Installation & User Guide

Contents
The Reaper: Introduction 3
Install: MPC Live & MPC X 4
Install: MPC Software Expansion Browser 7
MPC Expansion: What’s Inside? 10
The Reaper Instrument 10
Bass & Breaks ‘Themes’ 11
Bass MIDI Patterns 13

Playing The Instrument 16

Using the Themes 17
Legacy MPC Installation 19
Further Resources 20
Credits 21

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 The Reaper: Introduction
• The Reaper is a multisampled acoustic upright bass instrument which can be
used to create realistic sounding double bass performances in your MPC. The
vibe of this bass is gritty and organic - perfect for filthy jazz-inspired hip hop
bass lines.

• The Reaper uses pizzicato (‘plucked’) samples recorded from a vintage Otto
Rubner acoustic double bass. All samples have been edited and mapped to
MPC instrument programs to provide out-of-the-box playback in most MPC
models.

• The Expansion is fully compatible with the MPC Live, MPC X, MPC Touch,
MPC Studio and MPC Renaissance. The expansion can also be installed in the
Akai Force (please follow the MPC X/Live installation instructions).

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 Install: MPC Live, MPC X & Akai Force
The following instructions are suitable for installing the expansion in the MPC X &
MPC Live in 'standalone' mode, as well as the Akai Force (screenshots taken from
the MPC).

Enter the ‘MPC X-MPC Live-Akai Force Edition’ folder and inside you’ll see a sub
folder ‘The Reaper’ – this is the folder we’re going to transfer to your MPC X/MPC
Live or Force.

The factory-fitted internal drive on your MPC/Force is not externally accessible, so
let’s assume you have a USB drive called ‘MPC DATA’ connected to the USB port on
your MPC Live/X/Force (you can also transfer to an SD card or internal SATA drive).

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Connect your MPC or Force via USB to your computer and go to MENU and hit the
‘MPC chip’ icon at the top of the screen (this is the 'Laptop' icon in the Force);
select CONTROLLER MODE ('COMPUTER MODE' in the Force). At this point, your
USB disk will appear as a removable drive in your computer.

If it doesn’t already exist, create a folder called ‘Expansions’ in the root of your disk
- now copy the ‘Reaper’ folder inside this ‘Expansions’ folder. 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 ‘Reaper’ thumbnail to view the expansion:

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 Install: MPC Software Expansion Browser
The MPC Software expansion is fully compatible with MPC Software 1.9 or greater.
Locate the ‘MPC Software Installer.XPN’ file and drag & drop it 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 from the MPC Browser, nor can it
be installed by double clicking.

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

Select ‘Import’ and once installed, open the Expansion Browser (‘X’ on your
keyboard for MPC Software 2.x, ‘shift & E’ for MPC Software 1.9), and click on the
‘Reaper’ thumbnail to view:

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 MPC Expansion: What’s Inside?

The Reaper Instrument

The Reaper bass instrument is the file ‘Bass-Reaper Upright Bass.xpm. In the
hardware UI, select the PROGRAM filter:

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In the MPC Software Expansion browser you can find the instrument within the
‘Programs > Bass’ group:

This is a standard KEYGROUP program which you must assign to a ‘KEYGROUP’
type track. Single tap/click to hear a preview (requires ‘AUDITION >AUTO’).

Bass & Breaks ‘Themes’

The expansion contains a single project featuring 10 ‘bass and breaks themes’. In
the hardware UI you can quickly view his project via the PROJECTS filter:

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Each theme is a two track sequence consisting of with a bass line matched up with
a break pulled from our awesome 700+ break collection, ‘The Live Break Bundle’.
https://www.mpc-samples.com/product.php/255/the-live-break-bundle/

The breaks are all ‘patched phrased’ to allow for the breaks to auto-match your
sequence tempo.

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Bass MIDI Patterns

We’ve also taken the 10 bass lines from our themes and created separate MIDI
‘pattern’ files from them. View these in the hardware UI by using the SEQUENCES
filter:

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In the MPC Software Expansion these can be found in the Patterns group, within
the Bass > Reaper sub category:

Patterns are short, MIDI ‘snippets’ that can be loaded any MPC sequence. To load a
pattern, simple double tap/click and it will immediately load into the next available
blank track in your current sequence. As these are standard MIDI events they can
also be assigned to any other keygroup program, plugin or MIDI instrument.

