That would be really great!
Would you mind to take a foto love story for this? Thank you!
Howās the Force for non-synced, experimental looping and such? Lots of free running clips at the same time, going on and off independently of each other, 1010 blackbox style?
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What I wasnāt sure about here was the free running question, as I hadnāt really explored that and the Force does encourage you down a grid route.
But I just tried loading the same audio sample to two tracks, and changing the length of one - and you can get Steve Reich style phased loops with very short differences (or of course offset different grid lengths for a more structured approach).
So youād be able to run eight audio (clip) tracks at once in this way, but you can also add traditional MPC kits on top of that, and they can contain very long samples themselves - your limits here would be polyphony and RAM, but both are generousā¦ All of this can be captured to the arranger as a long-form multitrack recording streaming to / from disk, and you have the track, bus and master FX on top of all that, plus performance macros and the more traditional looper device (which I expect eats one of your audio tracks).
Hope that helps - as I mentioned in the MPC thread, the Clip programs on the MPC are similar, but I think the Force provides a more coherent clip environment (and the arranger is a great addition).
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Thanks 
No doubt, the Force is more what Iām after.
Now, if it had battery also ā¦
But yes, the Force is def more down my lane.
Iāve used it with a battery, but itās not really a device you want to carry around. Iāve tried, itās big. Even if the battery were built in, it wouldnāt be fun to drag around.
Thatās why I have a Live 2 as well.
But wait! Because Iāve also replied re. MPC clips in this confusing two-lane conversation. Iām not sure which is your best bet - the MPC clips could be like having several Blackboxes in one unit, but the arranger on the Force is a big draw. And itās a bad time to be deciding, with an MPC update about to hit and a Force one presumably not far behindā¦
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Youāve been very helpful I really appreciate it. Thank you 
I often look at the drum track as a big, 128 version of an audio track. When I first got my BlackBox is was after getting the Force and specifically to add an additional 16 audio tracks when using them together.
That was before I got I. The mindset of using a drum track and treating each pad as anything from single hits to whole loops and phrases, each with its own Fx etc.
Glad I didnāt think of it that way because I might not have added the BB, and I love using the two together.
I did try, but they came out terrible and wouldnāt have been any help. Iāll try again when conditions are a bit better (itās gone tropical here), but what Iāll also try to do is export a project with a basic example of the setup so you can explore it yourself - I expect thatāll be worth any number of photos I could take.
I had the force for a while and did this on occasion-you can turn the quantisation and length off and effectively record āloopsā at random lengths and then trigger them at various points stopping/starting them independently.
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Im back home on sun eve.
i will try that then. perhaps i can make a small guide then.
good night everybody!
peace!
@gekkonier - Hereās a project file that should help demonstrate the idea.
Copy MasterAutomation.xpj to your SD card and load it onto the Force.
Hit the Launch and Matrix buttons and youāll see thereās one track, with a single pattern. Launch that and youāll hear the worldās least interesting one-bar Bassline pattern.
Press Mixer and then the I/O tab and youāll see that the Bassline trackās Audio Out is being sent to Sub 1.
From here, hit Master to the lower right of the pads and you should see the orange Submix tracks on the screen. If not, keep hitting the left arrow until they appear. Press the Effects tab on the screen and youāll see that Submix 1 has an Air Filter plugin. The Bassline audio is coming through Submix 1, and therefore through the Filter plugin.
You should also see that the top three pads in column one all have clips on them. Press Matrix to also see them on the screen. If the patternās not playing, hit Play to start it, and you can now trigger any of these three orange pads to launch sequences that automate the cutoff of Air Filter plugin on Submix 1. Each has a different pattern length, so they play against the one-bar Bassline loop to create more complex variations (though theyāre all short and simple in this example).
Select an orange clip and use the Clip button to edit it, and then tap the TRK: Volume label to view the automation lanes. Select TRK 1: Cutoff Frequency and then the up arrow on the far right of the same line to expand the automation. Here you can follow the clip playing and see how it goes in and out of sync with the Bassline pattern. You can also change the Loop Length setting here, and draw in different cutoff patterns.
Switching between the three orange Submix clips doesnāt affect the Bassline MIDI clip, which keeps looping away in the background.
To get back to the regular clip view where the Bassline pattern is, just hit Master again. from here you could create several new Bassline MIDI clips. Something to consider here is that if you created new Bassline clips under the current one, you could hit the clip pads directly to switch patterns without affecting which clip is playing on the Submix track - but if you launch a whole row of clips using the Launch buttons on the right, youāll trigger that row on all the tracks - so if you hit the top Launch button, youāll trigger the top Bassline clip and the top Submix clip.
Hopefully this all makes sense, and demonstrates how a Submix can have its own patterns, which can be launched separately from the track patterns, and can also have their own independent lengths (and various other settings). If you have any questions, post away - and apologies if any of the above sounds overly basic, Iām just doing my best to avoid anything ambiguousā¦
MasterAutomation.xpj (27.9 KB)
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@NickD
Thank you very much!
Alone with your description I managed to do this!
Iām very happy, thank you!!
That keeps it moving!
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Akai should talk about this feature soo much moreā¦
Maybe a silly question/lack of understanding regarding the Force Arranger, but can you drag/rearrange the blocks on the linear timeline/view?
Cheers!
Audio, yes. MIDI, itās a little more complicated. If you record a MIDI clip to the Arranger, itās captured as MIDI notes on the timeline, with no āgroupingā - so you canāt just grab the handle of a two-bar block and slide it around. You can cut, copy and paste sections of the timeline for a similar result, which is fairly painless, and your original clip is kept intact separate from the Arranger track, so you can drop it in anywhere later on. But if you want malleable blocks you can reorganise, the easiest approach is probably to renounce them to audio, at which point youāre basically working with an eight lane, non-destructive stereo multitrack. You lose the ability to make individual MIDI tweaks, but you do still have the original clip pattern to go back to if needed.
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I handle it a little differently which for me ends up being faster in the end.
Iāll record every track, audio, midi, etc., for the full length of the arrangement, then cut out sections to make my track. This allows me to still edit midi tracks as needed, change instruments or feed external devices.
What could I call that, subtractive arrangement? Itās basically the opposite of what I would do in Ableton for the most part when working on the timeline, but almost exactly what Iād do in Ableton when recording a jam from the session view.
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@Artsutanav - I just noticed my iPad helpfully corrected my previous reply to completely reverse the message. I meant to write āyou canāt just grab the handle of a two-bar block and slide it aroundā, but it came out as āyou canāā¦ Iāve corrected it, and hopefully the rest of the post made it clear, but just in case Iāve given you entirely the wrong impressionā¦
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No no, all good.
Thank you!