Roger Linn reviews MPC Live 2
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If you want something less expensive, you might take a look at the Roli Lightpad Block. It's kind of like a miniature Linnstrument. In 5x5 grid mode you get 2 octaves. I find it more fun and usable than the Seaboard Block.
I'm a little hesitant to recommend it though, because Roli is awfully controlling. To configure the device you have to use their software (which runs on Mac and Windows only), and it won't talk to the device unless it's registered to you. So if, like myself, you bought it second hand, you have to file a support ticket and have it de-registered from the previous owner before you can register it to yourself and actually use it.
(To their credit, the process was pretty quick.)
The Linnstrument is the complete opposite -- the device firmware is Apache 2.0 and available on github.
I'm primarily a guitar player with some ability to muddle through on piano on simple parts if I have to. The Linnstrument feels to me like a cross between a guitar and a piano. The notes are all laid out side-by-side like a piano, but in parallel rows like a guitar, and it respnds like a string instrument to wiggling your finger for tremolo or sliding it along the row for portamento.
In the default tuning the "strings" are tuned a fourth apart, like the lower 4 strings on a guitar, which helps a guitarist adapt quickly.
The sensors are quite sensitive, with very quick response, which makes it feel alive and responsive. It came with access to downloadable content that included MPE instruments for Logic Pro. I've used Logic for years, so I just made a reference project with all the supplied instruments in it and use that as a starting point for new projects that use the Linnstrument.
I quite happy with it and don't regret the price paid one bit.
Here's a little thing I made with it:
https://mic11.net/assets/audio/Ribbon.mp3
I did all the parts on the Linnstrument with Logic and my reference project.
E.g. I played a gig last week where each key on the left split was an individual drum loop (e.g. bassdrum beating on one key, snare on another, hihat on yet another) and the pressure controlled the level of each individual loop. This way you can create very organic, reactive, structures with one hand.
Another thing it is great at is when you play with multiple fingers into a arppeggiated synth that reacts to the channel pressure and the timbre, as you can still emphazise or de-emphasize single notes within the arpeggio organically.
It certainly still holds up for me at least. In a way it has become even better, as MPE support has developed.
One thing however is: most synthesizer presets work fine on the Linnstrumment, but you will have to make your own if you're willing to unlock the full potential of the thing, as the emphasis is so much more on pressure than on velocity/envelopes.
One of the very cool things people may not know is the LinnStrument has open firmware under the Apache License, and you can download the source here: https://github.com/rogerlinndesign/linnstrument-firmware
So grab an instrument, and start hacking!
Also, the Linnstrument is cool, it's more unique and interesting than the MPC.
I mean, I like my MPC Live 1...
It's not uninteresting material but it feels more like an endorsement than an actual review.
The MPC Live is a great machine, but it does require serious investment (like any complex groovebox) to internalize it's operation and become proficient with. It would have been interesting to hear Mr. Linn expand on the various design choices he made that still persist in the new units and maybe add a bit of product history, anecdotes, etc. Which could be done while preserving the "objectivity".
Even the title is "Roger Linn tries out a new Akai MPC." So he tried it, knocked out a little beat, and liked it.
I used to have an MPC X. Wonderful machine. Will buy one again in the future :)
I prefer Maschine which is functionally very close, but aside from the Maschine + requires a computer.
My basic workflow is to find my samples, Maschine locates them on my PC automatically more or less. Then I do my arrangement, and upload to SoundCloud or YouTube.
Having a separate device means I need to copy the samples over, and then copy the finished track back to my PC.
I actually had an MPC Touch, which is basically a controller that acts as an MPC Live when connected to a computer. I didn't really like the workflow.
I respect the MPC for what it did for music, but we have plenty of options now. Figure out what works best for you.
This video is really neat though. Very cool to see the original creator still at home with the latest model.
The Linn video came across my feed because I've been on Youtube learning about MPC's. I plan to buy one as a hardware sampler and for me they're still value for money without considering sequencing and CV.
