This post somehow involved AI. It could have been copyediting, creating an image, or penning the whole thing in unsupervised fashion. As you know, interesting things may happen. Just like in real life. You have been warned.
We’ve been building a hardware setup for DeepMEE, which I already talked about here.
Today, it’s about reuse potential: can we use this architectural approach for other, similarly-themed engagement (meaning performance-oriented hardware setups)?
MPC as the Master Sequencer
Although most people historically see the MPC primarily as a sampler for beatslicing, it’s a very powerful pattern sequencer with added sampler the way I perceive it. And with regard to its power as a sequencer, it would work for a lot of things, including different scenarios, more linear workflow etc.
The main limitation is the strict track structure over all sequences since SW3, together with the fact that program changes will also be sent by muted tracks. The latter is something I hope the folks at Akai work out a solution for. All is well if you’re working with completely predefined material, or if you’re using only one sequence.
Double Sequencers
Here, we opted to have not one, but two sequencers: Elektron Analog Rytm (EAR) for its own drum sounds, MPC for everything else.
This worked surprisingly well. True, the musical setting did not require for synchronized pattern/sequence changes, but if it had, this could be easily played or automated.
All in all: at least with those two components, a success story. And there’s no reason to believe it would have been different if we had paired, say, a MC-707 with a drumlogue.
Attacca Transitions
We considered a multitude of options of transitions wanted to have a (potentially polytempo) segment where both the old and the new parts play together.
What we settled for was taking a sample of the mixer’s main bus with the MPC (easy, as the mixer is integrated as an audio interface with the MPC), assigning that to a drum program, and starting it there – and using e.g. a highpass to then slowly remove it.
We considered use of the MPC’s looper, but the inexplicable fact that this looper is the only thing in current-day MPC which cannot be assigned freely to an output made that impossible. A pity. I hope they fix that soon.
An alternative (depending on the mixer assignments) would have been a separate recorder, like a Roland SP-404.2. Which would make the setup bigger with no added benefit. Then, if the MC-707 had been made the main sequencer, the SP-404.2 would have had a role to fill, so there’s possibilities.
Does it scale?
The mother of all questions. Can we do this for something larger?
The MPC provides a maximum of 128 tracks, of which we effectively used around 32. There’s room for growth. Add to that the big number of ports on the mioXL MIDI interface, and we can turn that into a Mahler-style MIDI orchestra should the need arise.
The BigSix was aleady at its limits in this project, but nothing keeps us from using a bigger mixer. Like the old Mackie 8*bus. And with that, we could add lots of other synths (which we can sequence with the MPC, see above) and outboard effects.
So yes, it does scale to a bigger size. But what about scaling down?
Just an MPC, a smaller mixer (think Mackie 1202 VLZ), the M9 and one hardware synth (we can keep the Virus for that)? Totally possible.
And finally, while it’s a different architecture altogether, if portability is key, we can go the Paralogue 2 route and just do everything with the MC-707.
So: is there potential?
Definitely so, yes. Maybe not for everything, but I’d say:
- Things that want considerable MIDI sequencing capabilities,
- Require or want immediate tweaking in performance,
- Can live with more traditional sequencing (as opposed to generative/aleatoric),
- And do not require portability as key.
For portability, we’ve looked at a key option in Paralogue 2 with the MC-707. While only examined theoretically in Paralogue 3, including modular thingies would be a way to break out of the „traditional sequencing“ neighbourhood. So there is potential.
And closing things off: specific ideas
So what could we do with that architecture? Examples? Without detailed reflection:
- using prerecorded audio tracks and remix them live (aka „true dub“). The MPC with its audio track feature would work perfectly as the playback machine.
- other EDM genres. I’m no expert on this, but how about minimal techno or synthwave? Or, moving the tempo in either direction, oldskool jungle/liquid DnB or downtempo/chillout styles?
- songwriting or songwriting collaboration setup.
There are ideas, indeed. Non-recurring costs in effect!
