MPC & Ableton Live Tutorial - Transferring MPC MIDI Sequences to Live

In this excerpt from chapter 6 of my MPC & Ableton Live Tutorial book, 'Using The Akai MPC With Ableton Live',I'm going to take a look at a method for bringing your MPC MIDI data into Live as an imported MIDI clip, which is an alternative to the method of manually tracking MIDI data via MIDI sync (which is covered in detail later in the book). Please note that previously in the book, I've already created an MPC project (called 'Live') which consists of a sequenced sample based drum beat and three MPC MIDI tracks that control three different software instruments in Live. At this point, I've already tracked the drum beat as audio into a Live audio track and now its time to transfer the MIDI. Please note this tutorial requires Ableton Live 8.13 or greater to function correctly.

Importing MIDI into Live as MIDI Clips

As well as importing MPC sample based tracks into Live audio tracks (as covered in chapter 5 of the book), we can also transfer MPC MIDI data from any MIDI tracks you may have in your MPC song/sequence. Throughout the book we've used the MPC to send MIDI messages to Live to trigger Live's software instruments - now instead of triggering it from the MPC, we're going to simply 'extract' the MIDI data from the MPC and store it within Live MIDI tracks. Basically now that we've used the MPC to initially create the MIDI performance, we're now cutting the MPC completely out of the equation so our entire beat is contained within Live.

To do this, we need to transfer the actual MIDI event data we’ve recorded on tracks 4, 5 and 6 in sequence 2 of our MPC ‘LIVE’ project – these are the MPC sequencer tracks that trigger the Live instrument sounds, as set up in chapter 2 of this book.

So, rather than have the MIDI data played within your MPC, we’ll simply shift that MIDI data directly to the relevant instrument track in Live in the form of a self contained MIDI clip; remember, a Live instrument track is just a MIDI track that outputs to an instrument plug in.

In Live, load up the ‘MIDI Tracking.als’ session file from the ‘Live Project Files’ folder; this is our 80 BPM project which contains three Live instrument tracks; bass, piano, and fx, and an audio track containing the stereo drum clip we tracked over to Live as pure audio in chapter 5.

In your MPC, load up the ‘LIVE’ project - to do this, find the folder for your MPC model and either load up the LIVE.PRJ file (newer MPCs) or load up the APS and ALL files (MPC2000XL or older) or AKM files (MPC4000). Now select sequence 2 – this sequence has bass, piano and fx MIDI events already recorded on tracks 4, 5 and 6, with drums provided on tracks 1-3 using an MPC drum sample program (PT-KIT.pgm).

Exporting MIDI  From Your MPC

So how do we transfer this MIDI data directly to Live? Well it’s actually quite easy. Live will let you import MIDI data from any sequencer as long as it is in standard MIDI file format, and luckily, all MPCs give you the option to save individual sequences in standard MIDI file format.

So what is standard MIDI file format? Well, it’s an MPC sequence file with all the MPC –specific stuff stripped out. So, no q-link events, no filter/attack/tuning/decay events, no program or effect bank changes etc. Instead, you have just standard MIDI events, such as note value, velocity, duration, etc.

For this part of the tutorial, we’ll create a standard MIDI file of sequence 2 of our ‘LIVE’ project – so load up that project and select sequence 2 (PT-FINAL). Depending on your MPC, now do the following:

MPC1000/2500 (Akai OS)

Go to SAVE (MODE and pad 3) and under ‘type’ select ‘SAVE A SEQUENCE’. Under ‘Item’ select ‘02-PT-FINAL’. Under ‘To:’, save to the folder you currently have all your tutorial files for this book.

Hit DO IT (F6) to bring up the ‘Save A Sequence’ screen:

Use your jog wheel to change SEQ to MID. This will save your sequence as a standard MIDI file. Hit DO IT (F5).

JJ OS

Go to SAVE (MODE and pad 3) and in the top left of the screen, select ‘Save: A SEQUENCE’. From the list, select ‘Sq:02-PT-FINAL’.

Hit DO IT (F6) to bring up the ‘Save A Sequence’ screen:

Use your jog wheel to change SEQ to MID. This will save your sequence as a standard MIDI file. Hit DO IT (F5).

MPC500

Go to SAVE (MODE and pad 3). Change ‘Save’ to ‘Sequence’, and ‘Item’ to ’02-PT-FINAL’.

Press DO IT to show the ‘save a sequence screen’:

Select the save type as ‘Mid’, giving you a standard MIDI file.  Press DO IT.

MPC5000

The MPC5000 only saves in standard MIDI file format. Go to DISK (MODE and pad 3), select SAVE (F2) and choose a location to save the file. Under ‘Type’, select ‘SAVE A SEQUENCE’ and under ‘Item’ select ’02-PT-FINAL’.

Hit DO IT and your MIDI file is saved.

MPC2000/XL

The MPC2000/XL saves all its files in standard MIDI format by default. Go to SAVE (SHIFT and ENTER) and under ‘Type’ select ‘Save a Sequence’, under ‘File’ select '02-PT-FINAL’.

Hit DO IT (F6) to bring up the ‘Save A Sequence’ screen:

Choose ‘MIDI FILE TYPE 1’ and hit SAVE (F5). You’ll now have a single MIDI file containing all the tracks from your MPC sequence.

MPC3000/60

Press the DISK key, then 1 (‘A Sequence’).

Choose ‘MIDI FILE TYPE 1’ and hit <Do it>.

MPC4000

Go to [SAVE] > SAVE SEQUENCE. From the ‘Sequence List’, select sequence 2 (PT-FINAL) and MIDI File Type: 1. Hit DO IT.

Creating your MIDI Clip

You’ll now have a single MIDI file containing all the tracks from your MPC sequence. To import this file into Live, we simply locate this MIDI file in the File Browser and drag it over just like we would with an audio clip – and just like audio, we can either drag the clip over in Session View, or directly into Arrangement View; again, I’ll use Arrangement View as the example.

Go to ‘Arrangement View’, and locate the newly exported MIDI file in the Live File Browser. You should see an expanding triangle to the left of the file name – click on this and the MIDI file will expand to show all 6 tracks within it.

Now simply click and drag the 'BASS' MIDI track over to the beginning of the existing ‘1 Bass Sub’ track:

Repeat this process for the PIANO and FX tracks, by dragging the MIDI tracks to the Live project tracks 2 and 3.

Hit ‘Play’ in Live and you should now hear your entire beat playing back with all instruments and drums provided entirely from within Live.  That was pretty painless. You can alternatively do exactly that same process within Session View except this time, drag the individual MPC MIDI tracks into clip slots.

My version of this can be found by loading ‘MIDI Tracking – Import.als’ from the ‘Live Project Files’ folder.

What's Next?

In the full Using The Akai MPC With Ableton Live book, the rest of this chapter deals with real time tracking of MIDI data which is often seen as more desirable as it can retain the MPC's timing idiosyncrasies and 'feel'.

The complete book itself teaches absolutely everything you need to know about using Ableton Live with all standalone MPCs, including using Live as a sound module for your MPC beats, syncing Live via MIDI Clock and MIDI Time Code, triggering Live clips using your MPC pads and multiple methods for successfully tracking out your beats (MIDI and audio).

To buy and instantly download the complete 120 page book including all example project files, go to the 'Using The Akai MPC With Ableton Live product page' at MPC-Samples.com.