The MPC Bible (Example Content)

This tutorial is adapted from ‘The MPC Bible’, MPC-Tutor’s complete, hands-
on tutorial guide to Akai’s current generation of standalone MPCs. It’s jam-
packed with step-by-step beat making projects that teach you all the
workflows, shortcuts and production skills you’ll need to make music with the
MPC X, MPC Live, MPC Live II, MPC Key 61 and MPC One.

You can get more information about the course here:

https://www.mpc-samples.com/product.php/268/mpc-bible/
MPC Bible Tutorial:
Creating The Clap From
Hell
In this tutorial I’m going to transform a sweet and innocent clap sample into a
thick and gnarly beast of a clap using nothing but the tools available to us in a
standard MPC DRUM program.

Loading The Basic Clap

Firstly, download the tutorial files:

https://www.mpc-samples.com/demos/mpc-bible-demo-tutorial.zip

Now unzip and transfer the ‘Clap From Hell Tutorial Files’ folder to your
MPC disk. If you are unsure how to do this, please refer to my guide over at
MPC-Samples.com which contains information on how to transfer ebook
tutorial files to your MPC:

https://www.mpc-samples.com/article/using-mpc-ebook-tutorials

With the tutorial files now transferred to an attached MPC disk, create a new
blank project; to do this go to MENU and hit the NEW PROJECT button:
Back in MAIN, you’ll see the default blank DRUM program, ‘PROGRAM 001’,
is assigned to the DRUM PROGRAM row:

Tap the ‘A’ icon at the end of the row to bring up the on-screen keypad;
rename this program to ‘Clap From Hell’.

Go to the BROWSER, select Places on the left hand side and navigate to the
disk where you transferred the ‘Clap From Hell Tutorial Files’ folder (in my
example I’m using an SD card called MPC DATA).

Now double tap the ‘Clap From Hell Tutorial Files’ folder to enter it.
Make sure the ‘browser filter’ at the top of the screen is set to ‘Samples or ‘All
Files’.

Press pad A01 so it lights up in green – this tells the MPC that the next
sample loaded should be assigned to pad A01. Double tap the classic-
clap sample in the BROWSER to load it directly to pad A01 (alternatively,
single tap the sample and press the LOAD button).

Setting up The Layers

Go to PROGRAM EDIT and press the SAMPLES button at the bottom of the
screen – with A01 still selected you should see the following:
Hit A01 to have a listen to our clap. It’s a very standard clap sound, nothing
special, but we’ll soon change all that.

Let’s assign a second copy of this clap to LAYER 2 of our pad. First, single
tap the LAYER 2 ‘tab’:

Tap in the SAMPLE field and turn the data wheel clockwise (or hit the +
button) to change this from ‘None’ to ‘classic-clap’.
Alternatively you can assign samples to multiple layers in the second
SAMPLES screen. Notice how the ‘Samples’ tab has four dots underneath?

This indicates that there are three additional ‘SAMPLES’ pages available each
with their own unique set of parameters – to access the second SAMPLES
screen, simply press SAMPLES once again:
Here it’s more clear how the samples are currently stacked on top of each
other - when it comes to initially layering your samples you can choose
whichever UI you find more intuitive.

Panning & Tuning The Layers

The next stage is to start applying program parameters to differentiate the two
duplicate layers and create stereo width.

The last column in the SAMPLES screen lets us adjust the PAN for each clap
layer. The default PAN value of ‘0’ places a layer bang in the centre of the
stereo field; a negative value pans it to the left and a positive value pans it to
the right.

Single tap the PAN parameter for LAYER 1 and turn your datawheel
anticlockwise to set it to -15 (slight left pan). Now set the PAN for LAYER 2 to
+15 (slight right pan).
Hit pad A01 to preview what our panned layered clap currently sounds like; by
panning each layer to opposites sides of the stereo field we’ve given the clap
a bit more width and presence. You can experiment with the amount of
panning to change the overall stereo ‘width’ of the clap.

Now turn your attention to the ‘SEMI’ column. The SEMI parameter controls
the pitch of each layer. Lowering the SEMI value will tune down our clap to
give it a darker feel.

Tap the SEMI value for LAYER 1 and set it to -6. Now adjust the SEMI dial
for LAYER 2, but this time set it slightly differently to -7. The reduced tuning
gives the clap a darker, grittier vibe, and by using slightly different tunings on
either side of the stereo field we enhance the overall stereo effect.
Applying The Pad Offset

Hit the ‘SAMPLES’ button once again to enter the third SAMPLES screen:

This is the OFFSET screen. Here we can ‘offset’ the two layers against each
other, so rather than both layers play exactly in unison, the playback of one
layer will be slightly delayed compared to the other. This will this create a
nice ‘dragging’ effect.
To do this, tap the OFFSET parameter for LAYER 2 and start dragging the
virtual slider to the left so the offset value is becoming increasingly negative:

If you find using your finger a bit too clunky on this dial, you can just single tap
the slider and turn your data wheel anti-clockwise. This will adjust the offset in
units of 100 (per wheel click). For even greater accuracy, hold down
the SHIFT button while you turn; this will change the offset value in single
units.

