Playing Instruments With 'Pad Perform'

The MPC supports a number of different types of instrument including synth plugins (such as Tubesynth and Odyssey), externally connected MIDI instruments (e.g. hardware synths connected via USB, Bluetooth or MIDI cable) and keygroup program (e.g. multisampled instruments). These instruments can be played in a more traditional sense using an attached MIDI keyboard, or by using the MPC pads.

Playing instruments with the pads can be tricky as its difficult to know which pads represent which musical notes, so to solve this issue Akai created ‘PAD PERFORM’ mode. Let’s take a look at how we can use pad perform with any MPC instrument.

Configuring PAD PERFORM Mode

In MAIN, set up a track to play either a ‘PLUGIN’ patch, a MIDI instrument or a KEYGROUP program. Now enterPad Perform Mode by hitting the PAD PERFORM icon on the ‘PROGRAM’ row. Alternatively, press SHIFT & 16 LEVEL.

The default screen in PAD PERFORM mode is called CHROMATIC:

In CHROMATIC mode the pads are set to play all the notes in the standard chromatic musical scale, but you’ll notice that some pads are illuminated. These pads represent the notes contained within the ‘SCALE’ you set in the SCALE & OCTAVE section, which in the above example is the scale of E Natural Minor.

So, while you are free to play any pads, if you stick to the lit pads, you’ll always be playing notes that should ‘fit’ within any song in the key of E minor.

Change the SCALE & OCTAVE setting to C Major:

Here you can see that the lit pads now represent the C Major scale (C, D, E, F, G, A, B). If you leave ‘BANKS’ set to ‘ Start on Root Note’, the first pad (bottom left) will always start at the root note of the selected scale (in this case, a ‘C’). The root notes are always lit ‘red’ (in the above example, the root note of C is found on pad 1 and pad 13).

The numbers shown after the notes are the octave. So the first pad is C4, which refers to C, octave 4. The C on pad 13 is an octave higher (C, octave 5). You can use the OCTAVE +/- buttons to change the octave covered by the current 16 pads. Alternatively select a different pad bank using the PAD BANK buttons.

Now select NOTES mode:

In NOTES mode you’ll notice that all the pads are lit. That’s because in NOTES mode, the pads only play back the notes from the selected scale, there’s no option to play any of the ‘off scale’ notes, and hence no chance of accidentally hitting a ‘duff’ note.

The disadvantage of notes mode is that there is no option to ever play any notes outside of the selected scale, which is why CHROMATIC mode can be the more flexible option.

Notes and Chromatic mode are perfect for playing single note lead lines and melodies.

Playing Chords

Now select CHORDS mode:

In the above I’ve continued with the C Major scale (C, D, E, F, G, A, B), and by looking at the pads you might just think this is the same as NOTES mode. But this time each pad is configured to play multiple notes simultaneously to produce a chord.

The notes that make up the structure of the chord are set by theCHORD parameter which by default will be a1-3-5 chord. This means that the chord made up from the 1 ^st, 3^rd and 5^th notes of the selected scale.

So the first pad is a C. This means we start the C major scale from the ‘C’ root note and use the 1^st, 3^rd and 5^th notes to create the chord: C, E, G (which is a C major chord).

The second pad is a D, so this time we start counting from the D note. So the 1^st position in the scale is ‘D’, the 3^rd note along from D is an F, and this 5^th note from a D is an F. DFA = a D minor chord.

And so on across all the pads. Changing the CHORD type from 1-3-5 will build the chords from different notes within the C major scale. For example, 1-4-5 will take the 1^st, 4 ^th and 5^th notes from the C major scale.

All the chords in CHORDS mode will be in perfect harmony with each other as they are all built exclusively from the same notes within your selected scale.

CHROMATIC CHORDS mode may initially seem identical to CHORDS mode:

Here we define a ‘CHORD’ shape, which in the example above is a ‘Minor’ shape, and then move this chord shape up the notes of the selected scale under SCALE & OCTAVE (C major in the above example). As before, C major consists of the notes C, D, E, F, G, A, B, but this time as we’ve stipulated our chords should all use a ‘Minor’ shape, the pads play back C minor, D minor, E minor, F minor, G minor, A minor and B minor.

This means that the chords in CHROMATIC CHORDS are not all harmonically related, so this will provide some more interesting results (some chord combinations might sound a little odd!).

Another popular chord playing option is PROGRESSIONS mode:

In PROGRESSIONS mode, the pads have been pre-configured to play a very specific set of chords. Here you can only select a preferred key and octave for your progression, the actual chords assigned to the pads are fixed. So in the example above, we’ve chosen the key of ‘C’ and the ‘Guitar Jazz One’ progression. This has given us a progression mapped across the pads in the key of C (Cm, Bb/C, Fm7 etc).

To change the selected progression, double tap the ‘CHORD’ dropdown on the left hand side of the screen and at the top of the resulting screen hit the top left pointing arrow:

Now you are taken to the progressions grouping page:

Single tap any of the progression groups to view the available progressions for that style:

Tap on a progression select it and choose a suitable key under ‘ SCALE & OCTAVE’. You should now see the on-screen pads indicate which chords are assigned to each pad:

The MPC comes with a number of ready-made progressions, but you can also easily install custom progressions (our Melodic Percussion expansion contains some custom MIDI progressions for use in standalone and MPC Software/controller mode).

The final Pad Perform option is CUSTOM:

By default this mode will effectively turn off pad perform mode and will set your pads to a ‘pure’ chromatic mode, with no scale or key configurable – just use the PAD BANK buttons to select different octaves. If you’ve set up custom pad colours (via MAIN > program pencil > Edit Pad Color’) your pads will now show those custom colours here.

In CUSTOM mode you are on your own, so you are likely just guessing which pads are going to work in your track. But that in itself can produce some interesting results as you are likely to play pad combinations that you would never have considered when working in the scale-based options.

All our instrument expansions are built with standard MPC keygroups so they fully support creating your own leads, riffs and chord sequences using any playback method you prefer, be it with a keyboard, via PAD PERFORM mode, or even through the arpeggiator.