Such a great technique. As a Tracker user as well this speaks to me as trackers thru the ages have made this easy. And this is so much easier than automation in DAWs where to get per step is a matter of a lot of zooming in & out and drawing small chunks of data in right at the start and end of your midi data or samples. It’s rare Akai get something so right but they have here. And not turning off the per step automation by accident (shown here by the next step along with no levels turned up) sometimes brings some happy accidents. Nice work Andy 👍🏼
Greatly appreciate you sharing all these tips and tricks! This machine's potential is still being revealed, there's so much that it can do! Hands down the best in standalone, my opinion of course! Going to get the new MPC Keys 61 and be set for a good decade or so! Lol
No problem, I’m glad you are finding them useful! The Keys 61 looks like a beast, very interested to hear the new plugins in action. Have fun with it! 🙂
Definitely an underrated and less well known feature of the The Force and nice and clearly explained - well done. My only bug bear with it, is that it applies to the track regardless of the clip (NOT TRUE - SEE COMMENT BELOW). So if you wanted those parameter modulations in one clip on a track but not another, you have to turn off the step sequencer for the one you don't want it on and there's no quick button combo to do that that I'm aware of. I'd love it to apply to individual clips rather than tracks, unless I've missed something...
I’m not near my Force at the moment so can’t test it, but I thought it was per-clip rather than per track. If you add some automation to a clip then copy and paste it as usual, select the duplicate and then press shift + delete automation (bottom row) you can try moving between the two and see if it’s persistent.
@@MaxipokMusic My mistake - I've just checked and it does seem to be clip based. Don't know how I missed that! Then, yes indeed, this thing is killer. Combined with the envelope follower and macros, this gives you the kind of modulation flexibility you get in modular, especially once the probability comes, as you say.
is there a way to set teh values of teh steps with the knobs ? I found it quite hard to get PAN exactly to 0 (half bar) Is there also a way to show where are notes? eg when you have a note sequence and want to automate the panorama of one note.
OT: but did you know that force (and mpc) can use Rex files (well, kind of). Akai Rex = “Patched phrase” and can be applied to drum loops and melodics. Would love to see you do a video on it 😉
Step sequencer is really the only thing which I was not utilizing in my workflow but it seems that there is a lot to discover. Nevertheless I like to twist knobs more than setting things one by one... 👌
Yep I know what you mean, it doesn’t come naturally to me either. I wonder if it depends whether you started out on Roland xox boxes? The allegedly coming probability stuff will really open this up for making evolving patterns though, pretty cool…
@@MaxipokMusic tbh probability is not the thing I've been waiting for. One thing that bothers me is no drum-master page See, for melodic plugins knob->track is giving you possibility to change parameters on the run for all notes in clip, however while you go there while you are in drum track is it useless, cause macros are just dumb and assigned to a single pad. If they were assigned to "master" drum track and have one reset button or knob, it would be so perfect to jam with.
@@beats4trips You can stack multiple macros on a single knob, and set them to momentary so it will snap back to base values when you release the knob, that kind of does what you are describing. I use that sort of setup a lot in performance videos. If there’s a limit to the number of parameters you can stack on a single macro I haven’t encountered it yet… 😃
@@MaxipokMusic yeah. I incorporated this in my template, but tbh it should be on the "track" page. While it's on macro, i need to switch between track and macro project in knob section because my performances are based on melodic plugins movement like cutoff/reso, which are in track section. Nevertheless, I'm going to try drum sequencing, as it's kinda tempting right now
Hey man, thanks for the great videos. So much to figure out with this device. Just wondering, my samples are sounding different on different pads even when I’ve set all parameters the same. Any idea why this is the case? Can’t figure it out for the life of me.
That’s a head scratcher, without seeing what’s going on I’m not sure. I would suggest resetting preferences, creating a new project and then putting some samples on pads and seeing if it persists. The only thing I can think of is if you went to track edit and instead of having ‘all’ selected, you’ve tweaked an envelope or something on a few individual pads and haven’t spotted that. Also check your pad mixer and see if any sends have been applied to individual pads.