With the caveat that making music with a PC based DAW has zero appeal to me.
It's really about Linn Smart Computing, a subsidiary of Ivor Tiefenbrun's slightly unhinged empire.
Can't find any link between them. Maybe they are eponyms?
Just start from the two buttons: "Main" and "Menu": Main should really be called "editor" and "menu" should be called "main." Good for you if you memorized what functions are behind which button. +5 pts if you can find the hidden multitrack level viewer. Hint: behind the tiny Autobot shield on the sampler page. Quick: what key combo gets you to the track mixer? I believe it depends on what screen you're coming from?
It's rarely clear what entity you're saving or loading... is it the effects patch or the song or project or drum program, etc?
And oof! How abt that onscreen keyboard?!?! somehow worse response than a 1999 cell phone keyboard?! Needs buddha-like patience. Numerous upgrades over the years and examples within the app of better response, but they can't get an intern to spend a sprint cleaning that up?!
Notice how Roger edits out all of the menu traversion...
Also the drum program is so massively flexible... high ceiling but also very high floor. The mix of pad/sample editor functions tucked behind menus is like an under water maze.
And the MPC Live swaps the drum pads to the left... whereas on the classic MPC 2k they're in the right. Great for lefties tho lol!
And the main/menu/record buttons are so big and need so much force it's hard to get the timing right. I don't even like pressing undo bc it feels like shifting my 88 Cabriolet with its worn synchro on 1st gear.
Switching between tools in the piano roll editor and sample editor is so tedious... It requires infinite patience compared to bandlab, cool edit pro, audacity, reaper, and flstudio. One mode for zoom, one for select, one for delete, one more to add notes...etc.
No page has both save and load on it. Save is actually a disk so it's not clear if it saves or loads. "Load" is actually labelled "browser."
The file system layout tries to be both abstract and literal with "Places" and probably useful shortcuts but i can't always see how to simply traverse up one folder... which I often need to do bc I go too low bc of the bad response time of the screen-to-folder traversal.
Randomly an annoying modal "save progress window" blocks my flow.
The hierarchy of "tracks," sequences, and programs is tricky to remember.
It took me weeks before I realized it will never simply show more than one audio track waveform at a time. So lining things up across tracks is way harder than necessary.
In short, I hate this machine even though I want to love it so badly. I think it rewards deep hyperfocus and committment over spontaneity and flexibility. I only use it for its excellent fx chain. Probably a good choice if you can only have one machine and dedicate a monk-like existence to it.
I find it sus that Roger mentions none of the above criticisms. We're conditioned to respect soft-spoken elderly heroes like him, but it reeks of submarining by the struggling InMusic organization. Just listen to him gush about the features...I mean what are the stakes here for Roger? Is he on any kind of time or monetary budget for studio customers? Or is he simply validating how well others have kept his original ideas intact? Plus he only records a few bars of a loop... no serious editing, song-making , or sample-editing.
Not to mention the role of reciprocity in persuasion. Sure he can say anything he pleases, but they gave him a nice fancy unit for free. He's psychologically bound to return the favor.
Anyway lots of people do love this machine, especially those fond of the rest of the series. It's just certainly not for me.
A lot of musicians think Ableton kind of sucks.
The reason to use an MPC in 2024 is to get away from the irritations of interacting with software via a keyboard and mouse—the touchscreen on the modern MPC isn't very responsive to use, a stark contrast to being able to muscle-memory your way around MPCs of yore. It's nowhere near as responsive as a smartphone screen and chopping samples on it frankly sucks due to it. It's more annoying than a keyboard and mouse by a long way, IMO, and keyboard and mouse is actually pretty efficient and accurate for most things.
Linn's video also edits out navigating menus and other friction, so I would take the video with a very pinch of salt. Great dude, immensely talented, love what he does, but I am very sceptical of this video in terms of intent and honesty.
Remember: Linn has had nothing to do with Akai Pro, and he didn't receive a bean from them in all these years. So, to suddenly be receiving anything from them, disclosing that he was given it, and the video having been doctored and his observations being not strictly true, I'm not too convinced by the intent of someone—perhaps not even at Linn's behest.
