16 levels + quantizing problem, very weird

I just tried to set this short guitar sample to 16 levels, TUNE setting..
then i set the quantizing to 1/8 and recorded 4 bars' worth of chords using the 16 levels and note repeat..

What I found out is that the MPC erases all simultaneous pad presses except one...!! my chord is gone and only the highest pad pressed keeps on droning in the freshly recorded sequence.

I then turned the quantizing off and whacked the chords in by hand. This worked ok, but then I tried to quantize the pad presses to 1/8 .. HEY PRESTO, the goddamn chord is once again a droning sound of the highest pad involved in the chord.

Anyone else who has had this? what is going on, I think I would've noticed if this would have been like this in the past.. anyone got any suggestions, is there something really easy I'm missing?

hey klustor.....you on SES?

umm huh? SES? A strange drug? somekinda messenger program? the government bureau in charge of the budget?

and oh yea, it is not about the mpc not being able to play the same pad simultaneously with different tunings.. I was able to do that using the step edit screen's INSERT function.

gets stranger by the minute.

come on, maybe some friendly soul could try and recreate the situation with their 1K... see if I'm the only one.

Help me out, would be really grateful.

thanks!

not just you bro..

but i just assign the same sample to two pads (and change the pitch/tune of each one to my liking).. which works fine for me..

I haven't tried this, I'll have a go later tonight, but here's what I think.

When you want a 3-note chord in a track, you need 3 MIDI note events in there, e.g. 60, 63, 67 (C minor). If you set the Track type to "MIDI", it's easier to see the note numbers.

The pads normally send MIDI to the sampler/sequencer, according to the Note Mapping settings. But what is it sending in 16 Levels mode?
I think: because 16 Levels mode, by definition, works on 1 Pad, that 1 Pad is the note that gets sent, then recorded by the sequencer. The Tuning side is not recorded, it's being done on the sampler directly. So, if you hit a 3-note chord in 16 Levels mode, you're sending 3 X the same MIDI note, which would explain the drone. (Or is it 1X? Check in Step Edit.)

As suggested, try assigning the same sample to different pads with different tunings, then use that to build up the chords you want, and save the Program in the same folder as the sample. It doesn't waste memory, since it's still one sample...

(I really should think about teaching school...)

It becomes only one note because you are overdubbing the first note with the same note with a different tuning (what 16 levels does)
Another way to do it is to use a sequencer track for each part of the chord, that way adding the second will not erase the first, and you don't have to use up more pads.

stereoroid wrote:(I really should think about teaching school...)

tellin me man.. ur FAQ by itself is a good study

Okay.. You guys are probably right.. Just seems irrational to me that something that can be accomplished cannot be accomplished in the easiest way possible.. I emailed Akai about this, we'll see how they respond.

Thanks a lot for the help! This forum rocks. But, as for the problem at hand, I guess I'll have to settle for workarounds.

The reason this works this way is a good one, If you are recording on a track and hit the same note over the same note recorded, it would give your synth or sample two note ons and durations and such. This way you can overdub the note without erasing it first if you just want to add a longer duration to the note.

Back when the MPC's were designed for a lot of midi sequencing, and this is where this feature really shines, but it still doesn't mess with the way other things are recorded when you look at the bigger picture. I would rather see 16 levels have midi functionality, but I never need to use that, but it would be cool.

still wish we know how to use midi with this thing...

baichai wrote:still wish we know how to use midi with this thing...

I put a few ideas up on the FAQ on my site... the MIDI works, and it is good, if you like MIDI (which I do).

Back to the original question...
Last night I tried recording to a sequence in 16 levels tuning mode, and it actually worked OK, better than I thought:
- Pad selected for 16 levels: A08
- when I played chords, what got sequenced was A08 with different +/- Tuning levels. The sequence played back and sounded exactly like when I was recording it. What I was actually hitting was A05 + A09 + A12:
A major chord looked something like this:
01:00:11 A08 (42) T +10 ...
01:00:14 A08 (42) T -30 ...
01:00:19 A08 (42) T +40 ...
...
- I tried changing the Track type to MIDI: Step Edit didn't show the tuning on screen, but it was still there and it played back correctly.
- If I had sent the sequence out to a synth via MIDI, then the Tuning would have been lost. It couldn't send pitch bend, because it doesn't know the bend range on the synth, so I would have got 3 X Note42
So if you're building chords based on samples using 16 levels, it works, I'm not sure where you're going wrong...

ah-HAH!

I recorded the chords with 1/8 quantizing on, which means that all the notes supposed to contribute to the chord are put on top of each other, which results in two of the three notes getting erased.

This, of course, could be avoided by whacking the notes in by hand, but I had in my mind 1/8 quantization and the note repeat button. Would be nice and easy to just let note repeat take care of timings.

kluster wrote:ah-HAH!

I recorded the chords with 1/8 quantizing on, which means that all the notes supposed to contribute to the chord are put on top of each other, which results in two of the three notes getting erased.

I'm not following this - that should still work. You get all the notes with the exact same time stamp, but they all still play.
Unless the pad set to Mono mode, then you can only have one copy of a pad's sample playing at once, then the second hit will choke the first hit and so on. But if it's Poly, then you can have three or more copies of a pad sample playing at once, I know it works...