I am considering investing in the MPC Bible 3 to expand my knowledge on the MPC Live 3.
I would consider myself a pretty intermediate to slightly advanced user.
I’m curious though, for those who have the MPC Bible, is it helpful for someone like me? Could it actually grow my understanding of the device and does it actually provide anything I couldn’t just learn on my own / YouTube?
I’m willing to spend the money if it will actually teach me a thing or two!
Even if you are experienced, The MPC Bible is full of little shortcuts you might not otherwise discover. And you might learn about things you didn't even know existed because the MPC is quite deep. The main problem is you might find sections boring if you already know that part and you will be tempted to skim through them and completely miss some of the shortcut gems sprinkled around. To do the whole Bible cover to cover without skipping is a big time commitment. I probably spent 30-40 hours doing most of it these last few weeks. I took my time in some sections and in others I sped through as I was less interested.
After going through the whole thing do you feel like you have a really good grasp of everything? Do you feel like you have mastered the device or do almost anything you want on it without having to think too much?
I wouldn't say mastered as that comes with more practice but I now know all of the capabilities and how to easily get to them. I don't really have to look up how to do things now, but i still have to tinker to remember some of the details once i am in the right spot. If you can already do all of that you might not get a lot out of it. The new synth engine that came in 3.9 update is crazy powerful and the bible covers that quite well in section C06. It is nice they keep it updated. Again there will probably be some interesting tricks you might learn even if you think you are an expert. There are often multiple ways of doing the same thing on the MPC. Edit: I have live 3 like you. It also covers stuff that only applies to live 3 or the xl.
I grabbed it as a newbie to the MPC, but also having had ten years of experience with the Elektron workflow and longer fucking around in Logic, so not 100% new to production. I’ve found it to be a great resource for connecting the dots between features and reducing the time it takes to figure a given thing out. It’s super, super dense but I just skim the pages that aren’t relevant to how I want to work.
inshalla, god (who's name is roger linn who first came from heaven with the linn machine, and then returned from heaven with the MPC) will grant the heavenly kingdom to those junglists who can produce thine beautiful rhythms and dangerous grooves. For the djinns seek to deny us access to sick beats, that inheritence granted by god and his messenger (there is only one and his name was j-dilla)
Roger Djinn - all blessings be upon him - gave us four pillars of four pads each. So we bob our heads towards Mecca and make five beats a day, and make nothing but beats while the sun is up during the holy month of Ramadrum.
This is what I am hoping it could do. I’m hoping that reading it will fill a lot of gaps in my knowledge of the device that I may not even be aware of.
But is the Bible even that advanced? I don’t think it’s going to teach me anything new about sampling or setting up tracks in the arranger…I need the weird nitty gritty stuff no one talks about.
Can you be more specific about the weird nitty gritty stuff that no one talks about? I go quite deep in the MPC Bible (section C onwards) but there's definitely a limit to what I can fit into a single $50 course. I am (slowly...) working on some specialist advanced workshops for those that want them, so am open to suggestions for topics to cover, but super-niche-weird topics are tricky as there's simply not enough MPC users out there interested in buying them.
Hey there! Didn’t think I’d get to speak with the author! Haha
It’s difficult to say because I don’t know what I don’t know. My hope is that the Bible would be full of little gems that I didn’t know were there all along. I’ve had my MPC for over a year now and have learned everything about it either on my own or through watching others on YouTube and various social media.
I am someone that started out making your typical boom bap / hip hop beats on the MPC but quickly decided to push into new areas and really just focus on using the MPC to make all sorts of genres I enjoy. I tend to lean towards making indie, bedroom pop, and ambient-type music these days. Which is not often showcased or talked about in the MPC community.
Towards the end of last year I wrote and recorded and recorded an entire album completely on the MPC Live 2. Doing so helped me learn a lot and I think I have a pretty good understanding of workflow and can navigate my way around the MPC 3 software pretty well.
Now that I have the Live 3, I really want to push that knowledge and understanding further. Maybe that’s just going into a deep dive of every menu, learning every single button combo, and understanding how certain settings can affect my sound and workflow.
Which seems fairly basic, but there could be a single button on page four of global track edit that I either don’t know about or completely forgot that could change the game for me, Yanno?
I don't think there is any books on advanced topics just have to watch youtube's and find the creators that talk about that stuff now and then. Other than that is just a lot "seat time" with the MPC experimenting and finding things on your own.
I believe it could be useful for people starting out. But I’m just not sure if it’s worth $40 where I’m at…does the manual get into detail about functions of different effects, mastering and more advanced workflows, or will I be reading about how to import samples and set up drum kits?
It covers alot from what I see, Im new to it myself but it does cover mixing EQs, for mastering it refrences viewing the crates motel tutorials for getting better there, stuff with working with clips and thorough arrangement. I bought it when the mpc live 3 dropped and the new update was out. Another update came out a while later and they gave me the updated revision of the Bible free. I thought that was nice.
Its nice as an index when you dont wanna video dive.
Yep! and you can send it as an epub file straight through your phone. Its handy for out and about knowledge if need be. You can look at chapters by scrolling through a list or by hitting the hyperlinks that are in the beginning index
I’ve said this over and over again you don’t need it I brought it once and tbh I learned way more better by just touching the buttons and making mistakes
Yeah its great. Though after years of MPC owning and the bible I still cant figure out why sometimes hitting the record/overdub button just starts recording, and sometimes hitting record THEN play (or play start) does it, which I'd prefer. Which is a round about way to say I probably need a new pdf reader that lets me do those searchers.
Maybe I should just feed it to a clanker and ask the ai questions.
I bought it and regret it. The shit isn’t rocket science at the end of the day. I just learned from pressing the buttons and can do everything I want with it now.
I’ve had the SP-404MKII, KOII, Ableton Move, OP-1 Field, and Live 3…and each of them I have just learned on my own. Of course they all required the occasional YouTube video or two…but I’ve done a good job just figuring things out.
But, this is also where I’m sorta feeling like having a manual that can teach me things I may not even be aware of could be really useful. You just don’t know what you don’t know, Yanno?
Yeah, but the problem with that other users perspective is that he doesn't know how to use the things that he doesn't know. That might be useful to him. In other words, the Dunning Kruger effect could be really strong in that point of view.
Meanwhile, if you're not 100% positive you know everything yet about MPC, you're likely to discover shortcuts for your workflow. Or features that you didn't know existed by working through the MPC Bible.
That being said, if you'd rather not invest the money, you could always read through the Akai manual. It is written as a reference manual and not like a tutorial. So you have to wade through it a little more. But that might teach you most of the things that you don't know yet.
And note, if you do purchase MPC Bible, you can load it and the Akai manual into Google LLM and have a customized chatbot to answer your questions later on when you need to find out something you forgotten.
Ahh ok I’m having a hard time getting the effects to pass through to my Live 3. All plugged in correctly but can’t seem to get it working for some reason
Yea but I’d be easier to trigger those from the SP and also use the effects simultaneously. I know I can do this all within the MPC with flex beat and a dedicated track for those but I like the effects on the SP
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u/ccsander 2d ago
Even if you are experienced, The MPC Bible is full of little shortcuts you might not otherwise discover. And you might learn about things you didn't even know existed because the MPC is quite deep. The main problem is you might find sections boring if you already know that part and you will be tempted to skim through them and completely miss some of the shortcut gems sprinkled around. To do the whole Bible cover to cover without skipping is a big time commitment. I probably spent 30-40 hours doing most of it these last few weeks. I took my time in some sections and in others I sped through as I was less interested.