A lot of musicians think each and every DAW sucks. Ask musicians about Pro Tools if you want an equally polarising "industry standard". I didn't say anything about Ableton Live anyway. Strange remark.
"teams back up"? Akai went bust. Akai Pro is not Akai. Nobody from the original Akai works at Akai Pro. The MPC isn't even the MPC anymore, it's based off of Linux. They don't need to team up with Roger Linn to know what's wrong with the modern MPC, owners are quite vocal with what's lacking versus the originals and versus contemporary workflows. Roger Linn should carry on innovating on his own.
As for "destroying" Ableton, I can only laugh. This'll be why the modern MPCs have a mode for controlling Live and can export projects to Live, right? Like I said, they couldn't be more different. The modern MPCs don't even have the modulation matrix of the 4000, nor do they have the capabilities of JJOS. The looper is pitiful. No PDC either. No MPE. No comping takes. No spatial audio, not even surround sound. I could go on.
That's without even getting into not being able to score with it due to no SMTPE like the old MPCs, and lack of PDC makes it a joke for scoring even using the VSTi (same problem with Maschine).
Shit-talk Ableton Live all you like, but nothing comes close to Max For Live from any dev. Anybody serious uses what they need, including multiple DAWs to take advantage of what each does best, hence the death of ReWire sucks as that means no more bidirectional sample-accurate audio and MIDI between DAWs.
Ableton Link only does clock (hence not suitable for scores), but at least Ableton has Link, and Akai Pro integrates Ableton Link into MPC; seeing a pattern here with Akai Pro following rather than leading like the original Akai used to? Akai Pro has a brand and is coasting on the history of that brand. The modern MPC is quite irrelevant in modern production, IMO. Not to say you can't make good music with one, you absolutely can, but it's not even as good as what we had quarter of a century or more ago in many ways. Modern MPC is a toy by comparison and is priced like one; MPC 60 was $5000 in ye olde money. MPC 3000 was $3,699 in ye olde money. It shows.
If the modern-day MPCs were so good, the old MPCs wouldn't still be changing hands for considerable money and wouldn't be highly sought after. Go figure.
Are you a sample based musician? That what it was designed around. Perfect for hipho.
The OS does feel out of date, this current version of MPC OS came out when iPhone 6 was out, and there has long been talk of an MPC 3.0 upgrade coming soon. So it's hard to judge it entirely given its age.
A huge part of it is that many serious professional musicians use this as a daily driver for production and they are VERY set on workflow patterns dating to the 90s. So reorganizing stuff would come with big customer pushback.
Learning the MPC workflow and developing our own templates+flows is really critical to understanding it. Your experience with it is seemingly quite shallow but a bit understandable.
> Main should really be called "editor" and "menu" should be called "main."
Not really, Main is the mainscreen like your primary app view. Menu is like the start menu or a sidebar in a webapp.
Editor would be confusing because there's the midi screen. And you dont edit anything besides track names.
> No page has both save and load on it. Save is actually a disk so it's not clear if it saves or loads. "Load" is actually labelled "browser."
"Browser" is basically "sample browser", which was it's primary purpose. Then there's shortcuts you use for your projects directory. Or you load projects screen on boot prompt screen.
Otherwise agreed, File browser is probably the thing that could most be modernized. No support for renaming or deleting files either.
> The hierarchy of "tracks," sequences, and programs is tricky to remember.
Maybe but it's very logical when you learn it and works well.
> Randomly an annoying modal "save progress window" blocks my flow.
Because you put autosave on, which is optional and I dont recommend it for this reason. SOC is old af and slow. Just use proper backup protocols.
> And the main/menu/record buttons are so big and need so much force it's hard to get the timing right.
a lot of these critiques are quite bizarre I have to say... they are normal soft buttons on Live 2 (and shallower plastic ones on One)? Not hard push but at the same time I'd rather not hit rec and overwrite stuff accidentally either.