However, you can also use the Q-LINKS. If you have an MPC X you can see
the current Q-LINK assignments displayed in the little OLED screen above
each Q-LINK dial. But for the MPC Live/MPC One/MPC Key, simply hold
down the Q-LINK button until the Q-LINK screen appears:
As you can see, to adjust the LAYER 2 OFFSET, turn the second dial from
the top in the 2nd Q-LINK column (holding down SHIFT also improves
accuracy with the Q-LINKS).

From the Q-LINK overview screen you can activate the setting ‘SHOW Q-
LINK STATUS WHEN TOUCHED’ – now when you lightly touch any Q-LINK
dial a status window appears at the side of the screen which shows the Q-
LINK assignments for the currently selected Q-LINK column:
At lower negative offset values (e.g. -100), the offset isn’t particularly
noticeable, but as you reach -1200 or greater, the ‘dragging’ effect really
becomes clear and the clap suddenly sounds a lot thicker. If you set the offset
too high it becomes less of a ‘drag’ and more of a ‘double’ (or a ‘flam’ in
drummer terminology).

Set your OFFSET to somewhere around ‘-1800’.

Adding Some Effects

I’m pretty happy with the new ‘dragging’ clap, but let’s try adding a bit more
grime to it to get things a little more nasty. First, let’s make a copy of pad A01
to pad A02.

Press and hold the physical COPY button on your MPC. This will bring up the
COPY PAD screen:

While still holding down the COPY button, tap on pad A01 so it turns green –
the entire pad section should now become outlined in red:
Tap on pad A02 so it turns red on screen – this is the pad to which you are
going to copy to.

Release the COPY button to perform the paste procedure. You’ll be returned
to the PROGRAM EDIT screen.

Hit pad A02 to confirm that A01 has been copied to it. Now press the
EFFECTS button at the bottom right of the screen:
In the EFFECTS page we can insert up to four effect plugins on our pad –
remember insert effects are applied to the entire pad, it’s not possible to add
them selectively to individual layers.

The MPC has heaps of usable effect plugins built in and some of these are
great for dirtying up our samples. Double tap effect INSERT 1:

With both the TYPE and MANUFACTURER buttons enabled, expand the
Harmonic group, open the ‘Air Music Technology’ category and select the
‘AIR Flavor’ plugin.
Press SELECT and click on the pencil icon to bring up the settings for AIR
Flavor. Try the following settings for this effect:

AIR Flavor lets you quickly add some vintage vibes to your sounds. The
TIMBRE is basically an amp simulator, and the TIMBRE DEPTH controls how
much of that amped signal is mixed with the original sound. DISTORTION
controls the ‘aged’ vinyl effect and NOISE controls the amount of crackle.
FLUTTER is that distinctive ‘warble’ you hear on old cassette tapes and
MONOFY will remove the stereo width from your sample (I’ve left that at 0 as I
want to retain the stereo panning we set up previously).

Press CLOSE to return to the main EFFECTS page. Now let’s add a bit of
vintage sampler emulation. Double tap INSERT 2, expand the ‘Vintage
Effects > Akai Professional’ folder and select ‘SP-1200’:

The SP-1200 plugin emulates the output of a classic EMU SP1200 sampler,
adding both warmth and some subtle crunch. There’s no configurable settings
for this effect.

Now press the EFFECTS button once more to reveal the DRUM FX page,
which contains eight ‘low CPU’ fx plugins that can be applied to your pads in
addition to the 4 insert FX slots we looked at previously.
As you can see, drum FX have just a single parameter to control which makes
them great for quickly adding some additional spice to your sounds. Turn the
BitCrush dial to ‘9.5 Bits’ to give our sample even more lofi grit.

Finally, press the ENVELOPES button twice to enter the ENV: FILTER
screen:

Here change the filter TYPE to MPC (an emulation of the MPC3000 low pass
filter) and turn the CUTOFF down slightly to remove some of the harsh highs.
At this point you could look at adding some dynamic FX and EQ to further
shape and sculpt your sound - I talk about these in more detail in the MPC
Bible.

The Next Step

Head back to the BROWSER where you can load up my final version of this
program – ‘Clap From Hell – Final.xpm’. This has the initial layered clap on
pad A01, the gritter version on pad A02 and for comparison the original
(single layer) clap on pad A05. Which one do you like the best?

I cover hundreds more workflows and production techniques like this in the
‘MPC Bible’, the complete hands-on tutorial guide for the current generation
of standalone MPCs - the MPC X, MPC Live, MPC Live II, MPC Key & MPC
One. You can find out more about the entire course here:

https://www.mpc-samples.com/product.php/268/mpc-bible/