I appreciate your videos. I'm curious of your reasons for moving on to the force from the push 2? I'm actually considering a push 2 to take advantage of ableton 11 but I already gave a force. So lots of money invested on both sides. Anyway. Thanks for your work
Push 2 is a really nice device, but the reason I switched was to do with performance. Push has track focus, meaning it will only display or let you control one ‘thing’ at a time. For example you can have the mixer up, or device controls, but not both. And the knobs are fixed to the selected mode, so you can’t map them to macros and have the stay available regardless of the track you have armed, like you can with the Force. So in a nutshell, it only lets you do one thing at a time, whereas you can set the Force up to give you access to macros, mixer, clip / scene launching, and note mode all at the same time. It’s the only device I know of that can do this, making it great for performance. You can get Push to sort of do this, but I means using Max For Live and buying a couple of scripts (push hacker for example), but even with that it’s not as flexible. If I was just making music in Ableton I’d have kept the Push, but as I like making performance videos, Force was the best option.
I find it easier to just record my automation in as I go along. Pack what effects I need on each channel or pad and record them in when needed. This seems more time consuming. Good info though.
Had a nightmare uploading this one, the processing kept failing and then TH-cam clipped the end for some reason. It’s only a few seconds so I decided to leave it! 😬
Such a great technique. As a Tracker user as well this speaks to me as trackers thru the ages have made this easy.
And this is so much easier than automation in DAWs where to get per step is a matter of a lot of zooming in & out and drawing small chunks of data in right at the start and end of your midi data or samples.
It’s rare Akai get something so right but they have here. And not turning off the per step automation by accident (shown here by the next step along with no levels turned up) sometimes brings some happy accidents.
Nice work Andy 👍🏼
Thank you. That’s really useful. Such a deep machine, it’s got tons of gems like this to discover!
Maxipok is the Deep Features Sensei....
Greatly appreciate you sharing all these tips and tricks! This machine's potential is still being revealed, there's so much that it can do! Hands down the best in standalone, my opinion of course! Going to get the new MPC Keys 61 and be set for a good decade or so! Lol
No problem, I’m glad you are finding them useful! The Keys 61 looks like a beast, very interested to hear the new plugins in action. Have fun with it! 🙂
Once again great tip ! Thanks for your continuous efforts in sharing your knowledge, and saving my time ! 👍👍👍
Thanks for the video. I was wondering how to incorporate pitch automation. Seems like this will get the job done.
Another great tip, thanks for sharing.
Definitely an underrated and less well known feature of the The Force and nice and clearly explained - well done. My only bug bear with it, is that it applies to the track regardless of the clip (NOT TRUE - SEE COMMENT BELOW). So if you wanted those parameter modulations in one clip on a track but not another, you have to turn off the step sequencer for the one you don't want it on and there's no quick button combo to do that that I'm aware of. I'd love it to apply to individual clips rather than tracks, unless I've missed something...
I’m not near my Force at the moment so can’t test it, but I thought it was per-clip rather than per track. If you add some automation to a clip then copy and paste it as usual, select the duplicate and then press shift + delete automation (bottom row) you can try moving between the two and see if it’s persistent.
@@MaxipokMusic My mistake - I've just checked and it does seem to be clip based. Don't know how I missed that! Then, yes indeed, this thing is killer. Combined with the envelope follower and macros, this gives you the kind of modulation flexibility you get in modular, especially once the probability comes, as you say.
Kinda like effectrix with more options . I’m not there yet with on force productions but good to know this is possible . Thanks man
thanks for the tip. this is brilliant.
is there a way to set teh values of teh steps with the knobs ? I found it quite hard to get PAN exactly to 0 (half bar)
Is there also a way to show where are notes? eg when you have a note sequence and want to automate the panorama of one note.
