The most powerful MPC from AKAI is here. Watch this overview of the new AKAI MPC XL from Andy Mac.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfEObnwQgjA


Here is how the MPC XL compares to the previous generation MPC X and the MPC Live 3.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnzRVFe3RsU


Here is another demo by Andy Mac showing how to build tracks.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXFEAyaeKjc


The MPC XL is a large console measuring 21.4” x 19.2” featuring a 10.1” Touch Screen, 16 Expressive MPCe Pads, and 16 Q-Link Knobs with OLED displays arranged horizontally over 16 RGB function buttons.


https://www.akaipro.com/mpc-xl/


If you ever wanted to take a dive deep into the world of beat music, this $2899 beast does it all.

That's a hefty chunk of change when you can do it all in software with a launchpad controller nowadays..!

I'm having some fun doing beats with Koala Sampler on an iPad Pro. $4.99 app, lol 🤣

Wow Diki!

Thanks for introducing me to the Koala Sampler iOS App. I downloaded this app on my iPad Pro and it opened this Tutorial Video that explains the basic functions:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2p4qdJhRYI


I couldn’t believe how easy it is to record your own drum SAMPLES just using your voice. One can string these samples into a SEQUENCE, instantly add effects to these sequences while in PERFORM mode and finally RECORD the entire song.

It is the simplicity of operation that makes this app so enticing. This is a great tool for learning the basics of creating beat based music.

The developer of this app has many more helpful tutorials on his YouTube Channel.


https://www.youtube.com/@elfaudio


I see that this works on Android devices as well.


https://www.koalasampler.com/


I could see why such apps have such a wide appeal amongst the younger crowd. There is zero learning curve. You could feel entertained within a matter of minutes.

The KOALA SAMPLER gives you a glimpse of the workflow that has popularized software sequencers like ABLETON LIVE and hardware sequencers like the AKAI MPC family.

The new flagship MPC XL may be out of reach for many, however the MPC ONE+ offers exceptional value for $629.


https://www.akaipro.com/mpc-one-plus/


Let’s face the hard truth. The era of Arranger Keyboards will probably end with our generation. The younger crowd does not want to spend 2 years learning how to read music, spend two more years studying music theory, learning chord progressions and developing playing skills.

Moreover, they do not have the money to buy a top of the line Arranger which costs more than a professional workstation.

The styles that come in the Arrangers do not excite the younger generation. The MPC ONE+ is more affordable and fulfills their immediate needs. If one has a laptop, then ABLETON LIVE 12 is the gateway to expressing their creativity.

Having played around the KOALA SAMPLER iOS App for the past few hours, I decided to expand the capabilities by downloading the ABLETON NOTE App.


https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ableton-note/id1633243177


I am impressed how much power Ableton has embedded into this App for a one-time payment of $6.99. The UI is wickedly clever that will appeal to everyone who has never tried a beat box.

The feature set has all the tools and functions to get you hooked into the world of beat music without ever having to be a musician. This is the perfect stepping stone to making someone graduate to ABLETON LIVE 12.

I see they are offering ABLETON LIVE 12 LITE for free with ABLETON NOTE with seamless integration.


https://www.ableton.com/en/note/


Being an ABLETON LIVE user, this iOS App on the iPad brings the essence of making beats to anyone musically inclined or curious.

Here are 5 Tutorials on the Ableton YouTube Channel:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smJZcWwJsOw&list=PLoh4MB-kbBmJ6Ne2RL5gjf7FOnDdFELNV

Don't tell Yamaha or Ketron that! Or Korg, for that matter. They still seem to be developing new or improved models. And how many kids got their first keyboard for Christmas this year? A low-end Yamaha or Casio which are, in fact, entry-level arrangers.

I agree that "peak Arranger" was probably circa 2001 and some of our most beloved brands are gone for good. However, for anyone with a little musical training or just musically curious, arrangers can create a lot of music and fun --on the fly-- with very little effort. Personally, I think Yamaha will be selling a Genos VIII thirty years from now!

edit: ...and Korg will finally get all of the bugs worked out of the Pa5X :-) BTW, the Suzuki Omnichord OM-108 which debuted this year is also an arranger with MIDI capabilities. It just doesn't have a piano keyboard. FWIW.

I have been saying for DECADES how there's nothing intrinsically wrong with arrangers for younger players EXCEPT THE STYLES. You wouldn't buy an arranger if the vast majority of the ROM styles were from the 1920's or 30's. And kids today don't want to buy anything with the vast majority of styles are from the 60's and 70's.

