By
TicToc
Sun Mar 13, 2005 8:29 pm
I got pretty lazy with the graphical wave editing in the XL. Used my eyes not my ears. 60 wont let you do that.
The number pad/keys in the middle of the unit is more convenient, its RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE. Makes precise editing easier. I had a Zoom Sampletrak for 2 years, I got pretty Jedi with the digits, and "knowing" where to chop the sample length.
Im also left handed, and the pads on the 60 (left side!) are easier for me to reach than the ones on the XL. Its more natural and I dont feel like Im reaching across the machine.
No bullsh*t "open window" stuff to have to try to remember when you're stoned and in the middle of a very good idea. Menu tree is more straight forward.
Plus the convertors just sound better. The best way I can put it without using terms like "Fat" or "Warm" or "crunchy" is that it just sounds more like a record. I programmed some drum sequences and they dont sound like they were made on a machine at all. It genuinely sounds like a RECORD being played. That's just the way the 60 sounds. Again, maybe Im trippin, and what Im hearing may just be the sampler's unique coloration (yay 12 bit!), or could be the convertors, or both. If the convertors themselves are nothing special, and the beautiful sound is created by the onboard sampler itself, than all the more reason to say this thing is dope.
I like the workflow process, I like the menus, and I like that I can get my idea out and audible about 5x faster than I could on the XL. Making beats on the XL is tedious, and Im sometimes stoned and forget my idea midway into pushing "open window" about 40540590954 times.
In the end, the working process is more fun because its more intuitive, and the end resultant sound is more like what I heard in my head when I sat down to make that beat. I don't know about you all, but I generally dont bother to even start on a beat until I have it more or less finished in my head. I rarely sit down and "see where it takes me", I usually have several rough ideas in my head that I finalize on the machine. Thing is, it took forever to do that on an XL, and since I hadnt played with any other model of MPC, I just assumed that was par for the course. The 60 proves that wrong...at least for me. I find it to be much easier to use this, as the simplicity and elegance of the OS design just make everything more intuitive. The limitations force creativity, but they also lower the learning curve of the machine's basic functions. The limitations I faced on the XL were more OS-based, trying to understand the logic of the sequences of buttons as I memorized them.
As far as sound, I know what I want "it" (whatever "it" may be at that particular moment that I sit down with the machine) to sound like, and I can do that on both machines, but it requires less effort and "workarounds" to get the same result on the 60. Maybe its because Im stuck in a early 90s hip hop timewarp, but the beats I make on the 60 sound more like what I think of when I think of the word "hip hop", with much less effort to get that same sound out of an XL. In the end that is what all of us seek to achieve, creating music that WE LIKE and would listen to EVEN IF WE DIDNT MAKE IT. We have a "sound" we are chasing in our head, and we do what must be done to achieve that. I find I achieve it with less effort on the 60, and so I have extra time and energy to spice it up, find more samples, tweak....whatever. I feel like I achieved something everytime I sat down at the 60, and I didnt always have that feeling with the XL.
Thus, I can be more productive when I catch inspiration, and get more done quicker, without having to tweak and adjust and re-EQ and bitcrunch and process and resample.
This. Box. Is. Dope.
Shame it took me this long to figure it out...I should have just used logic and assumed that drum machines/samplers, especially the ones popularized by hip hop.....go through evolutions that parallel my favorite hip hop artists. They were dope when they first came out and were hungry, and as time went by they took shorts and made product that was, though good, nowhere near as good as the earlier days. Rappers do that, and apparently Akai did too, because basically they broke the mold after they made the 60, and I can see now why some say that the later models (2000, 2000XL etc) pale in comparison.
Perhaps because my first sampler was that cheap little Zoom Sampletrak, this just feels like a bigger version of that. I dont have to devise intricate plans for programming, I can simply bang it into the pads and sequence almost as quickly as I can think it, and the elegance of the timing on the sequencer gives a distinctive funk to your drums. I cant really explain it to anyone who hasnt used both, but the sequencer is just better, period.
Richie Hawtin once talked about the 808 and said that it had a "groove" to it based on the limitation of only having full numbers for the BPM setting. You couldnt program a 93.5 beat, only 93 or 94. So he would intentionally create sequences that were 93.5 to exploit a glitch in the machine---if the actual sequence doesnt fall on a full number, the machine sort of "bounces" back and forth between 93 and 94, giving the machine its very own built in artificial "swing". That 808 bounce was unmistakeable and couldnt be duplicated or reproduced (since it stemmed from a programming error proprietary to only THAT machine). Thats the closest analogy I can come to describing the swing/timing on a 60.
Its not glitched, but it definitely is a different swing feel than an XL, though mathematically it probably is nearly the same. I figure it has something to do with the algorithms that interpret the sequence data, because if I remember correctly the actual "sequencer" engine is the same in both. Maybe Im just stoned, but I can both feel and hear a difference in the way a beat moves on this thing.
We use these machines for the feeling they give us when we make a beat, period. I feel like a musician when I use a 60, and I feel more like a programmer when I use an XL. I feel like the XL did a lot of the work for me.
Akai really did drop the ball after Roger Linn left. I wanna play with a 3000 now!
...I mean, 4000 users would turn mad @ "as a user of both XL & 4000,...,XL's better than 4000"!!!...
, thanks to try out.
