Advice For Anyone Struggling To Learn The Akai Force 

I just bought the akai force and received it yesterday. You have prevented that frustrated "I want to give up" feeling altogether, and for that you deserve money. Thank you!

it's heaps of work, but you should do a series about just this. You're such a good teacher, it would be the go to for a lot of people.

I just bought a used force. This vid is gold

This is terrific real world advice. Your channel continues to be a great source of knowledge and shared experience.

SUCH great advice man...Thanks !!!

thank you man. very nice.

Very wise words. Big thanks!

Hi Mp! Good work again. Thks for providing us with all this good and relevant stuff about the force, still appreciated ! Looking forward next episodesss…

Love your channel sir!! Keep up the hard work!! MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU! 🙏🏾👊🏾

Thank you for the video, I'll start to apply the advices.

Great vid again - top tips !

Great video, really enjoyed the last segment of it of the reality of work put into it. Thank you for all your great content around/about the Force!

So speaks the voice of experience. Solid advice there!!! 👊

Great video! I got my force yesterday and have watched some of your tutorials in the last days. Akai should pay you for them. Thanks for all the efford and time you put into those videos and sharing your knowledge! Cheers!

Divide and conquer is brilliant. Thanks! 🙌🏻

🙏❤️🙏 Thank you for your wise words!!!

This is pure gold 👍

Great video mate, just about to push the button on a force with the vision of using it with hardware at the centre of my studio, will definitely follow your common sense advice of learning sampling, sequencing etc before trying to record multiple machines with loads of midi chains etc etc. Spot on advice about being kind to yourself about social media also Thank you 😄

Excellent! Thank you Maxipok. Love the philosophical bit at the end. Very important...for just about the whole internet world!

Awesome advice, about to receive my Force this Thursday, I've watched a few videos and I must admit it will be overwhelming to some degree, your 5 step be kind to yrself and take 2 weeks is invaluable advice, probably take me longer as I'm a bit slower at learning this stuff

Great advice! Thank you!

Thank you for your very true Tipps!

Thanks for your help

Thanks!

I've 31 videos saved to my favourites and just purchased the force. This is my first video and will follow your advice. Very helpful indeed. Thank you

This is what I needed to hear ! I gave up learning Force twice, luckily returned each time. This time I'll follow your advice - take it step by step. Thank you so much !

I am one of those people you describe 😄. Literally, only switched it on yesterday after a few months to see if I could get my head around it - thinking where to start. So very helpful / timely - many thanks for taking the time to share 🙏.

You're such a sage Max! I experienced what you described more with ableton over the course of 3 years before I accepted that the layout just wasn't in my brains' language (if that makes any sense). Took to the force like a duck to water with your help and I'm such a tech head. Have been since the 90s, but I've never enjoyed something as much as the force. It is complex but with a bit of patience and practice, It just gets more and more approachable and inviting. It goes really well with the arturia microfreak if you're in to synthwave. I've never had more fun. (Only issue is that I need to figure out where the hell my Tubesynth has gone. Its disappeared lol).

Many thanks to you!!! I bought ! year ago and till now I never used it because it is too weird with respecto to a usual keyboard...so I was near to sell it...but now your video is a game changer

Great videos, really appreciate them!, there are so many gotchas with this device… example… assumed I could just plug it in usb to Ableton and it would send midi or audio or both over USB… nope lol

thanks for your videos, they're super helpful. Out of interest where did you get the stand for your Force?

Great advice. I’ve had the thing forever and still haven’t really “clicked” with it.

I am still new to force and struggle with acapella trying to chop and sync to a new tempo for a remix thankyou for this video too.

🙂👍What a great, concise teaching that gets to the root of the matter! That must be why when I change the volume on the mixer, things get all weird. I don't think I'm recording mixer volume data, but is it actually recording mixer volume data without telling me? Do you know why they want to make things so user unfriendly?

You're a complete ledge and freely sharing your experiences.... And Gabe gave you a shout out!!!. Force is Def overwhelming....but it feels like the other side of that is that it enables people to bring their own way of doing things. Will definitely try these tips out. Thankyou! (Again).

The MPC was very intuitive, trying to learn the Akai Force is like trying to learn Mandarin Chinese while drunk, and on a rollercoaster at 1AM with a migraine headache, and a stubbed toe.

