I own two MPCs (Live and X) and recently (a few days ago) added a Verselab to the line up.
First off, the MPC can do a lot. So you have a powerful box there, and if you stock up on the plugins & FX, there’s little you can’t do with it. That said, personally I really don’t like how the MPC handles audio tracks (the length of an audio recording on an audio track in a sequence is limited to the length of sequence — so if you have a four bar sequence going, the audio takes you can layer on that can be four bars only). And this is where the Verselab shines. So to me there are three things that distinguish the Verselab from the MPC One+ - the vocal track, the physical step sequencer and its workflow.
C. The workflow is as follows:
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Hit “Seq”, choose one of the eight tracks, choose the (preset) sound you want on that track, then play/record something. Do this again until you have a sequence you like. You have the choice between playing freely on a chromatic or diatonic grid, playing single pad chords (you can decide the intervals of the chords in chord mode on a per pad basis), or using the “Style” grid, which has note repeats in various subdivisions on the bottom two rows of pads and different preset arpeggiated lines on the top two rows.
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Hit “Section” choose the next section of your song (Sections on MV-1 = “Sequences” on MPC) then back to Seq and play whatever you want to play there. Note that preset/sound assignments on tracks are section specific, so if for example you have a piano on track 1 in sequence 1, you could still choose to have eg a flute on track 1 in sequence 2 etc.
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After you’ve laid out your Sectiona, hit “Song” and here the pads now each represent one of your sections. Hit “Rec” and use the step sequencer to structure your song by arranging sections sequentially on the step sequencer.
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Still in Song mode, now hit “Vocal” to access the vocal track. Turn on the mic and if you like vocal processor, set the FX you want on your voice (edit + “on” in the vocal processor section of the hardware controls). Now choose a “Take” (you have 16 vocal takes to mess with, one per pad) and where in the song you want to punch in, by hitting the corresponding step in the step sequencer (eg if you want your vocal take to be placed right at the beginning of the song, hit step 1 on the step sequencer in Song mode etc). Now you can record your vocal take across your whole song if you like. Use other takes for a second vocal line, harmonies, adlibs etc etc.
The nice thing about this workflow - next to being able to layer vocals across the whole track with no real practical restriction in terms of length of a take — is that there are hardware buttons for most steps in the workflow, so with a bit of time, muscle memory should allow one to navigate the Verselab quickly and mostly intuitive (it’s Roland so there WILL be button combos to memorise :))
B. Already spoke about the vocal track, you can record some 12min of vocal takes or so across your entire song, it’s A LOT of fun, and I’m not even a vocalist.
C. The physical step sequencer is very useful for quick hands on edits of your sequences. I feel the MPC really should have had this as well, in order to reduce the need to use its dreadful Piano Roll.
I’d recommend the Verselab to vocalists or instrumentalists that want to layer takes across their entire song structure. This is the killer feature of the Verselab in my eyes (as @KingMidas stated above as well).