I also seem to have flexbeat, and sub factory, and a couple others that I’ve never registered. However the only offer advertised with my hardware registration is a free Splice trial 
I don’t know what or why but I’m not complaining…
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Once I’ve set up my MPC Live 2 today (well, it’s 3:03 in the night…) it turns out Akai also gave me Sub Factory, Flavor Pro and Soft Clipper for free!!! They’re not trials. Woo hoo!!! 
Oh, and the speaker + battery more than makes up for few missing buttons compared to One+ (esp. Program Edit, since I use synth plugins a lot).
I’m going to have lots of fun with this thing! 
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The buttons are actually much nicer too… they feel much much higher quality. I love the buttons on my live 2 more then the ones on my SE honestly… they are perfect. Such a wonderful instrument, powerful where it counts but still not big enough to where you feel completely tied down like the SE.
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I suggest putting the program edit menu icon on the customizable pull-out drawer (as well as the save button and sounds button). Once they released that feature, I never thought about the lack of a program edit button on my live 2 again.
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Thanks for letting me know. It’s not a massive issue since it does eventually shut down. I logged in a ticket with akai support, will keep you posted.
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Oh, I knew I could customize the side bar, but I wasn’t aware about the pull-down drawer - will look into that! Thanks
Oh, I just mean the side bar that you can drag out on any screen. Swiping out from the left side of the screen and tapping program edit (my center icon on the bar) is super fluid and easy and accessible. Same with Save and sounds— it’s a much lower barrier of entry to save my programs and tracks and plugin presets from any screen on the MPC and it means I actually do it almost as often as I should.
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I prefer the shift + pad button combo for program edit, more button-y, less screen-y 
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Yes, but that requires me to settle on icons order and for now it’s in flux so I have to give it some time 
On a different topic - I really hope they’ll eventually add MIDI clips (not clip launcher, just clips on the arranger timeline), because editing MIDI with a loop brace and subsequent menu about what to copy, from where, to where and to which track is a workflow killer. For audio it’s much easier 
I was searching the user manual, but it’s pretty messy so I’ll ask here:
- AFAIK there’s limit of 8 plugins on current MPCs, but is this only for instruments, or does it also include more sophisticated FX like FlaxBeat, Flavour Pro or Delay Pro?
- After bouncing a MIDI track to audio, can that source track be disabled to stay still in the project but to free up the CPU and plugin slot? Or maybe it can be individually exported in case I’d need to access it?
I wish they would give us the option to move it to bottom of the screen or make the tab invisible or more transparent. Sometimes it get in the way. I like to put the Project tap at the top of the the pull screen to quickly access the sample list to disk stream, rename & delete samples.
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The Force clip matrix would make the arranger easier to work with as you can record different clips, even from different scenes/seqs at once, but on the MPC, a track is like a clip so you can go to the piano roll grid editor and press shift and tap the Select All then copy everything, than paste it to where you want it on the timeline of the arranger. If TC is off you can tap on the arranger timeline and move it more precisely while holding Shift, then paste it.
You can kinda emulate the Force clip matrix (each track 999 clips) by making clip-seqs, where 1 seq is used just to store variations of 1 or more tracks like tracks 1-16 for the main part of the beat or anything that you want to having playing while you switch thru the track variations, so on tracks 17-24 is different bass riffs ideas, 25-32 is for leads…etc. On these seqs your just playing one variation per section to find a combo of tracks/clips like & then you can record them into the arranger.
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The limitation is just for instruments, not effects. You still have the 4 inserts per track limitation though, + per pad, + per bus.
You can disable the track to free up CPU (or technically I don’t know if it’s still “running” the plugin to a degree, but at least it won’t “play” it through sequence data anymore. However, you can’t then free up one of the 8 instrument plugin slots. It still occupies it until you remove the plugin from the project.
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Once you save the audio sample with the project you can delete it in the project, then save the project again so that it’ll still be in the project sample folder but it won’t load into the project. You can always reload or delete it later from the project sample folder.
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Thanks @Poetic-Noise & @djst
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Yes, I understand all that and Force’s clip matrix would be welcome indeed, but even without it I think MPC 3.x should be using distinct clips to contain MIDI phrases, just like it does for audio - it would make duplicating, deleting, reversing, stretching, etc. MIDI stuff so much easier and coherent. And it would be consistent with recording clip-matrix performance onto a timeline, if they aver decide to add it.
I hope that the loop brace workflow for MIDI is just a temporary workaround on the road to proper implementation.
I agree with you about adding MIDI clips. I was just giving you & others I workaround for to go about it with on the current system. Currently I think it would be best to work out your arrangement with song mode using different seqs & convert that to 1 seq so the most you would have to do is delete some notes & add automation. Or do what Malo Beats said (at 17:05) and get comfortable with the arranger’s edit menus:
I like clips bc they let you come up many different ideas before committing to in the Arranger & the matrix is better at organizing all those ideas & mixing them up & storing them as scenes that can then be played into the arranger. The arranger with MIDI clips seem half-baked from a Force user, but mpc3 is getting starting & still kinda in beta if we’re keeping it 100.
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I’m 99% sure the answer is “no”, but - is there a way to manually draw a note that’s spanning multiple grid cells, e.g. if I have a 1 bar of 16ths, can I draw a continuous 8th note, or a quarter note? Tapping and dragging left or right inputs multiple grid-sized notes.
Are my only options to achieve that to either record it “live” or draw a grid-sized note and then tap “Edit Start” or “Edit End” and use the dial to make it longer?
If you TC on and the time division then used the pencil tool it will enter notes at that size. It should also work when select a note and change the edit-end.
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What do you mean by continuous? Your goal sounds unclear the way that you’re stating it.
You set the sequencer division ahead of time, if it’s set to 16th notes, tapping produces a 16th note, adding on edit end adds 16th notes. If you change the sequencer resolution you can apply that resolution to the whole track, or all tracks, and then the same length note as entered previously is retained, but any further advancement of edit end will produce increments in the new resolution added onto the existing note length.
If you turn off global time correct, then any start/end change will move the absolute smallest increment the sequencer / resolution allows.
When you use edit start or edit end, the corresponding direction moves in whatever increment the sequencer time division is set to. That’s why I’m unclear on what you’re hoping to accomplish? You want to set a length, enter notes manually, then move them in unquantized increments by sight to where it looks or sounds ok, but without changing the sequencer resolution and without specifying edit end?
There isn’t a hot key or key combo for it, so when you’re on the grid, you have to select a function otherwise how would the machine know to nudge vs transpose vs edit end, etc? That’s part of the issue with having a touch screen interface with minimized physical controls is that one motion is used the same way over a variety of functions and the only thing telling the machine which function that one motion should accomplish is the setting.
Maybe I’m misinterpreting, that’s the only reason I asked to clarify.
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