Akai MPC1000 JJOS2XL Grid Edit Demo

YouTube via FatSynthDude
"Just a quick little demo I made for one of the GearSlutz members. Sorry about the fact that I used the camera's audio, but I'm gelatinous and lethargic.

So anyway, this is just a demonstration of the grid edit mode in JJOS2XL. The guy asking about it was wanting to dismiss it because in JJOS1, it's not quite x0x-like, and you have to program in while the pattern is stopped, otherwise it's just realtime step input with a pretty GUI when you're playing the pattern. He's actually right, and this is included in the later versions of JJOS as well, however, JJ introduced into a later version (not sure if it was in JJOS2 as I haven't spent much time with it) an extra layer to the grid edit to where you can look at one drum part a bar at a time and edit it while it's playing, sort of x0x-style. While the basics of this are a little more tedious than on a 909 because you can't just reach over and switch on/off steps, there are little caveats that make it a little faster (selecting more than one slot at a time) and actually are a little more creatively implemented (instead of simple on/off, each slot is set up to where you input the velocity.)

The vid starts with grid editing of my 522 as a contrast just to show how that works. I then dive into the extra editing mode and show how that works followed by a simple demonstration of the new (and far improved if I might say so myself) version of the copy and paste function. Next I demonstrate how the grid editing for a track designated as 'MIDI' works as well as track duration adjustment. Then, by switching the track to 'drum' mode, I can go into regular grid editing procedures as well as the other layer of sequence editing. As you can see (and this is something I only just found out myself while doing this video) the duration of each note and note shifting can be adjusted by moving down beneath the velocity section. Shifting notes is as simple as pressing a new pad, and then to jump over to a new bar, you just exit the editing mode (wish I had a name for that section) shuffle the marker over to the next bar, and then shift-view again.

Personally, I'm a big fan of JJOS in general, and 2XL adds a ton of improvements to make things even easier and more creative for song creation. For people who own an Akai MPC1000, upgrading to JJOS is very much worth it as, like many others, I feel that Akai's OS's are lacking and somewhat crippled because of their limitations. For people who don't have an MPC, I believe this to be very much worth looking into as a sequencer.

Sorry the execution of this video is a little clunky, but I've only just upgraded to 2XL a couple days ago and haven't quite yet dived in to the system to learn all of its features. (In fact, I actually stumbled on this screen by accident.)"