Production Tips

• Triggering Logic from an AKAI MPC
• Reverse reverb effect
• Breakbeats
• Recording vocals
• Working with acapellas
• Getting started

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Triggering Logic as a Sound Module
with an AKAI MPC

Level: Advanced
Posted: 03.03.08

When I first got my MPC I fell in love with the feel and groove of the machine, any other MPC user will tell you the same. The MPC was great for working with my external hardware sampler and synths via midi, but when that whole DAW revolution came the MPC started to feel harder to integrate into my new way of working. What I always wanted to do was use Logic as a big 16 part midi sound module for my MPC to trigger; this way I could have an EXS sampler on midi channel 1, an ES2 Synth on midi channel 2 and so on....

Finally I worked out how to do it in Logic 7 with a bit of environment trickery! You need to make sure you have your MPC's midi output connected to your midi interface and have a look at what port it is connected to (midi input 1 for example). I have my MPC's midi output connected to midi input 2 on my Unitor midi interface for logic.

Step 1 - Environment

You will need to go to the Environment window and be viewing the midi instruments. Go to the New menu and select Multi Instrument and tick all the boxes for the 16 channels.

Step 2

Now go to New again and select Physical Input. This will show you all the midi interfaces and ports you have connected to Logic, notice on this example I have 8 ports from my Unitor 8 interface, you may only have a simple interface or midi comes as part of your soundcard, so you may only have 1 port for example.

Step 3

Now you should be able to see all the ports available to you from your midi interface. Connect the port that your MPC is connected to and drag the cable to your newly created multi instrument from step 1. Notice on this example I am using port 2 to the multi instrument as this is the port my MPC is connected to in my own set up.

Step 4

You will now need to create a Channel Splitter and drag the cable from the multi instrument to the channel splitter. This is the last boring part of the process - let the fun begin!

Step 5

Open up another Environment window and place it below the current one, but on the new environment window you want to be viewing the audio channels not midi instruments.

Step 6

Drag the channel splitter channels to below audio instruments, so drag ch1 on the channel splitter to audio instrument 1 on the bottom window, and so on until you have done it for all 16 channels. The audio instrument channels should highlight when you have cabled correctly. This can be a bit fiddly to do, but I suggest you do this and then make a logic template for future use.

Step 7

Now if you did it for all 16 channels correctly audio instrument 1 should correspond to midi channel 1 on your mpc, and so on. So you can trigger a EXS24 sampler on channel 1, synth on ch2 etc. All of this whilst being sequenced by your beloved MP, but with the quickness of Logic's access to sounds and plug ins! I know of one other way to do this in Reason which is lot easier, have a search on the net or I will do another tutorial soon for that. Happy beatmaking!