SAHPREEM KING: Hello, my name is Sahpreem King. I'm a multi-platinum record producer and author of this book "Gotta Get Signed: How To Become A Hip Hop Producer". Notice that I'm holding the AKAI MPC2000XL underneath my arm in the picture. This was not a strategic move on my part; I actually use this device, so when I took the picture, it was actually me coming out of a recording studio holding this drum machine heading to my car. So, I don't just talk about it; I actually use these pieces of equipment that I'm going to talk about today.

The first piece I'm going to talk about is the Akai MPC1000. This is a great machine for anybody who is a DJ, an aspiring record producer, a beat maker, a guy who wants to be a programmer. You can even use it, if you're a rock guitar player and you want to program drum tracks and use samples and maybe do a progressive rock like a Trent Reznor kind of effect, anything that involves samples. I mean any time you use programming and use samples in your work, this is a great machine for you because this is not only a drum machine and a drum programmer but it's a sampler as well so it kind of combines sampling, production, and drum programming all in one unit.

The best features about this MPC1000 are this: Soon as you buy this machine, right out of the box, it comes with a compact flash card. On the compact flash card -- it's a 32 MB flash card filled with samples, sounds, programs already pre-made so if you don't have any type of material, any type of samples, any type of drum sounds, as soon as you buy it right out of the box, you have 32 MB of samples. You have kicks, snares, hi-hats, Rock sets, Drum 'N Bass sets, House music sets, Hip Hop, RnB, particularly any type of music that involves electronic programming is right in the machine as soon as you take it home. So, you can go home, you pop this in, you load it up and you're ready to go.

Another cool feature about this machine is that you have the classic Akai feel. The pads are a little smaller than the other devices bu the feel is exactly the same. You have that same Akai dynamic as well as the famous Akai sequencer. A lot of these sequencing programs available -- I mean I'm not going to name them all but you know there's quite a few of them out there -- they all try to copy that MPC feel. That MPC feel was made legendary by the MPC60 and it followed through the years and the tradition of the MPC series, and now it's in the 1000, it's in the 2000, 2000XL, 4000, 3000, I mean and even the new devices to come. So you have that legendary Akai MPC feel.

Also, what makes this a great machine as well is that soon as you buy it, it comes equipped. You have stereo record in, you have stereo out as well as four assignable outputs. These four assignable outputs, as we take a look right here, that actually gives you six outputs to use. So, if you want to hook this up to a multitrack machine or hook it up to a mixer, you have six separate outputs.

Also you have A and B, an A and B MIDI In and A and B MIDI Out, so that's going to give you two -- you can hook up two different MIDI devices and utilize 16 channels per device, so that actually gives you 32 channels of MIDI right out the box. You can also daisy chain those devices so really your MIDI capabilities are unlimited.

It comes equipped with a 99,000-note capacity sequencer, so it's going to give you a 64-track sequencer and its 64 tracks. So, the possibilities are unlimited as far as your sequencing capability, and like I said it's a 99,000-note capacity sequencer, which is totally awesome.

Another cool feature that this has is that you have the cue length faders. With these cue length faders, what that allows you to do is assign an effect which comes standard on this device, assign an effect parameter whether it's tune, decay, filter, whatever, you can hook it up to the cue length and it will give you the access to go ahead and manipulate that sound in a live mix or after the effect, that's why you have these after buttons. So, once you record it, yo can go back and change your effect.

Also this device comes equipped with SPDIF in and out, so it's your digital in and out. On some of the other devices, they don't come standard with this device, so automatically right out of the box, what makes this a really good thing is that you have the digital in and out.

Now the key, the most essential key feature of this unit is you have a USB connection here. You can hook this device up to any type of computer through a USB connection, and it's a mass storage. And what that means is that you can store your samples right on your computer, on your laptop, on your desktop, Mac, PC, it does not matter. You can take your samples and pull them from out of your unit and pull them into your hard drive and manipulate them in any type of sequencing program or editing program that you're using. You can go and convert the samples, EQ the samples, chop them up, do whatever you want to do to them and then pull them back in the device and save them on your compact flash card.

