Updating how MPCs are being presented to beginners

Finger Drumming Gear / Software / Setup
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Hi, first post. Thank you hosting this space!

As I was going through the Beginner Course, I was surprised to hear/read a presentation of the MPC option that sounded to me at least dated, also distorted? I mean, Rob actually recommends the standalone MPC as a valid alternative to controller + laptop, and his words sound positive. However, the reference is the MPC Live and a budget of ~$1200, and there is the comment about a limitation on realistic drums samples. The conclusion seems to be, if you have a lot of money and you don’t mind the sound of synth-based drums, then MPCs are a good option for you.

Nowadays the MPC One sells for about $700 and the price includes some expansion packs. Out of the box there are several drum sets offered that are based on realistic samples, classic drum sets.

I don’t know enough to compare the offering to other setups, but it looks to me that especially beginners are off to a good start here with MPCs too.

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I don’t think I ever said a standalone controller is a “valid” alternative for a controller + laptop. I did say I can recommend the MPC live as a controller because the pads are good. That means you can use it as a standalone controller, but for “realistic” sounding drums you’d hook it up to a computer and use it as a midi controller (with nice pads).

It’s true that with the mpc one you’d probably get the standalone functionality of the live for ‘only’ $700 so yeah, the price went down for sure! That said, it’s the ‘cheapest’ of the standalone devices but it’s still more expensive if you compare to any non standalone device, including Maschine mk3.

There’s a common misconception about ‘realistic’ sounding drums and ‘acoustic’ sounding samples. The realism isn’t the fact that the samples were once a real drum kit. Nor is the electronic sound always caused by the sounds being generated by a synthesizer.

Realistic sounding drums are ‘simulated’ by having multiple samples on multple velocity layers that then accurately translate your hits on the controller. So if you hit a snare pad softly, you’ll not only hear a snare hit that is soft in volume, you’ll also hear a sample of a drummer actually hitting that snare softly. Then, if you go louder, other samples are used of a drummer actually hitting harder. On top of that, if you hit the same loudness multiple times in a row, the software will “round robin” your samples. So it will have multiple samples of a drummer hitting at a certain velocity and will then pick different ones randomly so that no two hits sound exactly the same.

All of that is what you hear when you play using addictive drums, and it’s something you will not hear when using the MPC live or One in standalone mode.

That’s not to say you cannot make great music with those devices. I also believe that for many people it would be awesome to have a device like the MPC live on the go (mind you, the mpc one does not have a battery so playing on a mountain top or something is not in the cards… with the mpc live you could tecnically do that).

The thing is, you will just not get you the ‘quest for groove’ sound out of those devices. Everything you play will sound like its coming from a sampler, which is fine and in no way a bad thing. If you want realistic sounding drumss though… you’d have to use a drum plugin. And since most people join the site and do the courses because they like the way my drums sound, I want to make it clear to them what they can and cannot expect out of a device like MPC Live.

So yeah, besides the price of the mpc one I think that whole explanation / advice still stands at the moment.

I will do an update in the near future to make it 100% complete and up to date again!

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Alright, you totally got me there. :sweat_smile: Thank you for the detailed explanation. I had no idea, and now I understand the difference very well. I use the MPC One as a controller too, and I will check out AI2.

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I think having a standalone mpc and then hooking it up to a computer sometimes for the ‘realistic’ stuff is a very nice rig to have. David Haynes posts a lot of content where he plays completely sample based music in a beautiful and virtuoso way. He also does “real” drums sometimes and then he uses Superior Drummer (or something like that) and totally rocks the sh*t out of those pads.

The combo is nice. Just switch based on what type of music you’re making at that moment!

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