Unlike programs, there are no ‘Pattern previews’ in the MPC browser, so we have
manually included audio pattern previews in the SAMPLES category (see below).

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Individual Samples & Audio Previews

The ‘Samples’ section contains all the samples in the expansion, which includes all
the bass notes, fx and audio previews of all patterns and themes. In the MPC
Software Expansion browser the samples are grouped by type (theme preview,
pattern preview, instrument samples and fx samples).

In the hardware UI, select the SAMPLES filter to view all samples (pattern and
theme preview folders are easier to see in the PROJECTS or PROGRAMS screen)

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 Playing The Instrument
The actual musical notes of Reaper cover the pitch range A0 to C4. We have
mapped these across an MPC keygroup program and as such if you wish to use
your pads to play the bass you will find the first note (A0) in BANK C, pad C02.

The Reaper also contains some string and hand noises to make your performances
sound more life-like. These are mapped to pad bank A (notes C-2 to D-1).

The Reaper uses ‘round robins’ to vary sample timbre each time you play a note.
We have also incorporated velocity sensitive filter and attack to add some
additional timbre variation (this needs FULL LEVEL ‘off’).

The instrument is fully compatible with Pad Perform Mode and can also be played
using a MIDI keyboard attached to your MPC via USB, Bluetooth or using the 5 pin
MIDI ports (see the MPC manual for more details on how to connect MIDI devices).

If supported by your keyboard’s hardware, the Reaper will respond to pitch bend
messages which can be used to emulate string bends; you can also use your
keyboard’s modulation wheel to add some vibrato to the bass notes.

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 Using the Themes
After loading the ‘Reaper Bass and Breaks Themes’ project, select a sequence and
hit PLAY START to hear it in action.

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The bass line is found on track 2, the drums on track 1. While the bass line for each
theme was written specifically for that particular break, you can of course
experiment by trying different breaks with different bass lines.

We have carefully ‘patched phrased’ all 10 breaks so their tempo auto matches the
current tempo of your sequence

Patched phrase work best when you increase the BPM; when you slow them down
they typically become ‘choppy’ and a bit ‘clicky’. If you wish to slow down a break
we recommend you turn on ‘WARP’ in PROGRAM > SAMPLES which will disable
patched phrase and instead use the MPC’s stretching algorithms.

Remember, the bass line from each theme is also provided separately as a MIDI
‘pattern’ file, so pattern 01 is the bass line from theme 01.

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 Legacy MPC Installation
In the Legacy MPCs folder we have provided legacy versions of the Reaper upright
bass instrument, these are suitable for MPC5000, MPC1000, MPC2500, MPC500,
MPC4000 and all versions of JJOS.

Inside the Legacy MPCs folder you’ll find a sub folder called ‘The Reaper’. Simply
transfer this entire folder to your legacy MPC disk using your preferred method.
You can find more detailed transfer instructions here: https://www.mpc-
samples.com/article/mpc-file-transfers

In legacy MPCs the bass is mapped across the pads in banks A to C (MIDI notes C1
to C4), with sound fx mapped to pads C9 to C16 (MPC1000/2500) or D01 to D08
(MPC500, MPC5000 & MPC4000).

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 Further Resources
MPC-Samples has the world’s largest range of multisampled acoustic & electric
instruments for MPCs, all recorded directly from the original instruments
themselves including acoustic drum kits, pianos, keys, horns, orchestral sounds and
vintage synths:

https://www.mpc-samples.com/section.php/73/0/mpc-instruments/

To learn more about creating your own MPC programs, sequences, sounds and
expansions, please refer to my range of MPC Bible books at:

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

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 Credits
Bass Samples © 2013, D. Smolken. Licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Additional sample editing, audio files, bass
themes, patch phrasing, MPC & MIDI sequences, MPC programming and MPC
expansion files by MPC-Samples & Pad Pimps. Copyright © 2018. All rights
reserved.

Drums breaks copyright © 2010-2018, Timmy Rickard & Tombongo. All rights
reserved. Originally from ‘The Live Break Bundle’, https://www.mpc-
samples.com/product.php/255/the-live-break-bundle/

‘The Reaper’ artwork by Andy Avgousti, remixed from the ‘Grim Reaper’ by Raxon
Rex https://flic.kr/p/dyBmBo and bass photo by Tore Sætre
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dan_Berglund_Victoria_teater_Oslo_J
azzfestival_(220856).jpg

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