What I've done is I loaded up some samples that I pulled from my computer via USB, and I loaded them up in the device. Now, what I'm going to do is, to get access to these sounds, I'm going to hit Mode and Load. Those are the first two functions that you need for this machine. Once you've turned on this machine, you want to go Load and Mode -- I mean Mode and Load. You hit Mode and then you're going to hit the Load button. It's going to bring you into the screen, the Load Screen. It's going to ask you where do you want to plug your sounds from. Well, it's automatically pulling from my memory card because that's what I have in it, but it also has internal memory, which I can save sounds on there as well as access to my memory card. So, I'm going to scroll through my memory card and find my samples. The file that I want to use is called "Fire", so I'm going to pull up "Fire" and I'm going to use the view to find the programs because "Fire" is a program.

What a program is, a program is once I have assigned all of my samples to a separate pad, I have now put them in a program and I have saved them so that every time I load up those samples, sample A through -- let's say A through G, sample A through G is going to load up in the program that I call "Fire". So, I go ahead and I load it by hitting the load button which will correspond with the F's that you have there. You have F1 through F6, and I hit F1 and will load up my samples. So, I hit load and it loads up my sample.

Now, I wanna play these samples so I hit the mini button and I go back. When I go to trigger my sample, I scroll through here and I find my program that I just was using [SAPHREEM LOADS "FIRE" ON MPC1000]. All the samples that I just loaded are already in the device. Now, if I want to go ahead and I want to take these samples and make them into an actual sequence, what I need to do is I go to a blank sequence here, and the sequence is indicated by SQ and it says "sequence", so I scroll through my sequences until I find a blank sequence, and what it's going to say, at the top it'll say, for example here, "09 Unused" so this is an unused sequence. I find my time signature. My time signature is a 4/4, which is fine for me. I look at my tempo. Now, I'm using these purple cursor buttons here to scroll through the different parameters on the main screen here. So, I'm scrolling through. I can go through the programs, I can go through the tracks, I can go through the tempo, time signature, I can tell it if I want it to loop, I can tell how many bars I want to loop, I can tell if I want to mute or if I want to turn the mute on and off or MIDI on and off. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to set my time signature for 100 -- I mean my tempo for 100, so I'm going to use this data wheel, I'm going to scroll through and get it to 100. Okay. Now, what I'm going to do is make a little quick track. I'm going to go to track 1, and I'm going to find my program which is "Fire".

Now, another cool feature about this is that whatever the box, it comes with 16 MB of memory. You can expand the memory up to 128 MB if you use an EXM128 expansion card. That's something that you can purchase after the fact, real simple to install, you just open up the back of the machine, pop it in, then you have 128 MB of samples. Approximately, it's going to give you somewhere around 12 minutes of stereo sampling time and maybe 24 minutes of mono sampling time. In fact, that's a lot of sample time so you can really put in a lot of different sound sets in here. And the more sample time that you have is that it actually means that there's more samples and more kicks in there, hi-hats, guitar riffs, vocals, whatever you want to put in there that gives you more firepower so to speak.

Now, what I'm going to do is I have a bunch of programs already loaded. I loaded up "Fire" [SAHPREEM TESTS OUT "FIRE"], I'm just testing it so I'm sure I have the right sounds. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to make a simple two-bar loop sequence. I'm going to press play and press record. I press play and record, [SAHPREEM PRESSES PLAY AND RECORD] and you hear the metronome. Now, what I want to do is I want to find the pads that I want to press [SAHPREEM PRESSES PADS]. So I found three pads that I want to play, and I'm going to hit play and record and I'm going to wait for my sequence from when I want to start [SAHPREEM BEGINS SEQUENCING A LOOP]. It's just that simple, I have a sequence. Now, why it's repeating is because I had it set to a two-bar loop, so it's going to repeat the same two bars over and over. You can set the loop function to not loop if you choose so or you can set the amount of bars to as many as you want to. So, if you want it to loop for 8 bars, 10 bars, 12 bars, etc., you can loop as many times as you want. You can loop that same sequence of bars.

Not to get too in-depth because I want to confuse you, but what you can do also is that once you get into looping your bars, you can actually make different sets of sequences and connect them together and make them one sequence.

What I'm going to do right now is say for example I'm unhappy with the drum pattern that I just made. Once you're down with the sequence, a red button indicates here that says Undo Sequence. It lights up. So, as soon as you're finished with the sequence and you hit stop, the Undo Sequence button appears. So, if I want to start all over, I can just simply hit this button, it clears it, and now if I hit play, I've erased my sequence.

