How to Load and Use Keygroup Instruments in Standalone MPCs & The Akai Force

We have a large range of MPC instrument expansions on MPC-Samples.com that provide you with additional playable instruments for all modern standalone MPCs and the Akai Force, and in this article we’re going to look at how to load and use these instruments. 

What Are Keygroup Instruments?

Keygroup instruments are built using standard MPC keygroup programs (XPM). They use audio samples to create playable instruments in your MPC/Force.

We can use keygroup programs to produce realistic recreations of acoustic instruments and classic analog synths by recording (multisampling) many notes from the original instruments and mapping them across the MPC/Force pads (or across an attached keyboard). We can even use them with sampled synth oscillators to create subtractive synthesizers capable of making any type of custom sounds we like.

Configure the Track

I’ll assume you’ve already installed one of our instrument expansions, but if you need help with this either refer to the PDF install guide that came with your expansion, or check out our Standalone MPC Expansion Installation Guide.

The next step is to configure a track to load our keygroup instrument to.

MPC users should go to MAIN, select an unused track and hit the KEYGROUP icon on the track row to set this as a KEYGROUP type track:

This will automatically assign a blank keygroup program to this track called Program 002 – in the next step we’re going to replace this blank keygroup program with one of the ready-made keygroup instruments from one of our expansions.

Force users should go to MATRIX and in the touchscreen hit the ‘+’ icon and select a Keygroup track:

This adds a new blank keygroup track to the matrix:

We’re now ready to load an instrument to this track.

Step 2: Previewing & LOADING Instruments in the BROWSER

To load instruments from an installed expansion, you’ll need to use the BROWSER. The BROWSER can be accessed via ‘MENU > BROWSER’; alternatively, some MPCs have a dedicated BROWSE button and Force users can just hit the LOAD button.

In the BROWSER, select the ‘Expansions’ tab on the left hand side of the screen to display a list of installed expansions. Tap on the thumbnail for the expansion you wish to view – in this example, I’ve tapped on the ‘OB-MPC’ expansion:

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On the right side, tap on the PROGRAM filter to view all the available instruments (highlighted in green above).

All instruments in MPC-Samples.com’s expansions are properly ‘tagged’ to help you locate the type of instrument you need, and you can use these tags to quickly search through large expansions. For example, enter the phrase ‘keys’ in the ‘Search’ box to display all the ‘keys’ instruments in this expansion:

We also always include a ‘browser preview’ for every single instrument, which plays a short audio demo made using the instrument itself. To enable automatic preview playback, press AUDITION and select AUTO:

Now single tap any of the instrument names on the right hand side of the screen to hear its audio preview. You can also turn your data wheel to scroll through the list of instruments and the previews will play automatically each time an instrument is selected.

To load the desired instrument, either double tap the file name, or with the program name already selected, press LOAD.  The instrument should now be automatically assigned to the currently selected track in your project. You can check this in the MPC by returning to MAIN:

If your instrument is not assigned to the track (this can happen when you have loaded multiple instruments into memory), just double tap the current program name (highlighted in green above) and choose your instrument program from the select box:

In the Force, press MATRIX and you’ll see that the newly loaded instrument is assigned to the currently selected track:

Playing the Instruments with the Pads

With your instrument assigned to the current track you can immediately start playing it with the pads on your MPC/Force. A popular way to do this is to use Pad Perform Mode (‘Notes’ mode in the Force) which can configure your pads to only play back notes from chosen scales, or even to trigger an entire chord from each individual pad. Check out our dedicated article for Pad Perform Mode.

Playing the Instruments with a MIDI Keyboard

Instruments can be also played using an attached MIDI keyboard. If your keyboard is USB class compliant you can connect it directly to your MPC/Force USB port and you should immediately be able to play the instrument assigned to the current track, no additional configuration needed.

Alternatively you can connect a keyboard via the 5 pin MIDI ports using a standard MIDI cable (on some MPCs you’ll need to use the included 3.5mm jack-to-MIDI adapters).

The Force and MPC (except the MPC One) support Bluetooth MIDI as well, so if you have a Bluetooth MIDI keyboard this can be connected via Preferences > Bluetooth.

For more information about connecting MIDI controllers to the MPC, including assigning controllers to specific tracks, check out my dedicated MPC MIDI Controllers article.

Editing Keygroup Instruments

All the instruments in our expansions are already fully set up and ready to play with lots of FX and expressive features already baked into the program. But if you wish to edit the instruments further you can easily do so as all our instruments are standard MPC keygroup programs.  One of the easiest features to edit are the instrument FX.

For MPC users you can edit the insert FX applied to your instrument in ‘CHANNEL MIXER > Programs’:

Tap on the program you wish to edit and the currently assigned FX is displayed in the INSERTS box on the left of the screen. Tap on that INSERTS box to bring up the FX INSERTS page:

Here you can edit the existing FX, remove FX or add additional FX plugins to your instrument – use the pencil icon to edit the settings:

In the Force you can edit instrument FX via MIXER > EFFECTS:

Tap directly on any effect to edit its settings, or hit the INSERTS button (green arrow in image above) to bring up the standard FX INSERTS page, which is identical to the MPC version.

You can also tweak many other ‘behind the scenes’ instrument settings using MENU > PROGRAM EDIT (MENU > TRACK EDIT in the Force). Here you can adjust filters, envelopes, LFO, polyphony, portamento and dozens of other parameters to make an instrument your own. This is beyond the scope of this article, but if you do want to find out more about the more advanced aspects of editing keygroup instruments (including how to build your own instruments from scratch) check out the MPC Bible.