Contents

MPC Instrument Collection: Introduction 3

Install: Standalone MPC & Akai Force 4
Install: MPC Software Expansion Browser 12
Playing the Instruments with MPC/Force Pads 19
Playing with a MIDI Keyboard 22
Further Resources 23

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 MPC Instrument Collection: Introduction
• The MPC Instrument Collection features an array of real acoustic and electric
instruments multisampled and mapped to keygroup programs optimised for all
modern MPCs and the Akai Force.

• The bundle features every single instrument, articulation and patch from our
bestselling MPC expansions ‘MPC Orchestral’, ‘Electric Keys’, ‘Piano Suite’,
‘Vintage Organs’, ‘Electric Bass’ and ‘MPC Horns’. That’s 280 ready-to-load
patches recorded from over 50 different instruments (3648 samples in total).

• All programs are memory-optimised and are fully compatible with all modern
standalone MPCs (X, Live, One), the Akai Force, MPC Software (versions 2.x
and 1.9 fully supported) and all MPC Software controllers (MPC Touch, MPC
Renaissance, MPC Studio).

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 Install: Standalone MPC & Akai Force
The following instructions are suitable for installing expansions in any modern MPC
running in 'standalone' mode (e.g. MPC X/Live/One), as well as the Akai Force. The
complete bundle contains 6 separate expansion installers, and each expansion is
installed with the exact same method as follows.

First download all the expansions from your File Bank and unzip them using your
computer’s zip application.

Choose an expansion to install, for example, ‘Vintage Organs’. Enter the

‘Standalone MPC-Akai Force Edition’ folder and inside you’ll see a sub folder
‘Vintage Organs– this is the folder we’re going to transfer to your standalone MPC
or Force.

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Akai require that third party expansions are installed to an ‘attached disk’, such as
an SD card, USB drive or internal SATA drive.

For this example, let’s assume you use an SD card in your MPC/Force called ‘MPC
DATA’

One option is to temporarily remove the SD card from your MPC/Force and connect
it directly to the SD card slot on your computer. Remember, if your MPC/Force is
currently switched on, first 'eject' the disk from your machine via BROWSER >
Places:

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You can now put the SD card in your computer’s SD card reader.

Alternatively, you can connect via 'Controller Mode' (or 'Computer Mode' in the
Force). This is also the only practical option if you are connecting to an internal SATA
drive - please note that at the time of writing, this method is not supported by the
MPC One.

First connect the ‘square’ USB port on your MPC/Force to a USB port on your
computer using a standard USB cable. MPC users should then go to
the MENU screen and click on the ‘MPC Chip’ icon at the top of the page:

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This will bring up the ‘ENTER CONTROLLER MODE’ screen. Click on the CONTROLLER
MODE button at the bottom of the page.

Akai Force users should go to the MENU screen and tap on the 'Laptop' icon in the
top right of the screen (this time select 'COMPUTER MODE').

Whichever connection method you use, your MPC/Force disk will now appear as a
‘removable’ drive in your computer’s file manager (e.g. ‘Finder’ on a Mac, ‘Explorer’
on a PC).

If it doesn’t already exist, create a folder called ‘Expansions’ in the root of your disk
- now copy the ‘Vintage Organs’ folder inside this ‘Expansions’ folder.

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Repeat this process for all six expansions in the bundle, so all six ‘standalone’ folders
are now copied to the ‘Expansions’ folder on your MPC/Force disk.

You can now ‘eject’ the disk from your computer and in your MPC/Force return to
‘Standalone’ mode.

Make sure your disk is connected to your MPC/Force. Go to MENU > BROWSER >
Expansions and tap on the thumbnail of any of your newly installed expansions –
you’ll now see the contents of the expansion on the right hand side of your browser.
Select the PROGRAM filter to view all available instruments.

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For expansions containing many different types of instruments, such as MPC
Orchestral, you can use the ‘Search’ box to limit the view to one instrument type.
For example, to view a specific instrument type enter the appropriate keyword in
the ‘Search’ box. For example, to only view ‘Cello’ patches, enter ‘Cello’ in the
search box:

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Single tap the program to hear a preview (requires ‘AUDITION >AUTO’ is enabled).

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In the Force, this is accessed via the speaker icon at the bottom left of the BROWSER
screen).

Double tap to load the instrument into your project (or single tap and hit the LOAD
button).

