I do not mean that you should give up on the sidechain… but while we wait for it, “improvise, adapt, overcome”? If sidechain is that crucial to your style, that is…
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IIUC you can now save any single track from any sequence as a pattern from the pencil menus in the main?
Someone also just dumped some .mid files into the pattern folder on their MPC and they supposedly work (files need to be numbered somehow?)
Can anyone show me where the MPC live tracks are on youtube?? They all seem to be little demos of the features. Wheras all the Elektrons have loads of completed tracks uploaded. I have seen hardly any completed tracks. Especially Ambient/industrial/cinematic. It makes me wonder if people struggle to make a decent track on thes things. I know it has song mode as is easy workflow, but why such little output on youtube?
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Not on Youtube, but I play Industrial dub/noise and these are 2 tracks made entirely on the MPC Live.
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Thanks. They sound really great. Really earthy and gritty!. Im thinking of getting one as a great Rompler now it has the auto sample where i can build a library of instruments and ditch a lot of hardware. Is this good?
Ive been autosampling my hardware all day yesterday to see what settings work best. So far its really easy to get great sounding keygroups out of it. Even with note stride set to 6 (sampling every 6th note)
The loop and xfade setting are a bit trial and error though.
Has anyone figured out if its possible to adjust the loop setting afterwards on 1 sample and apply those settings to all samples? Dont want to adjust each sample individually, when sampling every note 
What worked for me was:
-Note stride 1 or 3 (so the loop points overlap when playing chords and you always have all octaves c sampled)
-Note lenght 3000 or 4000 note, tail 200 ( ofcourse adjust adsr on source)
-xfade 3000 to 9000 equal power.
Maybe this helps someone
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I’ll be honest- I’ve been considering acquiring an MPC Live for the past month(for percussive playing, arranging, and it’s battery power ability- in addition to being able to take all my samples from mars stuff with me)
This update seems so functional and more alluring and I’m pretty cemented in getting a Live when the time/finances are right.
I wonder how simple it would be to change a built in Plug-In to a Midi/Autosample track- if I wanted to use the built in instruments for sketching
Edit: AutoSample on the MD? Boom- drum kit done. Does the MPC algorithms give an implied velocity when playing? That would be a cool addition to the MD sounds
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Same thing for me in one of my projects…I had to free up some space in order to load it…
No Disk streaming yet…Fingers crossed will make it to the next update along with Multi midi mode,side chain and quality FX like stereo Reverb,Multiband Comp,gate,Limiter etc.
If all of that can make it then we’re talking about a 1 machine show 
Ah and while you’re at it automation lanes in standalone will look tasty!
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So I multi sampled a drum kit today. 4 velocity layers etc.
Saved all the samples and made a drum program out of them.
Not too keen on how it turned out but for a first try it was ok. Besides I don’t plan on using the mpc for those kinds of drums. EZ drummer and NI drum libraries are too good for that.
But it worked.
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Would be huge if they figure out how to do disk streaming…nice that they’re making huge strides in other areas though
I’ll probably use the layers to fake program changes rather than mimicking drummers dynamics - that quick first attempt I took involved a lot of manual sample assignments. Might even have to read the manual! =)
Thanks for reporting back!
i think i figured out my ram problems - it’s all because of effects. turned out, they eat up quite a lot of memory, though not every one.
did a test with tape delay - loaded 16 of them to empty project (4pads x 4inserts), it showed up 25% on ram meter…
and if i try to load 2 xyfx - it’s about 11%…
guess it was less on previous firmwares, but on 2.3 we have it this way… i told to dan about it, hope it would be resolved…
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ok, so i went and fully tested every fx in standalone.
test was - in drum program i choosed same fx to pad a01 on 4 inserts. and then copied a01 pad to a02,a03,a04 to make 16 instances of chosen fx.
turned out almost all fx take really small amount of ram, some a bit more, but nothing special.
