Tubedigga
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I donāt recall entirely, but I mostly just dug into it myself while reading the manual. As soon as you understand the concepts of Sequences (essentially āparts of a song, like Intro, Chorus, etcā), Tracks (essentially āsequencer notesā) and Programs (essentially āthe instruments used to play the sequencer notesā), things get a lot easier to grasp.
The next level of knowledge for me was understanding how mixing works. You have 4 insert slot at the per-pad level, then 4 insert slots at the Program level, and then you can route both pads and Programs to a Submix, where you have another 4 insert slots to use. And finally the Master level, where you have your final 4 insert slots. Understanding this will open up a world of opportunities.
Then you have four send/return channels (each with 4 insert slots - starting to see a pattern here? 
), and anything can send to these return channels: pads, programs, and submixes.
If you come from a DAW, this might sound terribly limited, but compared to any other hardware device I know of like the DT/DN, which I know is what you use the most, this is so powerful that the possibilities are nearly endless. And the nice thing is that none of it is particularly hard to grasp.
The only real advice I can give is, spend some serious time using the device. Thatās how you build up the muscle memory and that makes this thing 10x more enjoyable to use in my opinion. I remember that the first few days were rather annoying and it wasnāt until day 3 that I made something I felt a bit proud of.
One thing that Iām starting to enjoy more and more is the immediacy of sampling and resampling. Take a sample, add some effects, and flatten the pad. This bounces it into a new sample. Hold the Copy button while pressing the pad you want to copy and then another pad - and now you have a copy you can do whatever you want with. Change the loop point maybe, or pitch it down and reverse it. Add some reverb. Now you have a cool background effect. Now copy that into a new pad and so on. Iāve built up a whole atmospheric ambient track on a song within ten minutes using this approach. I could never dream of this level of productivity on my DAW, or any other device Iāve used.
Good luck!
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Mpc headz early vids are really good. TubeDigga + 
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Thanks for the detailed reply! I did play around a bit with MPC beats when I got an mpk mini mk3. I got a little preview of the workflow, which Iām looking forward to diving into with the mpc live 2. I thought it was clunky to navigate with a mouse and keyboard, but it seems pretty fluid and fast when you have dedicated buttons for different views (like parameter pages on Elektron gear). Iām also thrilled that you can quickly navigate with MENU+PAD to get to views that donāt have dedicated buttons, like program edit.
Yep, the whole project structure was overwhelming at first, but after fumbling around in mpc beats I think I vaguely understand the idea. Itās definitely gonna take some effort to get into the workflow, especially since itās so different from the DT/DN combo Iām used to.
Thanks for that advice! Thatās what Iām planning to do. Itās my first major non-Elektron gear, and Iām really looking forward to learning something completely new. And Iām also interested in exploring resampling, too. I was drawn to the sp404 (and later mk2 when it was released) for the whole fast and loose resampling idea, but itās good to hear you can do the same thing on an mpc.
Oh, and also finger drumming. I donāt know if I have the patience to get good enough at finger drumming to perform a whole track in one take, but finger drumming has been really fun and rewarding. I think Iāll be getting slightly different drum patterns than usual by live recording my drums (probably with quantization!) rather than p-locking individual trigs. Canāt wait to try finger drumming on 16 pads instead of just the 8 on the mpk mini =)
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Youāll get the hang of it in no time Iām sure. Itās incredibly powerful, but yes, overwhelming initially.
MPC Beats convinced me to never own an MPC, but what I didnāt understand then was how much the workflow is designed to be used with the hardware in front of you. Itās night and day to use it with the MPC Live/One. 
Another advice is to customize the main menu and put the most used features on the rightmost pad set. Iāve learned to access Program Edit with one hand by pressing Menu + pad4 for example. After a few evenings with it, itās something I donāt even think about anymore, 100% muscle memory.
Yes, resampling is a really fun creative tool on the MPC and itās so easy to do. I havenāt compared with an SP-404, but i understand from others that thereās literally nothing that the SP-404 can do that the MPC canāt, except for being a different workflow of course.
I came from DT/DN and moved to the MPC because I was/am interested in finishing songs and recording in a performance rather than doing it live. You can essentially do what you do on the DT/DN combo, but you do it while you have Automation Write enabled. That way, any knob twist or parameter change you do will be recorded into the Sequence.
It might help to think of a Sequence as an Elektron pattern. I often start with one sequence, and then I make a copy (itās quick enough from the Main screen, tap the Pencil button). On that copy, I then do some twisting to build up a part of the song. You have the 2X length button from that same pencil menu where you can quickly double the length of the pattern too, as many times as you need. Youāll still have the original Sequence and you can create as many sequences as you need. This is a very quick way to build out a song arrangement in my opinion. Pro tip, hold down the Shift button and pay attention to the color of the Step Sequencer button. RED = Automation Write is ON. Press it to toggle. (Red means recording. 