OT: but did you know that force (and mpc) can use Rex files (well, kind of). Akai Rex = “Patched phrase” and can be applied to drum loops and melodics. Would love to see you do a video on it 😉
Honestly, I have never heard of Rex files before 😃 But I will do some research and see what I can come up with! 🙂
@@MaxipokMusic you will be pleasantly enlightened then. Basically tempo synced warping without artefacts. New creative possibilities.
@@MaxipokMusic We just know Maxipok will come up with yet another mindblowing trick/workflow....
Never knew that! I have whole archives of Rex files I thought were redundant in this day & age.
Step sequencer is really the only thing which I was not utilizing in my workflow but it seems that there is a lot to discover. Nevertheless I like to twist knobs more than setting things one by one... 👌
Yep I know what you mean, it doesn’t come naturally to me either. I wonder if it depends whether you started out on Roland xox boxes? The allegedly coming probability stuff will really open this up for making evolving patterns though, pretty cool…
@@MaxipokMusic tbh probability is not the thing I've been waiting for.
One thing that bothers me is no drum-master page
See, for melodic plugins knob->track is giving you possibility to change parameters on the run for all notes in clip, however while you go there while you are in drum track is it useless, cause macros are just dumb and assigned to a single pad. If they were assigned to "master" drum track and have one reset button or knob, it would be so perfect to jam with.
@@beats4trips You can stack multiple macros on a single knob, and set them to momentary so it will snap back to base values when you release the knob, that kind of does what you are describing. I use that sort of setup a lot in performance videos. If there’s a limit to the number of parameters you can stack on a single macro I haven’t encountered it yet… 😃
@@MaxipokMusic yeah. I incorporated this in my template, but tbh it should be on the "track" page.
While it's on macro, i need to switch between track and macro project in knob section because my performances are based on melodic plugins movement like cutoff/reso, which are in track section.
Nevertheless, I'm going to try drum sequencing, as it's kinda tempting right now
Hey man, thanks for the great videos. So much to figure out with this device. Just wondering, my samples are sounding different on different pads even when I’ve set all parameters the same. Any idea why this is the case? Can’t figure it out for the life of me.
That’s a head scratcher, without seeing what’s going on I’m not sure. I would suggest resetting preferences, creating a new project and then putting some samples on pads and seeing if it persists. The only thing I can think of is if you went to track edit and instead of having ‘all’ selected, you’ve tweaked an envelope or something on a few individual pads and haven’t spotted that. Also check your pad mixer and see if any sends have been applied to individual pads.
I appreciate your videos. I'm curious of your reasons for moving on to the force from the push 2? I'm actually considering a push 2 to take advantage of ableton 11 but I already gave a force. So lots of money invested on both sides. Anyway. Thanks for your work
Push 2 is a really nice device, but the reason I switched was to do with performance. Push has track focus, meaning it will only display or let you control one ‘thing’ at a time. For example you can have the mixer up, or device controls, but not both. And the knobs are fixed to the selected mode, so you can’t map them to macros and have the stay available regardless of the track you have armed, like you can with the Force. So in a nutshell, it only lets you do one thing at a time, whereas you can set the Force up to give you access to macros, mixer, clip / scene launching, and note mode all at the same time. It’s the only device I know of that can do this, making it great for performance. You can get Push to sort of do this, but I means using Max For Live and buying a couple of scripts (push hacker for example), but even with that it’s not as flexible. If I was just making music in Ableton I’d have kept the Push, but as I like making performance videos, Force was the best option.
@@MaxipokMusic thank you so much for that detailed reply! That really helps.
Go all day with each parameter ❤ I want to know wat each effect do😊
I find it easier to just record my automation in as I go along. Pack what effects I need on each channel or pad and record them in when needed. This seems more time consuming. Good info though.
Art is subjective! I actually thought there wasn't too much lol. What happened to the end of your video?
Had a nightmare uploading this one, the processing kept failing and then TH-cam clipped the end for some reason. It’s only a few seconds so I decided to leave it! 😬
Ahh thats weird. Well if you decided to leave it I can take it that I didn't miss anything. Awesome content as always man.