words: belcher

The MPC has always been the piece of gear for beatmaking, an absolutely essential and legendary piece of kit used by the likes of Dilla, Madlib, Moodymann - and practically everyone else. However, since digital audio and software based studios came along, despite the unique MPC sound - people have tended to move on and use other bits of kit which are more practical nowadays.

I have my beloved Maschine, made by Native Instruments - which is very similar to an MPC in many respects with super responsive pads, and even characteristic MPC swing emulation - but the difference is that with the Maschine I have a massive 3GB library of samples at my fingertips, not to mention the software side of things, and of course the general size and weight of the thing compared to the huge bulk of the original MPCs.

But hang on a minute:

AKAI are going to kill it with this puppy and its smaller brother the “MPC Studio”! I’m actually feeling a touch of a ‘darn-it-I-should-have-waited’ syndrome… But nobody could have seen this coming.

As they say on their website “we’re going to change the game all over again.”

..they could be right, we’ll have to wait and see.

Next video drops in 160 hours 27 minutes according to their doomsday clock on the site. Lets hope they do this properly!

(Source: akaiprompc.com)