This is absolute GOLD. However…….the most fun way is to load a demo and learn the clip launching and basic controls THEN follow this sequence of learning ♥️

Love your videos. Just get mine and try to learn it. But have one stupid question.😁 Is it ok if it gets to hot in the bottom??some times I feel like it be on fire.

Can I ask what stand you have your Force propped up on? I'm tired of craning my neck down while working and that looks like a great angle. Thanks for the tips and all the work you put into making these tutorials!

Just watched this again. Maki a lot of sense. Please can I humbly add check the appendices in the manual, even sampling got a tune up. I'm in cat 2... Really liked how you start from the building blocks / single letter to sentences to paragraph approach. Everything unplugged and maybe see how much I use it.

Cristal clear explanations and a very beautiful way of thinking, speaking and seeing things especially in the last part ! however, I have a question regarding a personal dilemma as I can't seem to find an answer: Although the Force is a machine offering more possibilities (sampler, sequencer, synthesizer...), I hesitate a lot between the Force and the Polyend play. Could you, in a few words and if possible, explain the differences between these two machines in what they have in common? Many thanks to you and for your nice job!

I think lot of people like myself buy the Force and approach it as a musical instrument ie they buy it because they want to make music, even bad music will do but unless you already know how to do that the Force seems like it actively stops you doing that! I wanted to learn to make a basic melody, then add a drum kit, then a bass, maybe some pads and some twiddly bits on to lol. That doesn’t sound so difficult! But just getting the right synth on a track was a learning curve. Putting down notes of different lengths was painful without external keyboard. (Learn editing midi piano roll maybe time correction on step sequencer… all of that was hard work. Watching multiple video asking questions on forums etc. That’s just to put Down a melody and have simple drums (if you can find a basic drum kit - I still haven’t) As an experiment this week I decided to see if I could use step sequencer to play ‘twinkle twinkle little star’ with a basic drum beat using just step sequencer. Nope - no tied notes on the Force … would legato work. Nope only on Salina. I’d need to edit the piano roll use time corrections maybe. … so even the simplest tune unless youalready have an overview of the whole five instruments is really challenging! Hers my point. I think your RIGHT I have to learn each section- no matter how painful and uninspiring that maybe. Think I’m probably just overwhelmed and over thinking this. Iive watched a few videos on effects … sounds like ya need a degree in sound engineering just to understand those people. I know nothing about samplers, don’t get key groups which I read are a problem on the Force as far as assigning ranges (no idea how to do that) … etc … If I want to play music while I continue to learn I can go to my piano or guitar. Thank you as always for another insightful video.

GREAT TUTORIAL COUPLE OF QUESTIONS ..: HOW CAN I SEE THE TITLE OF THE PROJECT WHILE HAVE IT OPEN? HOW CAN IMPORT CORRECTLY MY ABLETON LIVE PROJECT ON MY MACBOOK into Akai force HOW CAN I RECORD THE LIVE SESSION

Thanks for the video! Was very helpful to me. I almost gave up on the Force because of it's weird operation concept. I find the concept totally anti-intuitive.

Use the Force Luke! ....turns to the dark side and uses Reason instead. Really need to get into this machine considering I bought in march 2020 and have barely touched it.

Coming from many years of linear recording from reel to reel /cassette 8trk/ GarageBand & onward it really hit home to hear you use that word , its so true .Its still linear, just hidden in multifunction buttons . I appreciate your advice & thank you .I wonder if Akai manual takes that in consideration? I think your process is a great way to learn Force. My problem is the language used in this format of recording ( a lot of it is new to me ) In your opinion ,does the manual explain the basic's enough to where to I can do a proper RU-vid search for specific advise ? There are many tutorials that assume you know more than you do.-

about 3-4 years ago i learned the Akai Force and Greek language. Because of Covid and moving i had zero time to practice with either. Today i took it out of the box...and i forgot everything. I dont even know how to select a note and transpose it or make it longer etc...At least I still remember my Greek :)

Bro, tell me about your speakers behind ? Brand and model please ! Thanx so much.

It is difficult no doubt especially just trying to get this ship off the ground atm ...do I have to backup my files when updating if I have not created any music yet? I also have the added hddrive installed can I just backup files there? I should I backup via a laptop?

