MPC Keys - 'Tricks' to improve Instrument Quality (ie Piano)

Hi all!

I love my MPC key 37 and use it more and more to play an instrument - because of the good keyboard and the many possibilities to vary.

I would like to share some tricks to make an instrument (ie piano) sound better and want to ask for other 'tricks'. This depends of course mostly on your taste, hardware and type of instrument/music.

Base for my activities is the Grand Piano of my TinyKeys samples (https://github.com/zooxo/tinykeys) which honestly consists of 3 (!) piano samples only (C2, C3 and C4) -> extreme fast and small 'RAM-footprint'.

Go to EDIT menu:

* To fill the room (left and right) - PAN:
Select GLOBAL and Keygroup 1 (C2 sample) and PAN it left. Select Keygroup 2 (C3 sample and pan left a little - because I play more in the right region of the keyboard). Select Keygroup 3 (C4 sample) and pan right a little. Finally the lower sounds come from the left box and the higher sounds appear more from the right.

* To make more chamber sound - REVERB:
Go to AMP ENVelope and raise the RELEASE a little bit - to make the sound 'reverberant' and linger on. Useful if you play slow ballads and don't use a foot pedal.

* Activate the PITCH WHEEL:
Go to MODS and raise the PITCHBEND to 16 (2 semitones) - so the pitch wheel 'pitches' (might be more useful for guitars)

* Activate the MOD WHEEL (vibrato):
Go to MODS and raise WHEEL>LFO. Then go to LFO and use SINE and a frequency (RATE) of 4 kHz. Finally the sound 'whawhas' when the modwheel is turned up. This might be more useful for organs (Leslie effect?).

So - do you have any tricks to share? Maybe to activate the aftertouch (I couldn't get to work)?

Regards
deetee

You don't have to manually pan across the keygroups, in MOD MATRIX set SOURCE: Keytrack (or Keytrack 61 etc..) with a TARGET of Pan. You can also keytrack filter, either in Mod Matrix or in the FILTERS screen.

deetee wrote:Hi all!

I love my MPC key 37 and use it more and more to play an instrument - because of the good keyboard and the many possibilities to vary.

I would like to share some tricks to make an instrument (ie piano) sound better and want to ask for other 'tricks'. This depends of course mostly on your taste, hardware and type of instrument/music.

Base for my activities is the Grand Piano of my TinyKeys samples (https://github.com/zooxo/tinykeys) which honestly consists of 3 (!) piano samples only (C2, C3 and C4) -> extreme fast and small 'RAM-footprint'.

Go to EDIT menu:

* To fill the room (left and right) - PAN:
Select GLOBAL and Keygroup 1 (C2 sample) and PAN it left. Select Keygroup 2 (C3 sample and pan left a little - because I play more in the right region of the keyboard). Select Keygroup 3 (C4 sample) and pan right a little. Finally the lower sounds come from the left box and the higher sounds appear more from the right.

* To make more chamber sound - REVERB:
Go to AMP ENVelope and raise the RELEASE a little bit - to make the sound 'reverberant' and linger on. Useful if you play slow ballads and don't use a foot pedal.

* Activate the PITCH WHEEL:
Go to MODS and raise the PITCHBEND to 16 (2 semitones) - so the pitch wheel 'pitches' (might be more useful for guitars)

* Activate the MOD WHEEL (vibrato):
Go to MODS and raise WHEEL>LFO. Then go to LFO and use SINE and a frequency (RATE) of 4 kHz. Finally the sound 'whawhas' when the modwheel is turned up. This might be more useful for organs (Leslie effect?).

So - do you have any tricks to share? Maybe to activate the aftertouch (I couldn't get to work)?

Regards
deetee

I've definitely used the release trick before while playing without a sustain pedal.