The bare hardware and sounds will probably suffice, most contemporary arrangers have pretty decent synth sounds (albeit voiced a little more 80's than '10's!) and quite a few have knobs or sliders for the knob twiddling crowd.

Sure, the clip launching stuff seems to be mostly on the high end stuff, but that's a marketing thing, nothing to do with what the unit COSTS, much. It would take little to add to even mid-line arrangers.

But nothing would turn a twentysomething off of an arranger more than wading through bank after bank of styles with ZERO relevance to what they would ever play. I mean, if I had to wade through eternal banks of Charleston or Black Bottom styles I'd probably pass on them!

But does anyone remember the Rapman? Casio made a barebones arranger specifically voiced for rap and hiphop in 1991. It was a cult classic, wildly popular with young musicians. You know why? ZERO old styles and sounds. No ballroom, no sambas, no bigband. No rock, even...

THAT'S how you get young musicians to play arrangers!

Weirdly, the arranger makers already understand and follow this. Most arrangers have an Oriental model. Revoiced for Far East or Middle East musicians. If they understand the worth in revoicing current arrangers for a regional market, why not for an age specific market..?

The other thing that is being ignored are software arrangers, particularly for tablets. Why isn't there an iPad arranger? An Android arranger? A basic soundset and a fully editable arranger is child's play for a modern iPad. iPad Pro has enough horsepower to run a Genos level arranger AND the sounds.

Most iPad musicians have plugins for sounds like drums, pianos, organs and especially synths that put most of our TOTL arrangers to shame. Take the output from an arranger engine, put it into the best iPad sounds, you got something that could give a TOTL arranger a run for its money!

Roland, I'm looking at you... you stopped making hardware arrangers, but you still own the code from a BK9 or EA-7 and a team of great iPad developers (check out the new iPad Zencore GX!). Easy money! Why are we having to point this out to you..?

What I would love to see is the AFFORDABLE marriage between arranger code and clip launching tablet samplers like Koala. Let the USER import the styles he wants, that way there's no putting the kids off with 20 Enka styles and a bank of 40's ballroom crap that few even of US use much anymore!

If the Rapman could be a hit, why not? 🎹🤩

Giglad https://deltarray.com/ is arranger software that has been out some time (Currently V5) but if you look at the specs required (It runs on Mac or Windows) only the iPad pro would be able to run it, and even then it would require an upgrade to at least 1TB storage to get the increased Ram that is needed, which means you are talking about £1800 and very few youngsters would pay that.

You cant just copy and paste a hardware arranger software to a computer/iPad as it is unique to each manufactures hardware, so would require serious re-coding to get it to work on a computer/iPad, thus the cost of the app would need to be high for them to make any money. (Again kids are not going to pay that)

In the future when technology improves and prices drop then yes, iPads will be fine, but were still some way off that time. (The software you see for iPad is pretty basic compared to the computer versions and arranger coding is not basic)

Bill

I disagree Bill. An arranger is at least 85% software (which for most brands has evolved only glacially in the last 20 years.) How much of Giglad's spec is driven by sound and video processing? It has an elaborate visual interface with more features than advanced hardware arrangers. However, the defining features of an arranger are chord recognition and style pattern transposition. After two years of updates, Giglad's chord recognition is STILL more demanding of the player and less flexible than Roland's and Nimbu's. Specifically, Bass Inversion should be a separate option available in ANY chord recognition mode.

I'm pretty sure that Roland could render a version of its 1996-vintage RA-800 module that would run on an iPhone, Better yet, its 2011-vintage BK-7m, which STILL routinely sells for about $800 in the secondary market. A lot of keyboard players and even non-keyboard musicians would be well-served by an app like this.

Giglad was just used as an example and not meant as the definitive software arranger.

As I mentioned you cannot copy and paste software between equipment as it all has to be recoded to work with different hardware (This is why a Windows program will not run on Mac or Linux natively without recoding for the different OS and architecture)

If you think back to when you did basic coding in school, you would have been told to modify the code to add something else and all of a sudden found it broke something else in the code, which emphasised that coding is not simple and just gets worse the more sophisticated the code (Arranger keyboards have sophisticated coding designed specifically for the custom hardware in them), just think of the Korg PA5x and the problems they have had with that, and that is done by professional coders.

If you are the more mature and were in school before coding came about, then download Python and follow a few tutorials on coding with it (Nothing like hands on experience) you will soon realise how difficult it is to get it to work on various different hardware.

Bill

I've messed with Python but I'm not a programmer or developer. There are probably software EMULATORS that can emulate specific hardware such as the ICs used in the venerable RA-800. AI large-language models can write code, and might also easily translate existing code from one language to another.

