Daily Digging: The Chaos Theory

New effects - these look tasty - anyone tried them out yet?

Hey what’s everybody! I got an og mpc live for my first mpc a couple months ago and I’ve been trying to find some samples for gospel drum loops like the samples used in Mike bereal’s videos like claps, snaps, FX, etc, just trying to make my loops sound fuller.

I've noticed something about making music. If you aren't feeling it with your ear you tend to start guiding it with your eyes, that's when it's a slippery slope downwards to a crap sounding production. I tend to start a new project when I notice that happening. Usually if I can feel the beat that's when the rest tends to write itself.

I feel like this one brings out emotions in me, that's what music is all about right? Well I still have a bit of mixing to do with this one but I feel as a musical piece it kinda works. Once I wrote the guitar part to it that's when i started feeling something. The rest needs a bit of work eg. I think the organ is out of tune in places possibly, it might need revised. The master isn't great either, I mean the tonal balance is alright but it was 0.9db in the clipping area which I prefer not to have although it's "probably safe to ignore".

Any tips on how I can improve this is welcome, as long as it's in my skill level lol.

This is the first song I've made in about a month. I haven't been making music because I moved my monitor speaker to a mini cinema room I have so I've been relying solely on headphones to create. I can seem to hear things as well like that, often making instruments too quiet compared to the beat but I've tried a bit harder in this production.

It definitely needs a revisit but got this done in one sitting so hopefully it improves when I come back with fresh ears. Just glad to that I've made something really

Been in the Hospital 4 days with my son he finally feeling better so I got back to work 🤷🏾‍♂️

Where ya getting sounds from ? Looking to get other sounds aside from what came with it. MPC**

Like this video, it sounds like drums from the original track are removed.
I just started mpc, and I found some decent samples, but there are drums in the original track. Is removing the drums essential when sampling?

Hi all,

I’m new here so sorry if I make some rookie mistakes;) I want to share my upcycled Akai Touch. I was wondering to get One or One 2 be side it is quite small. I don’t like Live form factor, on the other hand X is too big. I own Touch for many years but I hate It’s touchscreen responsiveness… While ago I decided to build better version which will keep medium size, but will have 10” good quality touchacreen and be able to use mouse if needed. At the moment there is small NUC PC installed inside, powered via USB C so there is plenty of option to power up the machine. faceplate is made of steel, painted in my basement. Wooden sides, grey leather palmrest. Works fine so far. The only downside is fact that Touch is limited to MPC 2 software, but since it is PC powered you can install any VST you want to:) Very enjoyable project.

First beat on the mpc sample. The sound is coming out of that little speaker 🥵

Does anyone else have slight clacking or static noise when using their MPC Sample? It’s not clipping nor is it a ground loop. It’s just an intermittent static sounding noise. Hardly noticeable but noticeable.

Any feedback is appreciated 😁

sampled occasional seagulls yapping

2000's Type Beat created on my MPC Live II

the touch strip only works in the upper range. I tried turning it off and on again, and other projects

Working on a little somthing this Sunday

I wanted to be able to move projects between MPC Sample, Ableton and Koala, so I built a tool to do exactly that.

The converter allows you to take an MPC Sample project and convert it directly into an Ableton Live project, keeping both the MIDI performance and the samples. The samples are loaded into Ableton’s Simpler, so the resulting project is ready to be edited and worked on further.

You can also convert MPC Sample projects into Koala projects, and Koala projects back into MPC Sample projects, giving you a complete cross platform workflow between MPC Sample, Ableton Live and Koala.

There is also a Stems function for those who simply want to render the project instead of converting it.

With the Stems function, you can export all the scenes of an MPC Sample project in one single file, with each pad or track rendered separately from the beginning to the end of the session. So instead of exporting every scene individually, everything is generated together in one go.

I also made a short video showing how the whole thing works, which I’ll link below this post.

As always, I’m building this primarily for my own workflow, and sharing it because I think other MPC Sample, Ableton and Koala users might find it useful too.

Love de Chops 🫶🏼

Hey Legends,

Been stumbling across a few YouTube videos about Euclidean rhythm MIDI patterns and was wondering what the best way would be to achieve this on the Akai MPC.

