SumOne

The Akai Midimix is a good relatively cheap (£77) addition to an MPC: Plugged in and it all worked as it should with minimal faff, the 'MIDI learn' function of the MPC works well. Two things I've used it for so far: For an Organ preset I use it as the Organ drawbars which is much nicer than doing that on screen, and the knobs are mapped to mirror the Organ delay and reverb screen, it means you can do stuff like change the delay feeedback at the same time as moving drawbars - stuff that's impossible (or at least tricky) to do simultaneously on the MPC alone without doing stuff like switching between screens. I also use it like a sound desk mixer e.g. A slider for guitar volume and dials above it for some guitar EQ and overdrive control, another similar channel for piano, drums, bass etc. also some sliders specifically for for effects (e.g. Global delay dry/wet mix on the slider then delay time, feedback, hpf on the knobs). Doing all this with loops is good for live dub mixing sort of stuff. ...and of course using the Midimix as a controller frees up the MPC controls to do other stuff like use the screen as the XY effects controller, assign the Q-Link knobs and the pitch/modulation wheels to specific things, assign pads as sample triggers etc. it feels with a bit of planning that it should be as many controls as I'll reasonably need and be able to cope with in a live situation. The main issue is remembering what you've assigned things to do if you get more complex and change stuff around for different presets. I'm considering some sort of interchangeable overlays I can label - something like this https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1782574539/akai-midimix-overlay-blank-template)

... Or pick fights on a Bass forum? 🫣

Yeah, spot on. I recently started an electronic music project with someone and after trying what Suno could do sort of scuppered our plans - we figured if we're just doing it to make music and not play live then what's the point? Suno can pretty much do it as well already with the right prompts. I've spent about 20 years learning music production but it now anything technical I know might as well be forgotten, it feels like learning to make photo-realistic drawings and then the camera being invented. I had toyed with the idea of being a sound engineer years ago, glad I didn't go down that road. I suppose telling Suno what to make is like being a music producer in the non-technical sense 'add some quiet guitars here'..'make it more upbeat for the chorus' etc. which does have some artistic merit. And like the video says - this might lead to very personal music being made by non-musicians which could be a good thing. Playing an instrument or playing with a band is a different matter though. AI isn't going to replace that achievement, fun, camaraderie or live event. It's partly why I've mostly moved from electronic music production into playing Bass with a pub band, and when I do produce my own music (spending a lot of time with an MPC Key 37 at the moment) I'm doing it becuase it's fun to do - not because I'm aiming to make any groundbreaking music that I'll make £ from.

I could see AI music being good if it gets to be properly intelligent and did the job of good music by making you feel something and then enhances that experience by making it truely personalised. e.g. music to help you relax/sleep that is in-tune with your sleep patterns and heartrate, music that is just right for motivating you at the righ parts of a marathon, music that helps you concentrate on study/work within the timeframes you give it. In some ways, it takes the 'celebrity/pop icon' aspects out of it and just leaves you with the music and emotion it creates which is possibly a good thing? But yeah, current AI music isn't any of that - it is just a middle of the road regurgitation of stuff humans have made. If it doesn't move on from that I'd expect that once it starts heavily referencing AI made music it will just get get increasingly bland. A quote from Thomas Bangalter from Daft Punk when they split up "As much as I love this character, the last thing I would want to be, in the world we live in, in 2023, is a robot". He went on to completely leave technology out of it and hand-wrote a Ballet score that was only played on traditional instruments. I expect there will be more of this sort of push-back, a young person today might grow up always accepting AI music for their gym workout or background ambient music but I expect (or hope) there will also be more enthusiasm to see humans playing instruments live.

It does mention Mento a few times, and the playlist has a couple of tunes like this: But that's just a couple of tunes in 30hrs of music. I think Mento is mostly skipped over to focus on when the music and culture had switched to 'Bass Culture'.

I'll need to re-read the book, but I think it took the soundsystems 'Bass Culture' as the starting point - and they didn't tend to play Calypso and Mento as they were more of a live band sort of thing and Bass wasn't much of a factor for them.

The book 'Bass Culture, When Reggae Was King' by Lloyd Bradley is probably the best account of the history of Reggae. There is a 30hr Spotify playlist of all the music mentioned: It goes all the way from late 1940s swing/RnB and Jazz that was played at the early soundsystems before Ska came about. It doesn't include Calypso and Mento though which seem a bit of an omission.

I think it is important to all be on the same page and be realistic and honest about what can be done as a team. All very well having an ambitious retiree band leader pushing and saying 'everyone learn these 5 songs before rehearsal next week' and then moaning when some haven't perfected it - but not all instruments are the same, not everyone learns at the same speed, some people have more pressing commitments. Perhaps the speed of learning for the band as a whole is one song a week. Also, as mentioned by others - need a definitive version to all learn, rehearsal recordings, all paying for the rehearsal room, and motivation of a forthcoming gig.

It kind of depends on what type of synth sound you want. One way of doing it is Octaver and fuzz, and I seem to remember getting some quite good ambient pad type sounds with the B3N mucking about stacking drive, modulation, reverb, delays. Add the slicer for some interesting sounds. Generally, envelope filters can be great for it (but the filters in the B3N aren't up to much). For the sort of mono Bass synth bassline sounds you are probably after though: Future Impact, C4, or the MXR are probably the top choices.

Agreed re the 24 fret thing being mostly unnecessary and not as good for slap. My personal choice wound be a 4 string with 21 frets as a slap bass and for most live stuff, and a 5 string 24 fret for jazzy noodling.

I think the economics of being in a professional band have changed a lot. Gigs used to be a way of generating interest so people would buy your latest album, seems that has flipped around.

Bought some cables from John, all went well with the transaction and quick postage etc, the cables are good quality. Thanks!

I expect so, although I've only used an Akai MIDI Mix with an MPC to basically add volume sliders to each track and for the knobs to control a couple of parameters for each track (that's quite good for stuff like live dub mixing - fading in different tracks and turning the knobs to do stuff like increase reverb). The 'Learn' MIDI feature does all the usual things like toggle and momentary so I expect it could turn on/off tracks or groups of tracks. https://support.akaipro.com/en/support/solutions/articles/69000858922-mpc-series-how-to-send-program-changes-with-a-midi-controller