MUSIC TECH: Poise is the BEST MPC Style Drum Sampling Software Available

In my mind, poise is the drum sampler we’ve all been looking for. Poise is what I would make if I could write software….

Poise is a simple, 16 pad drum sampler that lets you quickly add layers, manipulate the layers, and come up with new sounds.

Poise is NOT a sequencer. You can NOT sample into it. From the site:

Direct, straightforward, no frills and no bloat! Poise aims to make working with drum samples quick and painless, allowing you to focus on making music.

Sounds good to me, so good I had to keep it under wraps until I could actually SHOW you what it did. It’s not new, it’s been around, but I just found out about it and I know many of you will love it, because I get the same questions from folks looking for an easy drum sampler that let’s you layer your drums quickly and tweak each layer.

Why I think Poise “gets it”

Why do I think it’s the best? Let me list the reasons.

* It’s easy to layer sounds, just drag them onto the pad, and a layer number will appear in the window
* layers can be played in round robin, layered, or velocity switching mode
* You can have up to 16 outputs, enough to send each pad to it’s own track in your daw if you want
* It’s easy to setup to work with your midi controller
* You can have note on or one-shot mode for your samples
* It has mono mode, so you can get down like on your hardware, making pads cut each other
* You also have “cut groups” so you can set pads to cut each other off
* You can link pads… so you can quickly layer multiple sounds just by linking the pads together
* You can save your own kits quickly
* You can tweak each layer on a pad separately or together
* you can use wav, aiff, or mpc snd format sounds
* It’s lean and cpu efficient
* It’s 49 bucks

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MUSIC TECH: AKAI Blows It Out With New MPC 5000

AKAI's MPC drum machine/sequencer/sampler is known as one of the key instruments that have revolutionized music and Hip Hop production specifically. AKAI introduced the Midi Production Center with the ROGER LINN designed MPC 60. Through the years, improvements have been made to the kit and we have seen the MPC morph from the 60 to the 60II to the 3000, 2000, 4000, 1000, 2500 and the portable battery operated MPC 500. Now in 2008, AKAI has introduced the MPC 5000. It feels like it is in direct response to ROLAND's MV-8800 sampling workstation. The MV-8800 was seen as a potential MPC killer due to its inclusion of a built in analogue synth and flexible sequencing capabilities. Well AKAI has answered the call and has introduced a slew of new features including a built in synthesizer, arpeggiator and larger screen. Below is a great video outlining all the new features and capabilities of this new beast-