AKAI MPC 3000: The Best Drum Machine of All Time
There&#x27;s a lot of interesting knowledge in this article, and a lot of rhetoric. I&#x27;m not a fan of this kind of exaggerated writing for what is otherwise a factual history article as there&#x27;s already enough confusion between delivery and veracity, and there&#x27;s plenty of interesting things to say about the technology and influence contained in this machine. It reads more as PR than history. However, I do think it&#x27;s hard to capture the &quot;feel&quot; of a piece of modern history like the MPC 3000, not only for its technologically capability, but its operation and user-base response, not to mention its cultural impact. I would like to see more about Roger Linn&#x27;s philosophical approach, how the team worked behind the scenes, perhaps comparisons of sounds bounced from the 3000 vs DAWs with sampler emulations etc. I don&#x27;t know, just more technical and historical detail. But I just don&#x27;t think I&#x27;m the intended audience. The writer clearly has provided a lot of interesting, exciting, and practical information for their audience.<p>I had an MPC 1000 and a MPC 4000 (I believe the 4000 was intended to be the flagship MPC at the time). I know this article is about the 3000 specifically but I think there&#x27;s a lot of cross-over with the entire MPC range in how they &quot;feel&quot;. I&#x27;m really struggling to hold in my own rhetoric in as I write this – I want to say things like &quot;it was magic&quot;, &quot;the workflow is unmatched&quot;, &quot;the feel&quot;, etc. But there was something about the combination that I miss. The interface of the 4000 was intimidating to me at first, with something like 70 little buttons (hard plastic ones with an audible &#x27;click&#x27;), a rotary dial, 16 pads of course, and a few knobs and sliders. And it was huge. It looked like something out of a sci-fi movie (which fascinated me) and you&#x27;d think more expressive controls like sliders and knobs would make more sense. But having a button for nearly every screen and function made it really easy to stay in flow. It was fast. Everything was quite literally right under my fingertips. I still remember that feeling of not even consciously having to think of what button to press. My girlfriend at the time didn&#x27;t know what I was doing but I knew it looked impressive as hell. It was like playing Tetris for me, or driving stick. I felt more a part of the machine than an operator. You can see, it&#x27;s quite hard to write about without the hyperbole, but I hope comment sections allow for a little creative license (by people like me).<p>One strange choice that honestly was a little jarring to the workflow was the loading animation. In a machine like this, performing certain functions like bouncing or applying destructive effects to samples took time, and so the 4000 had a loading animation... for whatever reason Akai chose this to be a kind of cutesy nurse-looking lady with a bow in her hair tapping her foot like Sonic. I&#x27;m not saying nurses or bow-wearers can&#x27;t produce slamming hip-hop, but it was just an odd choice considering surely Akai were aware of the MPCs use as a pro audio device, unless those missing #1400-2000 MPC 3000 LEs were bought by radiology labs or something. It wouldn&#x27;t surprise me, the MPC is far more capable than I ever made use of.<p>I haven&#x27;t used the newer range of MPCs. I&#x27;ve been using a Push 2 for a couple of years which is a great device. I used a Machine Studio for a while which probably comes a lot closer to the &quot;feel&quot; of old school MPCs, in my opinion. It seems like more hardware is coming out that takes the &quot;stand-alone&quot; approach, which could be a great thing!<p>The 4000 certainly had very limited features compared to computer-based DAW setups even at the time. I consider most forms of creativity to essentially be problem solving, so being given a set of parameters to work within is borderline essential, and can certainly be inspiring. Modern DAWs can be overwhelming in a different way in that anything is possible. Yet even in the 4000 nearly anything was possible, but the limitations in memory, for example, meant you had to commit to some ideas. You could free up space by resampling your beats and slicing them up again as if it was another loop, and essentially do that again and again recursively. Just writing this has reminded me to re-incorporate that practice into my process today. I&#x27;ve been feeling very uninspired for the last few months and opening my DAW (currently Ableton Live) I feel like I don&#x27;t even know where to start anymore.<p>Anyway, the MPC felt like an instrument. It was inspiring. When I turned it on my mind knew what mode to get into. So every night I&#x27;d black out and suddenly wake up 5 hours later and wonder how I got there. So it&#x27;s hard not to feel nostalgic about the MPC. I miss that feeling of being in flow. And for a variety of additional reasons, I miss knowing what it feels like to get lost in a moment.