Force users quietly shaking their heads, those who lead are first forgotten…
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Force has [III]’s dedicated sequencer and MPCe pads?!!!
If you don’t know you don’t know
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Within a few more months of use, all us who have taken advantage of all the new buttons, shortcuts, and other interface items on the MPC Live 3 to build a fast workflow muscle memory. And are absorbing all of the useful information from the LED lights as second nature.
Well, that interface will be looking beautiful 
Seriously. It looks ugly to people because the interface looks extremely busy, because they can’t see it for what it really is. Once someone develops the ability to use it for the extremely playable music production interface it is, it won’t look that way anymore.
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I don’t think it looks ugly at all. 
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I’m in that boat, but I think it’s because I have the Force & knew how beneficial all those “ugly” buttons were going be. That first pic of the Live3 was horrible. I still think it’s as well designed than the Force for running 3.0 & specifically the clip-matrix. Whatever the new X-Force unit is will be the real game changer.
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The Force doesn’t have the MPC but it does have 64 pads & each one can have its own drum articulation & it has a 64 step seq via the pads. Also the pads can be used as 4 octave midi piano.
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No doubt. Im very aware Force is a great unit with its own advantages and unique features. Also that it was first with a lot of MPC’s “new” features. That actually underscores and validates the point i was making about the workflows it shares with [III] are anything but “traditional MPC or archaic” by any stretch.
However, Force isn’t an MPC so was entirely irrelevant to the discussion re: Bad Gear Episode comments i was responding too. Also, what i said was that all the features of the newest MPC weren’t assembled “together” before which is also factually true. Mic, battery, mpce, dedicated TR sec buttons and other features of [III] in addition to what was on Force is why there is so much excitement and energy around it.
Im also looking forward to whatever the next iteration of Force is, as well as the new updated Keys versions. I think the Keys versions will be game changers for me finally eliminating the need for an additional midi keyboard.
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I originally thought it was ugly, but once I saw it in person I realized that the leak shots were done with not the most optimal lighting.
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I think that ugly pic was released on purpose as marketing strategy & it paid the fu*k off!
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I disagree, as I’ve pointed out before MPC is currently a mix of old and new workflow tools. Very flexible and intuitive stuff like clips sits alongside song building using Next Sequence or confusing-at-first things like Pad Mute and Track Mute. The different visual styles between the old and new parts of the operating system are pretty obvious. One area where the mixture of user interface styles really jumps out at me is in the pop-up menus (eg for the arpeggiator or when multisampling) - the dialog boxes are still from the MPC 2.x design school, with big components like drop-down list boxes that easily catch fingers when you’re just trying to scroll the dialog to get to the lower options, or setting track color options from a list of paint-store names instead of just showing you the blocks of color.
I do not fault Akai much for this. They have to deal with a very large number of people who became loyal users on earlier hardware and OS versions, and who still need access to the 2.x workflow they were used to. Nothing could hurt Akai more than if people’s old projects started breaking, since most musicians aren’t corporate employees who can just call someone from the IT department to manage the software transition for them. So I expect that MPC software will continue to have this messy mixed visual style for another 2-3 years as they gradually modernize and streamline the system. Of course, there will always be some people who don’t like those changes, but it seems like you might see people running an OG Live with OS 2.16 and also owning a Live III (or IV) for newer projects.
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I never thought it was ugly, but unless a device is unusually pretty (Vongon Replay) or unusually ugly (the TE medieval sampler) I honestly don’t think about it at all. The live 3 is another rectangle with blinking lights, pads, some knobs and which will inevitably have cables coming out of it at some point, like all the other blinky light box rectanglular knobby cable aggregators.
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I don’t really see how you’re disagreeing. You are speaking about design more than workflow. What I said was MPC Live 3 and 3.6 is not the traditional MPC workflow. Nor is it archaic.
I never said it didn’t borrow from the traditional design or workflow. Of course it does. Also, MpC users know that you can still run the old 2.x workflow so that part of the convo is moot for those in the know. Want traditional you can have it. Want future MpC, you can have it.
Once again….Clip Matrix, dedicated seq, DJ mode with crossfader, one button punch fx, onboard mic for quick field sampling/vocal rec, mpce, etc are NEW to MPC and obviously not traditional MPC workflows nor is it archaic. I can’t believe that is a point of contention but mkay. I’m fine if I’m the only one that thinks MPC Live 3 and 3.6 expands significantly past “traditional MPC” or isn’t a leap forward vs archaic.
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What I mean is that if you come to MPC without knowing the development history, it’s confusing to see very modern things like you mention alongside very old-looking parts like Next Sequence, which is a very different approach to building a song. The arpeggiator screen still looks clunky, I was using it for a while before I even realized there were complex patterns available.
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And like, the event edit thing… that is going to make zero sense to someone not familiar with pre-Live MPC’s 
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I had a Morningstar MC3 that I used to send MMC messages to MPC/Force for Playback and Record. I no longer have the MC3 and while considering getting another, I though I would ask the community: does anyone have a suggestion for a compact Footswitch that can send MMC to the MPC via midi, USB, or Bluetooth?
Thanks
Tried using the matrix workflow to build a song. I still dont think this is the most intuitive way to do it, similar to Ableton, its a pain in the ass having to setup follow actions for 30 scenes. At least with the sequnce–>song workflow you can set it all up in one view pretty much.
My workflow wishlist:
- Update the classic song mode view to setup scenes instead of sequences. Then you could rapidly setup the follow actions with far less clicks and see it all in one view.
- Multi track erase - i.e. click erase , cycle to track erase, and then use the pads to select which tracks. Would really speed up arranger.
- Shortcut buttons on Live 3 to set loop points in arranger
- A shortcut to get to fx menu
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Can’t you just record to arrangement and then jam your clips on vibes?
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It’s a somewhat special case, but if you use the RK-002 Smart MIDI Cable and create a program that converts CC messages to MMC, you can send MMC commands from any footswitch. I tested it with a Boss FS1-WL, and it successfully sent MMC to the MPC.
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The bad gear episode reminded me of what I didn’t like in the MPC one, koala sampler, flip and so on. A touchscreen is a bad interface for editing things like midi notes.
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