In his latest video, Alex Ball takes a look at the legendary Akai MPC60 MIDI Production Center.
The MPC60 was developed by Akai and Roger Linn and released in 1988, and went on to be used on classic albums by DJ Shadow, Dr. Dre, J Dilla, MF Doom and others.
Key features:
- The often-copied 4 x 4 pad grid
- A ‘crunchy’ 12-bit sampling engine
- 60,000 note sequencer with 99-tracks
- Roger Linn’s influential swing feature
- 512 kb of RAM, which provided 13.1 seconds of mono sampling time
- Floppy disk drive storage
- Flexible connectivity, including MIDI, individual outputs and more
Check out the video and share your thoughts on the Akai MPC60!
Topics covered:
0:00 History of the MPC60
3:46 Intended use of the MPC60
8:18 Demo: The MPC Song
8:55 What people actually did with the MPC60
10:27 Sampling
12:15 Demo: Passable Hip-Hop
13:13 Groove, Feel and Swing
14:49 After the MPC60
15:29 Discussion with TUBEDIGGA
22:04 Patron Outro Jam
My name is James Webb and I like music and that thing looks like it can play it!
Unable to care. They should do something with their shiny new Native Instruments acquisition instead.
This thing made between 1988 and 1991, slightly predates the “shiny new Native Instruments acquisition”.
Also it was inMusic who acquired Native Instruments and not Akai.
Wish Alex dug deeper on this. I wanted more granular detail.
I had an MPC3000 and that 16bit sound processing made every sample I put in sound so good. I can only imagine the MPC60 sound IRL.. with all this gear, you really need to check it in person