Some say language X is elegant and productive, while language Y is awful.
Some say language Y is the great one, while language X is unusuable.
Some workflows just make more sense to some brains than others.
Need to score picture or work on games via middleware? Screwed in Bitwig as there's no video or middleware support.
Need to quickly and easily do sound design with external synths, mixing control voltage, MIDI and audio? Bitwig is where it's at.
Need to do surround or spatial audio? Damned in a lot of DAWs.
Need to export a seamless loop for a video game? Screwed if you use Cubase or Nuendo instead of Reaper or Live. Yes, you can copy-paste tails, but it's really not the same as second-pass rendering, and if you need to export several hundred files for games at regular intervals for progress updates, it ain't happening.
Prefer to jam with real instruments, work in loops and layers without interruption? Without a paddle really unless you're using Live or Bitwig.
Pros and cons to all of them. Tried them all, and think it's a tragedy that ReWire is dead, because that really did solve most problems by being able to use a linear DAW and a non-linear DAW, especially within the realms of scoring picture and working with video game middleware. Exporting cues, loops, layers and sfx in most DAWs is terrible as they're geared towards traditional linear songs.
The solution is obvious: a ReWire successor that's an open standard. Inter-app audio and MIDI with sample-accurate clock is extremely important.
A lot of critiques of MPC I see come from people doing live stuff or non-electronic based music. You can only make so many people happy with each piece of software/hardware.
DAWs try to do it all, and market themselves that way, but a lot of people seem to end up using one for production, one for mixing, etc.
But also there's a TON of unserious people in music who don't really learn their craft and just jump between tools looking for a solution to their disinterest in really making music, and then they leave these critical reviews of tools they didn't bother learning, before moving on to the next DAW/synth/etc
Always loved that you could run SMTPE on older MPCs for scoring picture, that's what made Maschine an interesting proposition as you could just run it in-DAW, but unfortunately nowhere near as fleshed out as oldskool MPC offerings. The friction with Maschine for me was not being able to record mutes ala MPC—you still can't! That's without even getting into the lack of PDC in Maschine and clock stability getting worse with project complexity (this was a problem for years until I realized they didn't implement PDC!). Modern MPC software on the PC doesn't do PDC either. It's funny how things advance but regress in other ways, feel that way about computers and software in general—pretty, but lacking depth in a lot of software.
I love these exchanges in unexpected places. Makes me so happy to find passion for music, especially enthusiasm for the instruments and tools.
Ive been using an Akai S1100 sampler from 1991 recently, I'm a millennial who grew up with DOS and floppy so not totally foreign but it's been fun exploring floppy, Syquest SCSI 44mb drives, CD caddys, and hunting down old manuals to find the special combination of keys to get into hardware diagnostics mode.
Plenty for nerds to get technical enjoyment in music.
I bought an MPC 1 about 3 weeks into covid lockdown (strange memories). But I found that it was awesome for laying down simple and pretty awesome sounding beats, compared to my Logic + Launchpad setup. I have Ableton too but have never gotten around to learning it. On MPC, I ramped up pretty quickly on simple beats -- especially once I figured out I had to stop treating it like a DAW.
The record-while-looping is fantastic, and the MPC sample kits are nearly "production ready" (I mean, from my hobbyist perspective, who also owns a zillion drum libraries which never sound as good as in the demo tracks).
Over a couple of months I laid down 100 projects, and some turned out not terrible. A lot of fun. So in that sense it was definitely intuitive.
On the other hand, I found it excruciating when I wanted to learn deeper features. The MPC Bible is not a fun read. And the whole business of copying sequences never really fit me, compared to in logic being able to quick copy different pieces of tracks around and tweak and go back and edit curves, etc. I think it must be that to really make the most out of MPC, your mindset has to be: lay something down, commit, and move on.
I'm inspired to pick it up again though. It's a lot of fun every time I do.
absolutely valid criticisms though, it really is just a really shit daw in a box.