Now, I'm going to go ahead and do another track, another beat.

[SAHPREEM RECORDS ANOTHER LOOP]

Now, if you noticed that time, my timing was actually a little bit off. The cool thing is that I have a time signature sent to 4/4 and then my note value is 1/16 which is time correction. So if I'm a little bit off, it's going to set it to the closest 1/16 note and it's going to make my sequence sound a lot tighter, a lot cleaner.

[SAHPREEM PLAYS BACK RECORDED SEQUENCE]

So now that you have it on automatic time correct, my sound, my drum pattern is actually a lot tighter than I actually played it, which is a good thing. So, if you're not that great at playing, it'll actually improve the quality of your work. That's another thing that made the MPC so popular because it has a certain way it handles quantization and then makes your beats a lot tighter than they normally would if you played it without any quantization.

Okay. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to start all over, I'm going to hit play and record, and I'm going to record a track. [SAHPREEM RECORDS ANOTHER TRACK]. Okay, that's going to be my track 1. Now here, F4, see down you have timecode, click, track forward, track backwards, mute, and solo, so I'm going to go to the next track so I'm going to hit "track plus", which is F4. It's going to give me a whole new track which is a subdivision of the track of the sequence already made. Like I said, you can have 64 sequences in 64 tracks within that sequence. So, I'm in sequence 9 and I'm at track 2 so I'm going to add a different sound on track 2. So, I'm going to find a sound that I want to use, so I'm going to use this moan. So I hit play, overdub [SAHPREEM SEQUENCES SECOND TRACK], now I have a different sound playing on track 2, and if I want to solo that, I can go ahead and solo it; it's going to play by itself. Now, you ask where the other stuff is. Well, it still recorded there; I'm just only playing that particular sample on that track. Now, you're not limited to the amount of samples that you want on one track; you can add as many notes. Like I said, it's a 999,000-note capacity so I can add 999,000 notes on one sequence. I mean that's a lot of stuff but you can actually add all of that in one sequence, and it could be on one track; it doesn't necessarily have to be on two separate tracks or three separate tracks or four, etc.

So, what I'm going to do now is add a third track, so I hit "plus" again, I tell my machine what program I want it to play with, which is "Fire", and I'm going to add this Indian-sounding sample. I'm going to hit play, overdub [SAHPREEM RECORDS THIRD TRACK]. Now, I'm going to hit track "plus" again so I can to the fourth track, and I'm going to add one more thing, scroll back to my program and pick "Fire" [SAHPREEM PLAYS SOME SAMPLES]. Okay, we're going to use this sample here. So, what I'm doing right now is I'm just playing it to see if I like it, kinda testing the sample. The sample's a little long. Now I'm going to hit play [SAHPREEM PLAYS ENTIRE SEQUENCE], overdub, [SAHPREEM RECORDS FOURTH TRACK]. Now, I don't like the way I did that; I don't like where I hit it, so I can hit the Erase button, which is here, find the track, the pad that I just used, strike it, it's going to tell me which pad do I want to hit, which pad do I want to erase, so I hit it, and I hit do it, and it automatically erases that sound [SAHPREEM AUDITIONS TRACK AND SOUNDS]. So I changed my mind.; I don't want to use that sample. I want to use this one instead [SAHPREEM PLAYS SAMPLE], so I'm going to add this now. [SAHPREEM RECORDS FOURTH TRACK WITH DIFFERENT SAMPLE].

Now, I added that sample. When I hit play [SAHPREEM PLAYS SEQUENCE] and I have a nice little sequence, I can rap to this, I can sing to this, I can do anything I want with this, hook up a turntable and add scratches, whatever I wan to do with this.

Once again, this machine is really cool. This is designed for the guy who's a DJ, who's a record producer, who is a beat maker, somebody who plays live and does electronic programming, Drum 'N Bass, Techno, Jungle, any type of music that you do that involves any type of programming and sampling, this is a great device. And, like I said, the main thing about this is that it's small, it's portable, it's the size of a laptop. I take this on the road with me everywhere I go. I can hook up this to a DJ sound system or hook it up to my home stereo, or whatever. I can hook up my portable devices to this thing and you send out through an audio jack and record samples, do whatever I want to do. This is a great piece to have.