Blog Entries Tagged: akai

I decided to dive in and figure out the system exclusive implementation to see if it could be used to get past some of the MPC's control limitations. It seems pretty clear that the documentation was developed for the Z samplers as most sampling functions are in there, but nothing for sequencing. You can tell that they must have programmed Ak.sys using these commands. It is too bad they didn't add in other features to ak.sys that were available, like FX. Figure that with a good sysex capable MIDI controller, you can make a hardware version of ak.sys to some extent.
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Lesson 2: morphable oscillator waveforms

POLYMOOG
I took the same multi and program from before and made some changes. I turned off legato (to make it a polyphonic synth), smoothed the envelopes, brightened the filter and it sounds more like a pad now.
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There was a post a while back on how it would be possible to have the 4k emulate a synth. I had done something similar on my XL years ago, but it was very basic without the modulation possibilities of a real sampler. On the 2k you can assign up to 3 samples to an auto chromatic program, have velocity modulation, and use the basic AD amp and filter envelopes, but that’s about it and no live knob tweaking. I've always wanted to try this, but didn't have a real sampler back then. I picked up a Z4 a little bit ago, and this was the first thing I did. I actually have little use for it since I always sequence synths via MIDI... but wanted to learn how so that I would be able to do to samples what I know how to do with synths. The nice thing is that you can sequence notes from a kit like this when you just want to use one box, and then change the routing to MIDI later.
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I have finally obtained a second MPC (the pimpin chrome SE3 model) which will turn my live PA into the ultimate live PA/DJ hybrid set. This allows me to queue up sequences randomly and mix them together at will (as a DJ does with turntables) which was not possible before hand.