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 Install: MPC Software Expansion Browser
The bundle contains 6 individual expansions, simply install each one using the
following guide (instructions are suitable for both MPC Software 2.x & 1.9.x)

After downloading all the expansions from your File Bank, unzip them to your
computer. Now choose an expansion to install (for example, The Piano Suite).

Locate the file ‘The Piano Suite MPC Software Installer.XPN’:

Now drag & drop this XPN directly into the MPC Software UI from your computer’s
File Explorer/Finder.

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Please note that an XPN file cannot be installed directly from the MPC Browser, nor
can it be installed by ‘double clicking’ the XPN file.

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After dragging the XPN into the software UI you will see the following:

Select ‘Import’ to install the expansion. Now repeat the above procedure for all
expansions in the bundle.

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Once installed you can open your expansions in the Expansion Browser (‘X’ on your
keyboard). For example, click on the ‘Piano Suite’ thumbnail:

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Expand the ‘Programs’ group to reveal the different instruments:

With some expansions you can drill further to view additional patches:

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Single click to hear the program preview - this requires ‘Autoplay’ enabled:

Double click a program to load it to the current ‘keygroup’ type track. Alternatively,
drag the program directly into your project.

You can also browse the expansions using Media Browser (‘B’ on your keyboard).
Here, you can filter your display by Instrument Family and or Instrument.

In the example below, I’ve selected only Woodwind instruments:

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The Media Browser is useful as it can display all the matching results from all your
installed expansions.

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Playing the Instruments with MPC/Force Pads
All programs are mapped out to reflect the note range available on the original
instruments themselves. As MPC pads are mapped across the full 128 note MIDI
range from C-2 to G8 you’ll typically find there are no sampled notes in pad banks A
and B as these are too low for acoustic instruments – the first notes for each
instrument typically begin in bank C – basically when playing with pads, consider the
bank buttons to be similar to the ‘octave’ buttons on a keyboard.

All instruments are fully compatible with Pad Perform Mode (‘Notes’ mode in the
Force) which can configure your pads to only playback notes from specified scales,
or can play back entire chords from a single pad.

In touchscreen MPCs, press MENU > PAD PERFORM. Select BANK A, NOTES & under
‘SCALE & OCTAVE’ select your preferred scale & musical key. The 16 pads will now
only play back the notes in this specific scale. Red pads indicate the ‘root’ note in
the scale.

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In the MPC Renaissance/Studio, hit the PAD ASSIGN button to enter PAD
PERFORM.

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In the Akai Force, press NOTES to enter ‘notes’ mode, then hit SHIFT + NOTES to
bring up the ‘Notes Config’ screen where you can set the type of note layout
(Scales, Chords, Progressions, etc), the pitch and scale settings plus a number of
other parameters:

Many instruments feature dynamic velocity levels, so for maximum realism, make
sure FULL LEVEL is ‘OFF’ in MPCs, or ‘VELOCITY’ is set to ‘As Played’ in the Force.

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 Playing with a MIDI Keyboard
Instruments can also be played using an attached MIDI keyboard. For standalone
MPCs and the Akai Force you can directly connect a USB keyboard via any USB port
at the back of your unit. Alternatively, a Bluetooth keyboard can be paired via Menu
> Preferences > Bluetooth

If your keyboard only has a traditional ‘5 pin’ MIDI out port, connect the MIDI OUT
of your keyboard to the 5 pin MIDI IN port of your MPC/Force with an appropriate
MIDI cable.

When using the MPC Software, you can connect a USB MIDI keyboard to your
computer and configure it as the active MIDI input via Preferences > MIDI.

If you are using an MPC Software controller such as an MPC Touch, Studio or
Renaissance, you can alternatively connect the keyboard via a physical MIDI cable to
your MPC’s MIDI ‘in’ port (a minijack-to-5 pin adapter is required for the
Touch/Studio).

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 Further Resources
To learn more about creating your own MPC programs, sequences, sounds and
expansions, please refer to MPC-Tutor’s range of MPC tutorial books at:

https://www.mpc-samples.com/section.php/8/0/mpc-tutorials-courses/

The MPC Instrument Collection is part of our growing range of MPC/Force

expansions – check out our entire range here, with loads of acoustic keys, pianos,
drum kits, bass, synths & much, much more:

https://www.mpc-samples.com/section.php/78/0/mpc-expansions/

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