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 3bc Mon Jan 13, 2025 3:45 pm
New to MPC world. I've been trying to wrap my arms around all the sample chopping features available. And there are a million videos, classes, etc. of everyone doing something their way, but not necessarily breaking everything down. Anyone recommend a resource that comprehensively goes through all the different ways to do it?

As an FYI my desired workflow would be to sample off my turntable a 2-4 bar phrase. Trim it to loop perfectly, ask MPC to detect tempo based on bars/beats, chop that then based on those bars and beats, export those chops to the pads, use my desired tempo and have those pads automatically stretch to match my tempo and work from there.

I feel like I've seen information from about 50 videos that each contain a tiny piece of that workflow, but I'm struggling to remember what I found where and piece it all together.

Thanks all!

Cheers,
B
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By MPC-Tutor Mon Jan 13, 2025 4:06 pm
All fairly standard apart from the last bit - you can set each pad layer to 'warp' so the individual samples adapt to sequence tempo but that can be both CPU intensive and degrade audio quite dramatically. I wouldn't recommend that. You will get better results time stretching the original sample and then chopping.

If you want a chopped break that adapts to tempo, you should chop down to individual hits (threshold chopping or manually) and effectively build a playable kit from that. Or use patch phrase, but that can sound poor in most cases ('clicky' or choppy). Either way, all chopping methods covered in the MPC Bible: https://www.mpc-samples.com/product.php/268/mpc-bible/