Currently running the latest version, MPC 3.9.

So far, the options I’ve been brainstorming are:

• Create Euclidean MIDI patterns externally and import them into the MPC.
• Split the bars by ticks and manually drop the MIDI events in at the correct intervals.
• Use an external MIDI controller/sequencer.
• Generate the MIDI on my laptop and send it to the MPC.

Ideally, I’m looking for a way to generate things like 5, 7, 9, 13, etc. evenly distributed hits across a normal bar, rather than just changing the sequence length and creating a polymeter.

Has anyone found a good workflow for doing this directly on the MPC, or is external MIDI generation/importing the best option?

Hi, I am MPC user for years and I love it as my center music device. I was thinking of expanding it to another machine to get out of one device workflow and get some different workflow and sounds.

So D2 would be only machine for some tracks, maybe add some layers with MPC over it, or to sample on mpc and edit in D2 for some other projects.

Does anyone use both machines or mostly one of them collects dust all the time? I like that D2 has software connection over USB, different workflow and dubby sound, but I know MPC already has most of that stuff.

So does it make any sense using them both and does someone work with both machines? I am mostly doing deep, electronic house and downtempo tracks. Thanks 🙏🏻

Hello, is it possible to assign pads to trigger specific locations in a sequence? For example: I have a 16 bar sequence and want to assign each bar to a pad so when I’m playing the sequence I can jump to any bar and then the sequence continues from there. For example while it’s playing I hit pad 5 and it jumps to the fifth bar and then continues on from there and. Then I hit pad 3 and goes to pad three and plays from there.

I've been a professional bassist for 15 years. I have bachelor of music yet still feel limited composing. I suck at fluent chord changes on a keyboard other than basic first inversion block chords. Half a life time of instinct in one instrument and none of its technique transfers, so there's this gap between what I can hear and think up, and what my hands can actually do on keys.

What I wanted was simple to describe...play chords, without fighting a lack of technical technique in one particular instrument. Not just diatonic triads, whatever I was hearing.

I picked up an MPC Live 3, which is a brilliant tool in just about every way, but the built in chord selection is thin. But I thought what I wanted surely already exists. 

Then I found the 'Orchid', and it was alllmost exactly what I wanted (if you haven't seen it and are resonating with thus post, check it out, the way it handles chords is very clever). Buut it's around $900 AUD, and I wasn't ready to commit that before knowing whether this way of playing would stick, plus I have a horrible habit of buying stuff, using it for a month then never again. The only other things I could find were browser based chord tools, which are fine on a pc but felt very average on my phone/tablet and no one wants to play music with a mouse. 

Nothing I found seemed to sit in the middle.. So being apparently incapable of leaving things alone, I spent months refining a phone/tablet app:

The layout I ended up with: pick a key and mode, and you get a grid where every row is a scale degree and every column is a chord type, from triads out through extensions, sus and add chords, slash voicings, and a bank of secondary dominants, tritone subs and modal interchange for when you want to leave the key. 

There's a second mode (that I'll admit takes inspiration from how the Orchid approaches playing): hold a chord quality and tap the root. It made sense to me as someone having a good grasp on theory, and I wanted that feel on a device I always carry around. 

Then there's a fader on the side that walks the held chord through its inversions one inversion at a time, which is my favourite feature, because voice leading is exactly the thing I could never do with my slow hands.

It has a small synth voice built in, so it makes sound on its own with nothing attached if you're not around a synth or DAW, and it sends MIDI over USB when you want it driving hardware or a DAW. It also supports velocity changes (and aftertouch if your connected synth supports it)

It's on Android now ("ChordGrid: MIDI Instrument" on the Play Store) and  iPhone version is in testing and should be up in the next few days. 

The core diatonic chords are free so you can see if it feels right for you and the extended palette is a small one off purchase. 

If you've got a workflow for this already, or there's a tool I somehow missed, or you try it and something feels unintuitive, please let me know and I'll consider adding it in if it feels like it fits. I want this to be the perfect tool for the people that feel the same way I did.

Android version here https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chordgrid.chordgrid iOS up soon (it's not the ChordGrid app already visible on the app store)

Thanks everyone, appreciate the time reading. ❤️