Hello again In case you talk this I must say it was in different order for me also right to come into the Force , me start just with the grid and the plugin first. As I come from Ableton this was quite easy to do for me, its then like Ableton in the box. Mostly things are for me quite self explaining if I find them again. Now the Sampler isnt something I used also very often in Ableton, thats a whole story for itself wich i might will get on in the future. For me in the moment I am struggling bit is that I wanted import Ableton songs I already have into Force. Now while import as itself is not that difficult the problem is in the detail. As I had quite much tempochanges in Ableton , Force ignores that complete why the songs are not playable just from scratch.. Samples I already have in the Ableton arrangement and are there synchronised to the Tempo and changes just play their normal speed as recorded once. I also dont can find on Force neither in the Force nore in the manual the point wich tells about an automation of the tempo. Where is that parameter ? Does it exist or am I searching something never can be found ? I thought myself cause many things are in Force right there as they are also in Ableton or there where I think should be, for the Master Tempo Automation wich should for me be somewhere in the Master section in Arrangment is it not the case.. In Ableton there are 2 ways to get to it. you define in a Scene the tempo wich then change to it every time you launch a scene, that is also in arangemet recording then recorded, thats how i do my scenes in Ableton. Or you go Arangement Master lane you have the curve can even be draw. But in Force nothing from all like that. You have found something like that ? This might be not an important feature for electronic music wich is set to a tempo and played continously, but for rock I am doing it is. Even it were only for a slow down at the end of a song a quite common rock feature... And I think Force can handle this as i found in the Manual it can be tempo syncronised to an external gear clock and tempo as a slave, so it should my meaning and understanding also be possible that Force as master this also could send... Not ? A second point is that I am bit dissapointed on the Audio Interface Feature I wanted set up. I have it on its own again now, cause while i set it up it seems work quite well ( Presonus Audiobox 1818 ) , as I come back to it the week after nothing more worked, not even was it possible to start the Force.. not even more to shut down as well. As usual plug out the things to find whats the problem if I do the Interface, it started up. But shut down still not more work. I just then set the preferences back and now its work well again. But I think something is here not right perfect this feature.. cause the presonus is class complied should also work. I am also now on the latest Firmware 3.1.3 is available. Any experiances someone with this ? I dont know. I really like the Force, as I come more and more in it , I even programmed me like a template song with 40 tracks wich I always can start on for new things I compose and all stuff I need is ready for use. One point here is, while i loaded in samples for 7 Drumracks each with 16 or 24 Samples is no problem, if i load in finished song from Ableton only has 1 Drumrack and a few guitarlicks samples not long it runs out of RAM while loading the drums. Even songs has no guitar samples at all, it hangs itself on the Drumrack.. But I think its cause the Ableton Drumracks are with Multisamples and that is to much for the Force.. For me the whole song import from Ableton not works as feature, i cannot load in my songs without I adjust some things anyway not. I must now first edit the songs in Ableton and save seperately new with first only the MIDI Data of all tracks. Hope that will work then to bring my music into the force. I think I must then record the Audio new in Force direct and the Drum Set i take direct what i have now in Force.. but I dont want record anything new.. But its again much work, that was not how i imagined me this...

where can i buy your shirt? it's great!

Thanks for the great advice... what midi keyboard is that in the background?

Nice one and thank you 🙏🏽 My Force is lightly loaded with barely anything and it’s crashing/freezing. During Lauching clips I loaded an instrument and it froze. Had to restart by doing a hard shutdown holding the power button. Maybe it may happen to others.

Great video! I’m using the force to sequence my synths. Kind of bummed though that I can’t add effects to the synths (like side chain) without recording the synth into the force as an audio file. Do you have any tips or ideas for this?

I want to use external synths like Jupiter x prologue cobalt 8x , is this possible?

I like the concept of the force and the mpc's but being a daw user ( logic) I ask myself, why put myself through this much pain learning to do what i can already do in Logic ? I make my tracks, master the stems and stick them in a digital recorder for live use. What am I missing out on here by not having a Force ?

The stuff hidden behind shift key is also a source of confusion !

Can Akai play midi song with out an external keyboard

You should tell their marketing department - 5 devices in one !

I feel like i didnt get any samples i had it for 30 days and just feel like i got ripped off I hate this thing

Thank you, T-shirLink Please ?

6 things, its also an interface?

Hydra...synth...explorer...😁

So, I can use the force as a door.

First tip: get one.

Thank you, the last bit really made me feel better. I just kept beating myself up to the point that I just walked away from it set it on the shelf and have totally forgot everything I had learned. Now you have inspired me to start anew. Thank you!!!

Thanks!