Roland already has the source code. An app having the core chord recognition and pattern transposition logic, using MIDI and a minimalist interface shouldn't be difficult or expensive.

The potential market for mobile device apps is MUCH larger than the market for hardware keyboards; sales would recover the translation costs in a short time. The real risk is that a successful app backed by one of the "big three" might cannibalize sales of hardware arrangers. And Roland specifically hasn't made one of those in over 10 years!

iPads don't run Mac software.

Unless I missed one, I've seen no arranger software for iPad.

Most of Giglad's storage requirements come from the soundset. I don't want to use their sounds, just want to use a GS soundset and then stuff like Pianoteq, VB-3, Numa Player etc...

I'd rather some of the majors took up this, their arranger engines are mature, bulletproof, fully featured, stable and familiar...

The AKAI MPC XL is the most advanced hardware sequencer that streamlines the workflow of making beat music. After playing around with this device for a few days I am simply overjoyed by the ergonomics and simplicity of the user interface bringing back fun, speed and spontaneity to the process of music making.

This flagship product from AKAI represents 38 years of refinement since the first MPC 60 was launched in 1988 designed by Roger Linn.

If someone is thinking of exploring the world of MPC devices, I would wholeheartedly recommend the MPC XL. This is the easiest model to navigate with 105 buttons. This avoids menu diving. Every important function is right at your fingertips.

The AKAI MPC XL deserves a design award for being the easiest hardware sequencer to operate. Every button group, knob, slider and displays have been ergonomically laid out for maximum efficiency.

I could see why the form factor of the MPC XL is so much larger than my AKAI Force.

The width had to be expanded to 21.4 inches s to accommodate the 16 Q-Link knobs featuring OLED Displays arranged horizontally above a row of 16-step RGB button sequencer. By comparison the AKAI Force is 13.8 inches wide having only 8 Q-Link knobs.

The depth of the MPC XL had to be increased to 19.2 inches to accommodate the 10.1 inch Touch Screen and the 16 MPCe pads compared to the 15.3 inch depth on the AKAI Force with an 6.9 inch Touch screen and smaller buttons.

I love the 16 MPCe pads with 3D-sensing technology carried over from the MPC LIVE 3. They have kept the traditional 4x4 grid originally introduced by Roger Linn in the MPC 60. These pads are so much softer, thicker, larger and responsive than the 64 hard plastic buttons on the AKAI Force. It took me just a few hours to appreciate the value of assigning sounds to each of the 4 quadrants within an MPCe pad and freely morph between them.

I don’t see myself going back to the AKAI Force. It is the end of the line. The MPC XL with its Gen 2 8-core processor and 16GB of RAM does it all.

I am pleasantly surprised how well the MPC XL integrates with Ableton LIVE and any external MIDI keyboard like the Yamaha Genos2 and Korg Kronos3.
AKAI will be releasing an update their MPC Key 61 probably featuring the MPCe pads. I am using the Roland RD2000 as a MIDI Controller which is a better solution.

The MPC XL encapsulates everything one may desire in a hardware sequencer/sampler in an all-in-one standalone package.

There are tons of YouTube tutorials being released daily. Kudos to Daddy Long Les for creating this playlist with 74 AKAI MPC LIVE III Tutorials.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN5u0LbqLfM&list=PLA4xxYk4n3gg_RTF7P6uwMtzlRqMTlk7L


It applies to the MPC XL as well, with fewer menu diving.

Functionally, the MPC XL and MPC LIVE III are similar. They even share the same 535 page User Manual.


https://cdn.inmusicbrands.com/Software/37/MPC%20Live%20III%2C%20MPC%20XL%20-%20User%20Guide%20-%20v3.7.pdf



You can think of the MPC LIVE III as the portable version of the MPC XL with a built-in microphone and internal battery. One can save $1,200 with the much smaller, lighter and portable model.

I am 100% satisfied with the MPC XL and Sweetwater’s prompt customer service. I could see the appeal of these Music Production Center hardware boxes to the younger crowd. If you found the Koala Samper or the Abelton Note app on iOS devices to be fun and addictive, then these MPC boxes takes the enjoyment of laying down beats to a whole new level.

No one takes the instant music coming out of these MPC boxes seriously. It was never meant to be. However, it did spawn a whole generation of Rap and Hip Hop music. They are meant to sound groovy and put you in a trance. I don’t think Roger Linn ever surmised what his invention would lead to so many decades into the future! He has become a living legend. He remains so humble to this day.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bhSWwf-i1k


Best,

David