SumOne

🧀♨️

Bernard Edwards is a good call but my favorite music is Reggae and Dub with Robbie Shakespeare probably my favourite bass player, but it's not a style of playing that lends itself well to the 'here's a YouTube video of some virtuoso playing' as it's all about timing, feel, tone, making a bassline that is integral to the rhythm while also often being the hook. It's a cliché but less is more (not less volume/mix of bass though!) and that's the way I like Basslines.

Yeah, it takes SD cards for extra memory. I've also got an Akai midi mix on the way but that's more for additional live mix/dubbing sort of stuff. A midi keyboard is handy too. It can do everything stand alone but I find it easier to complete full tunes using the Laptop DAW it comes with. On its own its best for sketching of ideas/loops and live stuff.

I plug straight into the line level input. It works okay for me but I have a high output active Bass that I also did a bit of a mod to to make the signal louder. If you've got a low output Bass then it'd either need a lot of volume added by the MPC or using a preamp pedal to boost it. The new Amp & Cab sims and tuner are pretty good and there are a couple of Bass specific ones. Not as tweakable as Helix stuff but not bad for something that isn't sold as a Bass effects unit and lots of decent presets including: slap, fat fuzz, valve DI ...and 'pant filler'! It means you get a decent EQ and drive and still have space to add three additional effects like compression, modulation, delay. Here's someone using some of the new updates with a guitar. He's using it to record a loop but you can just set it to monitor (rather than recording) and you still hear the effects and Amp/Cab sim that the MPC is applying.

Rhythm & Sound (and Basic Channel) have produced some of my favorite music. This one especially:

Royal Blu meets The Autos - Dancehall Session

Skip Marley Ft Popcaan, Vibe

The sniffer dogs found that though

I've been a few times and it's always been good, I'd go again but nowadays I'd be spening most of my time at the Firmly Rooted stage during the day and IIcon through the night...it would be great but I figured a few years ago I could save myself a few hundred ££ by going to smaller festivals/events that focus on the stuff I'm into (Glade, Boomtowm, Outlook, Carnival) rather than contributing to the fees of glastonbury headliners I don't watch.

Okay, I'll stop banging on about this now, but using the the MPC as a live Guitar/Bass Multi FX unit* and recording tool for Guitar/Bass doesn't seem to be mentioned much by Akai or reviewers or on forums anywhere and I only stumbled on it's usefulness for it after buying it primarily as a drum machine, so I'm spreading the good word a bit! Latest free update (23rd June) will include a lot of things, but specifically of interest to Guitar/Bass: NEW MPC TUNER MPC 2.11 also adds an integrated high-fidelity instrument Tuner to its arsenal of tools. Now you can tune your external MIDI CV synth, guitar, bass, fiddle, hurdy gurdy or any other musical instrument using the MPC Tuner. More than a plugin, use MPC Tuner in either desktop or standalone systems by selecting it from the menu in MPC. AIR AMP SIM MPC 2.11 brings a new Q-Link-mapped Amp and Cabinet Simulator to the MPC platform for adding sweet harmonic distortion to samples, vocals, drums, synths, bass, and yes—guitars. Lay down a guitar or bass lick in MPC or run your drum bus through a full stack to soak it in some creative harmonic distortion. This new MPC plugin offers colorful amp simulation and cabinet emulation effects of many types and sizes. *Caveat being I've only owned it for a week and haven't played out live with it yet. The biggest potential issue I can envisage to using it as a live multi FX (apart from no footswitches and only 4x simultanious effects per input) is if there's latency as it's designed primarily as a sampler/drum machine rather than a live Guitar/Bass multi-fx unit. I haven't done any scientific test to measure the latency but haven't noticed it being an issue, I guess to effectively monitor an input and then record it in-time with the MPC drums/synths etc it is designed for the monitor to have low latency. I can't see one example online of anyone using it as a live Guitar/Bass multi-fx unit though so perhaps I'm missing some fundamental flaw that I'll only realise once I've sold all of my individual pedals! https://www.akaipro.com/mpc211#New_Air_Effects

John Mayer: “When I’m playing on people’s sessions, I don’t bring an amp; I record all my guitars through my Akai MPC” https://www.musicradar.com/news/john-mayer-when-im-playing-on-peoples-sessions-i-dont-bring-an-amp-i-record-all-my-guitars-through-my-akai-mpc

The synths are pretty decent and fairly simple to figure out and get good sounds from, and not plugging into a Laptop to edit is great. I was considering gettting a FI or C4 again but I think the MPC potentially has a lot of the synth Bass sounds covered - at least for recording, perhaps for playing live too. Obviously it misses the performance/fun of playing them on a Bass guitar, but it adds more live control of the parameters - and bashing drum pads is fun and can be quite a performance! Hype and Odyssey are the ones I've used most so far (The Odyssey video is demonstrating it on the Laptop software, but the editing can be done on the MPC as a standalone like in the Hype video).

Chris bought a pedal from me and all was good! Thanks

This isn't a Bass Effects pedal but the MPC One is well worth a look if you want a hardware drum machine, sampler, synth, stand alone DAW, midi controller... And it turns out - a decent Bass multi effects unit. It's good enough for live effects with the Bass plugged directly into it that I'm selling quite a few pedals to help fund the slightly rash decision of spending £600 on the MPC. I wouldn't recommend just getting it as a Bass multi effects pedal as there are limitations (big, expensive, no footswitches, only 4x effects on a channel at one time, effects aren't bass specific, no tuner) but it's got loads of decent effects that are very tweakable via a 7" touchscreen and knobs, including compression, eq, drive, modulation, delay, filters (including auto wah). And you can still simultaneously use it's pads to trigger samples, drum hits, loops, or as a synth. And on top of all that, the next firmware update (late June) includes amp and cab sims!