and only xyfx and delays was the big ones.
delay analog sync 16x - 24% ram meter
delay sync 16 - 24%
delay tape sync 16 - 24%
delay mono sync 16 - 13%
delay analog 16/ delay HP/ LP/ pingpong/ stereo/ - 8%
delay multi tap 16 - 5%
delay mono 16 - even less, smallest ram
xyfx - beat repeat lpf (or any other preset i guess) - 4x = 23%. 16x = 90% ram
so yeah, use them carefully. hope akai will fix this, cause i don’t know, why sync delays should eat so much ram…
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Thanks for the findings!Have you posted this to the AKAI devs?
yeah, i sent it to Dan on GS
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Just make sure you get a long enough return policy if you decide to get an MPC live. MPCs are totally different from elektron gear. But what is hood about the MPC, is that one usually knows very early on whether they can live with the MPC workflow or not.
Turning sounds to MPC keygroup programs is a breeze now but as the modulation capabilities are very modest, this will not be a viable approach for all kinds of syntesized sounds. However, combined with the realtime resampling, you can certainly get a workable compromise to most cases. Resampled loops can also be played back in either clip or drum programs, so you do not have to sacrifice those prescious 8 audio tracks either.
As for velocity, not sure what you mean here? the pads as well as the sequencer support velocity and aftertouch (although you can disable aftertouch to save MIDI bandwidth)
Yeah- I played around with an MPC X in a GC earlier this year- and the workflow wasn’t quite as intuitive as I would have hoped- will definitely take some getting used to- but the features and strengths it offers are enticing enough to try to learn- return policy will definitely be something I look out for whenever I make my purchase.
I suggest trying to conceptualize the MPC as a MIDI looper of sorts. So you have a loop that has a time signature, BPM and a bar lenght. Then, from an empty sequence (MPC name for patterns), you start loop playback with the metronome on. While the metronome plays, feel free to experiment with different programs to find what you want to play into the loop…
Next, decide the “grid” for the first event recording pass you want to do. Ok, let’s start with a simple 16th hihat pattn, so we will set recording grid to 16ths. To do this, hold down NOTE REPEAT and select the “16th” value, then let go of the NOTE REPEAT button. Now your rec quantization grid is set to 16th notes… so, playing along with the metronome, hit OVERDUB at the point where you want to start recording events (my preference is hitting overdub just before the loop resets in order to be on time for the first downbeat when the loop resets). If you fuck up the event recording, dont worry, just press UNDO once and try again… Once you are happy eith the recorded events, press OVERDUB to exit event recording.
You can add as many overdubs as you like, setting the rec quant grid before going back to overdub with NOTE REPEAT like above. For recoding totally unquantized into the loop, hold NOTE REPEAT and press any time division until the light goes out on it (this neans unquantized). You can also erase any events from the loop by holding ERASE and then holding a specific pad in the exact monent where you want to remove notes at.
While all this is happening, you can double or halve the playing loop on the fly from the main menu (sequence sections pencil icon). Doubling the loop works like on the elektrons ie, events will automatically copypaste themselves into tye extended lenght.
For recording stuff in more layers than one, just jump to the next track. Everything you do on this track (besides sequence doubling/halving) will now only record onto this track.
This workflow becomes gloriously efficient if one has an MPC with a footswitch control connected to OVERDUB. you can just play whatever and start recording/overdubbing on the fly. Such a shame only the MPC X supports footswitch ctrl (old MPCs all did this)
There are 16 submenues for all the stuff not related to the sequencer side. Access these 16 menus with MENU + pad. Once you have used this for a while your muscle memory kicks in and jumping between things like TRACK MUTE and PROGRAM EDIT becomes a breeze.
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People say the OT takes time. I’d say the MPC takes longer. But once you get used to it…it’s pretty fast and powerful.
I’ve done a few tracks with it. A couple have come out on vinyl.
Sequences are made of tracks.
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