



It also means my track hierarchy is structured the same through every sequence.
Takes barely any time to copy and rename seq. Mute/unmute components needed for the next section double the size if needed for the part.

Listening through in song mode I hit main when I want to make an edit and I'm already on the right sequence.

Never start a song at the begining. Might be a baseline or arp or a sampled drum loop. Working this way helps me find a direction before I start laying it out


oh ok cool that makes sense. i tend to do alot of my recording with instruments or midi / soft synths i forget not everyone works that way. I start thinking about song structure while writing the song alot of times.
By Planemo Thu Aug 08, 2024 6:32 am
IvoryBlack589 wrote:That's slick. I gotta start using track mutes. Been using MPCs since 2019 and never knew of that feature.


I had never touched an MPC until I got my One a couple of years ago and I didn't know there was any other way of constructing a song lol

Everything I have done since day 1 is exactly the same as eLuSiVeMiTe, I thought all MPC users did the same :)
By moonlake Thu Aug 08, 2024 7:06 am
I think I ve only looked into the manual 2 or 3 times... and possibly what I was looking for wasnt even in there.
Most things are self explanatory.

The one thing that confused me for a moment in the beginning was that "sequence" consists of more than one "track" and that there is only one "sequence" at a time.
A bit of a misnomer I think, but I am not sure hwo it should be called.

I think everything leads just naturally to using mutes and duplicate sequence and so on
when you explore and try it out.
By IvoryBlack589 Thu Aug 08, 2024 11:13 am
The thing that kept me away from using anything dealing with mutes is I felt it lead to unpredictable results when converting a song to a single sequence and anything dealing with automation feels pretty opaque in the current software ( that's one of the things I'm looking forward to in 3.0 is the visible 'automation lanes' or w/e).

I've read the manual, mpc bible etc but I guess I either skipped over the part about track mutes because of the above or I just thought it was a live performance thing.
By eLuSiVeMiTe Thu Aug 08, 2024 12:49 pm
IvoryBlack589 wrote:The thing that kept me away from using anything dealing with mutes is I felt it lead to unpredictable results when converting a song to a single sequence and anything dealing with automation feels pretty opaque in the current software ( that's one of the things I'm looking forward to in 3.0 is the visible 'automation lanes' or w/e).

I've read the manual, mpc bible etc but I guess I either skipped over the part about track mutes because of the above or I just thought it was a live performance thing.

Never had an issue. I just ask it to not import muted midi and it's as if it was never there in the long track.

I've disabled recording and reading of track mutes in settings. That caused me no end of frustration initially
By IvoryBlack589 Thu Aug 08, 2024 2:21 pm
So I tried the one sequence track mutes workflow with track mutes and multiple tracks in the same sequence for variations and I really like it! Still need to get used to it but thanks for suggesting it eLuSiVeMiTe.
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By Monotremata Thu Aug 08, 2024 2:30 pm
moonlake wrote:Wether or not a track needs harmonic modulations really depends on genre etc, on what kind of impressions you want to achieve.
Classic modulations in classic harmonic song structures often sound cheesy to me.



Very true. Electronic music in general has no need for quite a bit of 'classical theory'. Tons of classics were made with like 8 tracks coming out of an S950 or an S1000 with 4MB or RAM (sequenced in an Atari with Cubase hah), and half of those tracks were drum breaks heh.

Modulation or transposition?? Most of those guys didnt even know what a key signature was let alone a major scale, but they were able to make tracks that kept you going and moving for 5-6 minutes at a time and you kept asking for MORE.
By KaoticShock Thu Aug 08, 2024 8:30 pm
Monotremata wrote:
moonlake wrote:Wether or not a track needs harmonic modulations really depends on genre etc, on what kind of impressions you want to achieve.
Classic modulations in classic harmonic song structures often sound cheesy to me.



Very true. Electronic music in general has no need for quite a bit of 'classical theory'. Tons of classics were made with like 8 tracks coming out of an S950 or an S1000 with 4MB or RAM (sequenced in an Atari with Cubase hah), and half of those tracks were drum breaks heh.

Modulation or transposition?? Most of those guys didnt even know what a key signature was let alone a major scale, but they were able to make tracks that kept you going and moving for 5-6 minutes at a time and you kept asking for MORE.



But what if I just wanna use the Circle of 5ths progression like Bach and Vivaldi? :smoker:
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By Monotremata Thu Aug 08, 2024 9:05 pm
KaoticShock wrote:But what if I just wanna use the Circle of 5ths progression like Bach and Vivaldi? :smoker:


Then do it?
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By Oscar South Fri Aug 09, 2024 9:06 am
music theory VS exactly the same thing but without the formal names -- a classic of the internet discourse genre

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