I have MPC One and Force, I think I probably sell the MPC and keep the Force, although they have a lot of overlap I think the macros on the Force and the clip based workflow put it in front for me. I definitely won’t keep both, I will give it a few weeks before I come to a final decision.
Other factors in Force favour are the extra storage and USB, the massive size of it is a problem for me too though, if they did a Force in the MPC Live form factor with the battery, that would probably be ideal for me.
I had a Force and an MPC live 2. In the end, I kept the Mpc, larger pads and portability made a big difference. Also I failed to find a way to use them together in a meaningful, not forced way.
Yep, you’ve summed up many of my issues in your response, totally get where you are coming from. One difference is that I don’t use ableton (or a computer) as part of my workflow. I know it’s a silly position and a laptop is infinitely better, but just a personal choice.
I actually quite like using the force with external gear, but find the form factor of the MPC and the speed of the workflow + the pads more enjoyable to use than the Force.
However, I love the Force for the mixer and flexibility on the macros for performance.
I tend to use the Force like I would the MPC just building a loop (with one row of clips) like I would a ‘sequence’ on the MPC, it doesn’t do it quite as well as an MPC, but it does other stuff better.
Maybe just excepting them as different products with different strengths (and some crossover) and keeping both and using them together is the answer, even if it does feel a little like Akai overkill!!!
I reckon if I can fit it in my setup (physically) and give it the right placement will be the deciding factor, my room is tiny though and it will involve a lot of jiggery pokery to get it in the right place. So far I have just been using it on the dining table whilst learning it, I think I will continue to do this until I commit to it (or not.) I tend to do specific tests rather than create music whilst evaluating a more complex instrument, my logic is that there is no use keeping something if the workflow or features are not suitable.
This is what I worry about. In the current set up I have both on the desk, but much of what they are doing is ‘doubled’ ie I could remove one and not notice. The force this really just providing master FX processing and some additional synth option that I can play differently given the different pad layout. Not sure if that is enough to justify it.
I don’t use a DAW either, really just because I don’t like computer hassle, I use it for editing audio and doing backups but not for composing or producing.
Yepw. It’s a personal thing for me, I spend all day at a computer so like the ‘distance’ in my hobby, which after all is all this is for me (albeit an expensive one!!)
Yep. That is exactly my worry. The macros on the force are amazing. I prefer the MPC live 2 for pretty much everything else, but I love the mixer view, front headphone jack and assignable macros on the force!!!
Ideally the macros would come to the MPC in a firmware update.
Alternatively I could use the SP404 effects, which I tend to use alongside the Force macros.
Or I can do it all on the Force, it’s more than capable of doing pretty much everything that I use the MPC for. Just not sure it’s as ‘fun’….
When I’m using the force, I want to be able to have different patches or even different synths on the clips on different rows. There’s no real way to to that for the synths. Drum sample-wise, I can just spread drum samples over the available notes, so that’s not too bad.
So, until and unless Akai give us some kind of patch load per row for their internal synths, I’ll continue to use external synth modules. Seems a shame to waste those internal plug-ins though.
Unless I’ve missed something and someone has an alternative method?
Changing internal plug-in presets per Clip Row has been a feature request for a very long time, and we hoped that the introduction of Snapshots would allow this. But no, we’re still waiting. Changing different synths (or any instrument) per Row doesn’t work within the framework of a 1:1 track relation. You can’t do this in any DAW that I know of, so I don’t see how it would work on Force.
I have a method in Ableton Live. The way I do it, is to have multiple track columns under a group. That gives me any number of synths, or synth patches. Once the group is folded, it’s all in one column.
That’s using the groups feature in Ableton Live, but each track is still 1:1 to the instrument assigned to it. So I guess we need a feature request for track grouping on Force.
Possibly, but limited RAM on Force might make that a bit tricky. Not sure how many instances you could load on there. Better resource-wise if they could allow patch selection per cell. I’d be relatively happy making do with using the same plug-in on a track.
By the way, Ableton allows you to specify a program-change per cell, so if you have a plug-in which supports program change messages, you can do it on there.
MIDI cells on the Force also allow program changes per cell, but they only apply to external MIDI devices.
Yes, Ableton is great for this… I use it live and have Ableton ‘automate’ what synth/sound I’m using for each song/part. Being able to just have fewer tracks on the top level makes managing things way easier.
What we’re talking about with the Force, the MC707 lets you do this, per clip sounds, which is a really powerful feature, especially if you’re using it as a sound module.
It’d be nice if that could come to the Force, but I get the impression this would be really hard to implement on the Force’s format.
On Force, I’d prefer to limit the columns to 8 (controllers tend to have 8 columns), so I can more easily select say a synth pattern from the next row. That means my transitions into new rows are dynamic and areangement is done on-the fly whilst performing. I do this all the time with Ableton, but it’s be really nice to do it on the Force. It’s possible to do with pre-recorded bounced clips, but when it comes to synth parts with slow LFOs or random modulation (which I use a fair bit), it’s not really possible without running either as a real synth or plug-in.
