What the heck does an MPC bring to the table!?

[TommyBoy]

Sorry, I swear I'm not trolling.

 

Looks like a sampler. Okay. I know what that is and what that can do.

 

Looks like it can handle drum machine tasks. Okay. Makes sense to me.

 

So why does every rap artist have one? What's with all this "really tight timing" stuff. Midi timing to me is binary. Either you're being clocked or you're not!

 

Then you got all these pads. Velocity and aftertouch sensitive. Okay. I undestand that. So you bring in a sample, map it to a pad, hit that pad soft and get one sound, hit it hard and get a different take on the same sound.

 

Looks like everything I can do with a synth. The Fantoms have the sampling option, the pads, and the sounds. I always looked at the MPCs as tools for kids that couldn't spot a middle C on a piano or play an open E on a guitar.

 

I think I'm missing something.

 

I went to www.akaipro.com tonight and checked it out. Not a lot of help to me. I felt a lot like a guy from the 1950's trying to understand what BMW's iDrive does.

 

Any enlightenment is most appreciated.

 

Thanks.

 

TommyBoy

[konaboy]

Yeah, good questions.

 

And why are they still relevant in this age of PC audio workstations and laptop studio?

 

I await enlightenment.

[Dreamer]

It's all about feeling; back in the days I used to own an MPC 60 and still remember the review by Keyboard Magazine. They asked the same question: why an instrument like this in this day and age? And the answer was that it was much more easy and intuitive for a studio guy to lay his hands on a thing that reminded of a mixing board than on a keyboard. I agree that the Fantom X offers pads as well (plus many more things), and this is probably the reason why Akai isn't selling that many samplers anymore.

[Stephen Fortner]

Not all MIDI devices are created equal with regard to timing. I haven't worked much with any MPC personally, but the rap and R&B guys I know in L.A. all swear by them, and it's not merely a fashion or in-crowd thing. If it were, they'd have been abandoned in favor of something newer and blingier.

 

There appears to be a tightness and groove with them that's just not the same with say, a DAW program and other source of drum sounds, soft or hard.

[sleepwalk]

i've produced hip hop for about 10 years. i have always used the ensoniq asr-10, which is another favorite. I went for that piece because i was a piano player before i started making rap music. but guys that don't play keys usually prefer the drum machine setup. now the original classic hip hop drum machine/sampler is the EMU SP1200. that is the one that is most famous, but its sample time is very limited. They started remaking them for alittle while in the 90s but I think that is over now. It didn't have alot of functions, or sample time, for what it cost. they should have expanded the sample time when they reissued it. i never understood that. That's why the MPCs got popular. More sample time, and more capabilities. But yeah, there is something mysterious about the way the sp1200 makes it sound, somehow the way it quantizes the sequences it makes the drums pop harder, i don't know what it is, but you don't get the same thing on an asr10 (though the asr10 is fine for me). i never heard anyone speak that way about the MPCs either, just that they are easy to use. the sp1200 is the one they always sort of mystify in my experience.

[AnCap]

Why an MPC?

 

A couple of reasons:

 

Most rap producers don't really play keyboard, this is changing, but there are still many who dislike the idea of "synth beats" that involve things other than samples from a record. The MPC has functions to chop samples that are not found on most other samplers. These guys are not making multi-samples, they are taking apart samples from records and chopping them, then re ordering them. Further, MPCs used to be about as cheap as there was for sampling and sequencing in one package. Used that is pretty much still the case. Not to mention it is still probably the easiest, and most functional sequencer out.

[danimuschi]

hey!

 

as a sessionplayer for many R&B and hiphop producers i've asked the same question... what i've found is that the pads on the mpc is better to play drums at than a keyboard and that if you don't have keys like on a piano you can think more freely when you are sampling notes or chords! we'll often sample me playing rhodes or minimoog or whatever and then play around with it on the mpc! it's nice to hear what i just played being reinterpreted by a nonmusician on a sampler! also it can be great to play sampled keyboards on the pads with a more percussive feel...

 

hope this helps!

 

D

[TommyBoy]

Ahhhh...thank you so much for the insight. I can understand the tactile-feel thing. I used to play the pads on my Alesis SR-16 Drum Machine and preferred that to hitting my keyboard's keys to trigger drum sounds.

 

I also like the idea of playing something from the keyboard, sampling it, then adding effects or chopping it up and replaying it. I imagine there could be some really cool things materializing from that.

 

So perhaps Roland is attempting to bridge the gap between the two with the Fantoms? You have the 16 multipads as well as keys, sampling AND the internal sounds. Of course it's not really portable.

 

I'm still trying to understand this "groove" and "tight timing" thing. There's definitely something to it because I hear about it often, including the gentleman's comments above in this thread.

 

Thanks again. I'm still learning.

 

TommyBoy

[kb420]

I own an MPC 3000 and a Motif ES7. The ES can do everything that the MPC can, but (and I know that you already heard this) there is something about the MPC's swing and tightness with drum and sample combinations. I am in the process of totally rethinking my approach to making hip hop and rnb by stepping up to pc programs. I currently own Sampletank 2XL, Sonik Synth 2, Sonar 4 PE, Project 5 (version 1 and 2) and I do see the advantages of the pc, but in all honesty, when it comes to making beats, it still seems as if the MPC's timing and swing are better.

 

A few months ago I went to a Pro Tools demonstration. The rep from Digidesign was really going out of his way to show how great Pro Tools was as a midi sequencer. One of the menus that he showed us actually had a list of different "swings". I don't remember all of the different devices or programs that it showed, but it did lists "Logic" and the MPC. I then figured that there must actually be something different about the feel of an MPC if the PT midi sequencer listed that as an option. I didn't get the chance to experiment with it, but I really wish I did. I don't know if I answered your question, but maybe I did shed a little more light on the topic!

[kb420]

Here is an example of what I am talking about. When I first got Project 5V2, I made an 8 bar drum loop with my MPC. I then recorded it into Sonar and chopped it into 2 4 bar "groove clips". I then set them up in P5V2 and everything worked great, but here is where things went crazy. I tried adding some simple keyboard parts to the drums and no matter what I did, eveything just sounded "off" (for lack of a better expression). I tried adjusting the swing factor in P5, but it just never seemed to sync or blend together correctly. Sync is a bad way to describe it because sync usually refers to tempo, but the tempo was correct on everything, so in essence the swings really just seemed to be different.

[Roger Hooper]

When I started in retail, the Linn 9000 was ending its run. Then came the MPCs...It is definitely the functions, how they are laid out, the ruggedness of the box, and the sound; very easy to set up grooves. The heavy duty pads, and the programmable slider; Akai put the right combination of features in there. A lot of customers wanted them because certain hit records were made with them, but that is a normal thing with any instrument. The SP12/SP1200s were similar, but didn't have all the features of an MPC. They had a sound: gritty, in your face, and the timing of the sequencer was tight. When things went from 12 bit to 16 bit, a lot of customers wanted to stay with the 12 (at least, at that time), because of the grittiness of the sound.