Wave Sequencing with Akai Force and MPC

If you're looking for some new sounds and inspiration with you AKAI Force or MPC, give this technique a try!
Here I demonstrate how to emulate a feature known as wave sequencing on the AKAI Force. This mode of synthesis began (to my knowledge) with the Korg Wavestation, and is found on several Korg keyboards. This tutorial is applicable for MPC as well since it has the same keygroup tracks and note repeat features.
While you can certainly get more advanced with wave sequencing on the Korg keyboards because they have synth engines that are dedicated to this, you can still do quite a bit on the Force. This technique is easy to setup and use. Enjoy!
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Akai Force: amzn.to/3Z2TlXV
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MPC Live 2: amzn.to/3Eh6btq
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[@e-conrecords4665]

My mind was blown by this. Thank you!!

[@patrickmestabrook]

THIS IS SO COOL!!! I am so dang happy I found your videos, friend! Thank you very much for the education/inspiration

[@koraamis5568]

sort of wavestation in force/mpc standalone? you are golden!

[@joefilbrun]

Yep! The wavestation can take this to a whole different level. But you can do quite a bit on the force/mpc.

[@frankknoche9162]

Thank you so much, you show, that the Force could be more than only for House and Techno!

[@joefilbrun]

Hey @frankknoche9162, thanks for watching! I think it definitely has a pretty wide genre range now. Not so much when it was first released, or at least not without adding a ton of your own samples. But they've really added a lot to it since then.

[@frankknoche9162]

Dear Joe, many thanks for your everytimes so interesting tutorials about and with the Force! I enjoyed them everytimes very much and I hope, that you like to make many more for us! Thank you for to give us so many new ideas for to use our Force! 👍🙏

[@Noise-Conductor]

This opens up all kinds of cool & unique sounds.

[@konstantinoskarentzos9967]

Great video once again. If you made a paid full course for AKAI Force I would definitely buy it and many other people from the community, as there is no full video course for Force even from AKAI.

[@lmcmulle]

Fun video Joe.. I also own a Wavestate, it was fun to see how to implement this on the force.

[@joefilbrun]

Hey Leigh - nice, I’ve never had a Wavestate. I have a Kronos though and it can do this - to a greater extent than the Force/MPC, but probably not quite to the extent the Wavestate does. How do you like it?

[@channelz3363]

Hey Joe - thanks so much for sharing these capabilities of the Force - just blows me away what it can do.

[@joefilbrun]

Hey Channel Z, you’re welcome!

[@johng004]

Getting my force this week finally! Thanks for the help gonna revisit when it shows up

[@joefilbrun]

Congrats! There’s a lot to explore and a lot of good music ahead of you.

[@earskills]

Very powerful indeed ! Thanks a lot for your great videos ! 👍

[@joefilbrun]

Hey @earskills, thanks for watching. This is such a fun way to come up with new ideas. Hope you get some use out of it!

[@erdemergaz6987]

Thank you.. Interesting Force tutorials as such are always helpful 🙋🏻‍♂

[@joefilbrun]

Thanks for watching! I’m glad you’re here in this community of people pushing their Force to new limits!

[@selten-so-gedacht]

Thanks a lot for your great video - i learned a lot on the way, and the best: i came up with a cool sounding riff, which wasnt what i expected in the first place. Keep the good work up, i subed of course.

[@joefilbrun]

That’s awesome to hear! I find with those rhythmic wave sequences, they are really good at inspiring me. It’s really easy to listen to one and just have ideas pop into your head for where to go with it.

[@tolome7456]

Very creative. Thank you.

[@stefanmartens3040]

love it!!!!!

[@joefilbrun]

Awesome - hope you get some good use out of it!

[@mikl2345]

thanks so much. this also seems to be a super way to introduce what a keygroup track is, too, for someone relatively new to that. Also, i was wondering whether it may be feasible to use an audio track and its regions to simulate a wave sequence. would be interesting to hear your thoughts on that!

[@mikl2345]

i guess though as you mention in the video, with the keygroup, its envelopes take care of where the samples start and end. also keygroup is needed to be able to play the samples like an instrument at different pitches! i wonder though if there's any arguments in favour of using an audio track for anything like this? (or, in the opposite direction, even a drum track?!)

[@philippebackprotips]

Really cool.😊

[@joefilbrun]

Thanks - one of my favorite tricks in the Force.

[@auntjenifer7774]

Have to compared the Force with the mpc live 2 ? I received my mpc live 2 Retro and I'm blown away by it so far ! I have had it a couple days abs the first day I wrote and arranged a beautiful piece I'm really proud of and I didn't even open the manual yet so I'm stoked with the mpc. With you showing the force here it reminds me that I really wanted the force but didn't get it since it doesn't have a speaker but I'm thinking about getting a force. Is there any comparison you can share or is there something the force does that the mpc live 2 doesn't do ?

[@joefilbrun]

I don’t actually have a Live 2, but it looks like a great machine! The battery and speaker definitely make it nice and portable. As far as I know the major things that you would get from Force that the MPC Live 2 doesn’t have: disk streaming (for playing back very long samples), a linear arranger, additional controllers (like a crossfader, more knobs, envelope followers), an Ableton style clip-launching workflow, more physical buttons for navigation. There’s a lot of overlap and similarity though. Hard to say whether it would be worth having both vs. putting that money into something more differentiated. One nice thing is they added the ability to import MPC projects into Force. And if you bought any of the new AIR MPC plugins like OPx-4, Fabric, you get (I think) 3 licenses so you could run them on both machines without having to buy them again.

[@georgesbahia]

Merci beaucoup. Muito obrigado

[@gonzinigonz]

Does have that wavestation vibe for sure. Looked at this a while back as have a few wavetable synths kickin about and was thinking if possible to get something going on with the Force. Waldorf mwXT, Wavestation SR and Ensoniq MR & SQR. Also had a Ensoniq Fizmo for a while which i sampled all the interesting wavetables out of it. Ensoniq called them Transwaves. There are some wavetable oscillators presets in Hype as it goes but lacks the control that the other much older synths offer. I have created a number of Fizmo sampled keygroups for the Force that use all four layers and all looped up. Had to sample each key for each sample layer....

[@joefilbrun]

Some of those older synths could do some pretty amazing things. Sounds like you have nice collection! I hadn’t even heard of the Fizmo. Yep, I really wish they’d add a couple more tabs of controls to Hype. It always feels like there’s a lot of potential in that synth that we just can’t quite unlock.

[@gonzinigonz]

@@joefilbrun Yeah, Hype does feel a bit lacking to me from a programing point of view. There are some glaring omissions it seems. Can sound great though. Check out the old Ensoniq transwave synth demos on here, they're amazing. I loved my VFX while i had it, total ambient soundscape machine.

[@TeraMangala]

👌👍👍👍

[@kaislate]

"Save current instrument config into a layer" would be more useful instead of having to record each into the "sampler." In each layer there could be length options there. Otherwise, this with most of the Force is geared toward studio production with a workaround type of way to use a feature for live performance.

[@joefilbrun]

Hey @kaislate, thanks for watching. I agree, the Force has some interesting live performance features but sampling on the fly doesn't really fit into live performance that well right now. You definitely have to set it up in advance.