)
One last thing, sorry if Iām getting lengthy: I use the pad copy feature mentioned earlier as my workaround for lack of p-locks. Basically you can program and/or fingrrdrum (I do a bit of both), with or without the arp/note repeat feature on, and use your ears when programming drums. Then you may want to tweak just one of those drum hits. If itās just a matter of panning or similar, you could of course just hit Automation Write and twist away as the sequence is playing, but letās say you want to create a very distinct new sound. Thatās when I make a copy of the pad. With 8 x 16 pads available per drum program, youāre nearly limitless here too.
OK, one last thing: definitely explore the sub pages of the drum program edit. There are many cool things to leverage here such as sample layers, randomization/humanization, drum effects (these are in addition to the 4 insert slots per pad!), envelopes, an LFO that can be used to control panning, pitch, filter, etc. Itās almost like a simple synth engine.
Experiment with one thing at a time and remember to have fun.
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Cool! Ive always wanted to try one of those. I have the Force, so have been a bit afraid of the āMPCā workflow. But the Live 2 seems like a cool box to bring along on vacations and stuff. 
Looking forward to some āwalkthroughsā from you.
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Worth noting for newcomers that the MPCs can almost do p-locks via the automation lane in either the step sequencer or a pattern - the difference being that the value change persists (itās regular automation, at the end of the day), so if you want a quick filter boost you have to remember to drop the value back on the next step - which can get a bit messy if you later want to alter the ādefaultā value.
Itās not as smooth and convenient as on an Elektron device, but the touch screen makes it a fairly painless process, especially in the step sequencer, and it does the job most of the time. Temporary automation changes are an update Iād love to see on the MPC.
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Just got a One and had a force a while back; but yeah the workflow is vastly different. Force was easy to get into due to working with Ableton. MPC has a different structure in terms of tracks and groups.
Yeah, I use this all the time and itās very convenient. If you have e.g. a simple drum pattern and just want the hi hat to pan a bit differently, itās easy enough to just modify the pan parameter right in the touch screen step sequencer.
Temporary (real) p-locks would be cool for live jamming, but Iām personally less interested in live jamming. For me, the MPC is pure production. 
But it would still be great to have as an option.
@Eaves, one more workflow thing that can be a little tricky to grasp at first is that, if you mess up with automation, the quickest way is to erase it all is to go into the Grid (double press the Main button) and tap where it says āVelocityā and select the relevant automation from the list and hit the trash icon.
But you canāt do that if you accidentally recorded pad mutes. To do that, you have to use the dreaded List Edit screen, filter the list to Mutes/Solos and there you can remove the events. BUT: you canāt remove the events at the start of the sequence until youāve erased any subsequent changes first! This was mildly annoying before I realized. The way the MPC works is that IF you record a pad mute automation at some place in a Sequence, it will automatically insert an automation step at the start of the sequence to instruct it where the starting state is. That state reset has to be there for as long as any automation of the relevant parameter exists. This is also where you can adjust that starting point for a parameter of the sequence if you want to change it.
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I have a question. Is it possible to map a midi controller so that it always controls the parameters of the active program? Eg. I change drum programs but my mapping still works
Thank you very much, man! I appreciate all the details. Very cool that you can move stuff around on the menu screen. Iāve been watching a few workflow tips videos, but none of them have mentioned that you can customize this screen. My MPC wonāt arrive until next week, so Iāll be watching videos and reading the manual until then.
Edit: MENU+PAD to select view, MAIN+PAD to select track, and NEXT SEQ+PAD to select sequence (aka pattern in Elektron devices?) seem like really nice shortcuts Iāll be using a lot.
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The only annoyance is that Main+pad to select a track requires you to hold Main a split second before you can hit the pad for some reason. Unlike Menu+pad which is thankfully instantaneous.
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Eek, yeah hereās hoping itās fine. I think it has to do with having the dimming on too which was initially the cause I believe, which I have since turned off.
My only gripe with the MPC is not being able to easily reorder the track list in your sequences.
Everything I make becomes a giant mess and the āstay organized and think aheadā mantra doesnāt work for me. Itās then super time consuming to clean everything up.
Also wish the UI wasnāt that shade of red.
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My gripe is that no-one has made anything better. The door is wide open for a fully featured, non 64 step, multi channel MIDI sequencer / audio mixer with effects etcā¦
Itās starting to sound like you are describing a dawā¦ 
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One thing Iād love to see is the ability to rename the submixes and return channels. So you could call them e.g. drum reverb, lead delay etc.
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anyone downloaded the 2.11.4 update yet? wonder what bugs got squashed and which new bugs have appearedā¦
damn I hope they squashed the 1-3-5-7-9 bug. I jsut came to vent about it im pretty pissed about it still being out there. updating now
edit: online update via MPC says im running the most current firmware. (2.11.3) will check akai site
nope fucking unavoidable step 1 huge bug is still right there. what a joke