Perhaps it's still the honeymoon phase as I've only had it for 4 days but at the moment I think it's one of the best music purchases I've made in a long time. This 'The MPC One Blew My Mind' review sums it up quite well. And I think that review was before it got a really good firmware update https://www.musicradar.com/reviews/akai-mpc-210 . It takes time to figure out the interface because there's a lot going on as a standalone unit - lots of layers of complexity and things are done a bit differently to the usual DAW interface, but in the space of 4 days I've figured out the majority of it. I was expecting a good drum machine/sampler with good drum pads to play live and to record loops, but it also has good in-built synth and fx plugins and is a capable stand-alone DAW sequencer and midi interface. Being able to play the Bass live through it and add MPC effects (up to four at a time) is a bonus I wasn't expecting, I'll be selling a few pedals to help fund it. It comes free with Laptop DAW called MPC2 https://www.akaipro.com/mpc-software-2 that's worth £200 if bought separately, it's basically what's on the MPC but with a bit more control, it's good for doing things like organising sample packs and finishing tunes- doing things that can be fiddly just doing on the MPC. I think you can get a free trial of it. I was really into Drum & Bass but have gradually chilled out with age and am more into Reggae and Dub nowadays. The sounds that come pre-loaded with the MPC are best suited looped electronic stuff, there are a lot of Hip Hop/Trap and electronic dance music drum kits and synth sounds. I've loaded my own Reggae/Dub samples though and as you can sample anything and play individual hits with the drum pads so I think it could potentially work with any music but is best suited to 4/4 looped stuff. The minor downsides I've found so far are registering it and the software and updating firmware and importing expansion packs took me a few hours and needing the help of youtube, all works fine now though. You need to transfer samples from Laptop > SD card > MPC (unless recording directly to the MPC) as it won't do that over the USB connection. Not all of the in-depth things are obvious, it takes a fair bit of learning. More input connections would be useful, and an in-built battery would be good. They are quite minor things though, overall I'd say it's excellent.

I'm quite amazed at how good the MPC One is as a live finger drum, drum machine, sampler, stand-alone DAW with decent plugins (including synths) sequencer. All the hardware controls (including touchscreen) make it much better for my workflow and more fun than using a Laptop DAW. Bonus is that I can plug my bass directly into it (it requires line level but my active bass goes loud) and play through it with no noticeable latency - can then add MPC effects like compression and para eq and modulation and overdrive. I'm tempted to use it to replace some of my effect pedals - it can act as a multi fx unit and simultaneously be used to trigger samples or play drum tracks.

This is useful for planning: https://www.pedalplayground.com/

I used mine placed on top of my Amp rather than on a pedalboard so I just used it's individual power supply, when I was lugging around an Amp/Cab and power outlet it wasn't much hassle having the individual plug and with the pedal itself being a bit bigger than some others. I started playing in more situations without my Amp though so wanted everything to be compact on a pedalboard powered from one power brick which is when I sold it. I think the problem you might have with the CS6 is that it'll do 12v but is only 200mA per output - so you can use two outputs with a current doubler to get 12v 400mA but according to the Markbass website it needs 600mA (http://www.markbass.it/product-detail/compressore/), perhaps it'll work with less though, if it does then the Strymon Zuma might also work as it has a single 12v 500mA output.

I had one and thought it was up there with the best of the ones I've owned (including FEA and Cali 76), I forget the exact settings but I preferred it to be set as quite subtle. The only reason I sold it was to compress 🙄 the size of my pedal board/power supply.

I got an MPC One today, it seems really good. I started making beats on Grooveboxes (MC 303 then MC 505) about 25 years ago before using just about every DAW going. I've bought Macbooks and Logic, decent Windows Laptops and Reason, also Cubase, Ableton etc. but DAWs and VSTs always annoy me a bit - my Laptops never seem to be quite good enough to handle it without glitchy loading times mid-song, there always seems to be an update required or the driver isn't mapping as it should, or a sample is corrupted, aVST works on a song one day then doesn't the next, lag between midi drum pads/keyboards and hearing the sound live, mapped midi controls not saving properly, output working properly via Traktor but not via the DAW, and even using Reaper I found I was spending a fair bit on VSTs (and a few free ones, but they often seem to be a spammy virus danger!). Admittedly, most of this is probably user error but I've been at it a long time and it still is a frustration so it must partly be the tools not being user friendly - it all adds up to quite a lot of time and ££ rahter than making beats and me eventually getting frustrated with it and not bothering. So lately I've been heading back to hardware, for me it's more fun to use and more instant - which in some ways makes it more practical, it feels a bit more like being a musician and learning an instrument. I'd got the Teenage Engineering PO-12 (great for a pocket sized beat maker) then the Elektron Model Samples (a decent bit of kit but I found loading external samples a faff and the drum pads too stiff to use for finger drumming). It's early days but it seems the MPC One is in a whole different league to any other hardware stuff I've owned and good enough to actually ditch the Laptop DAWs. .....not cheap though.