Akai - MPC60

In this photo, Aphex Twin looms over his equipment, including the MPC60 towards the upper-right-hand corner. The drum pads and MPC60 logo can be spotted beneath other equipment, all adorned with Aphex Twin stickers.

*Nodfactor* [re-publishes an article](http://www.nodfactor.com/2010/02/07/still-lives-through-j-dillas-last-interview/) from a February 2006 edition of *Scratch* magazine where Alvin “Aqua Boogie” Blanco interviews J-Dilla. Aqua Boogie asks what equipment did J-Dilla start with, to which he replies “I started with the [SP-12](https://equipboard.com/items/e-mu-sp-12-classic-drum-machine-and-sampler) then moved to the [SP-1200](https://equipboard.com/items/e-mu-sp-1200) and then shortly after that the MPC-60, then the [MPC-62](https://equipboard.com/items/akai-mpc60ii), then the [MPC3000](https://equipboard.com/items/akai-mpc-3000) and I’ve been on the MPC 3000 ever since then. I’ve tried other samplers but the 3000 is best for me for what I like to do.”

At 6:50 you can see Alan showing off his MPC60, commenting on it's sequencer being amazing and that you can "put down beats in 10 minutes" with it.

In this video at 1:33, Para One of [L'Atelier](https://equipboard.com/band/l-atelier) and [TTC](https://equipboard.com/band/ttc) shows his studio, including a Roland TR-606, for the process of making his second album 'Passion'.

En Amor Amarillo, Cerati interpretó un pequeño instrumento musical electrónico conocido como el Akai MPC60 que fue muy utilizado a comienzos de los noventa por artistas de hip hop en Estados Unidos para hacer las percusiones de sus canciones. Con el MPC60 se podía hacer samples de sonidos electrónicos por medio de una interfase MIDI, algo innovador para una época en la que no existían los computadores como los conocemos hoy.

This clip from a 2008 Crate Kings article talks about how DJ Shadow ditched the Akai MPC 60 and MPC 3000 as his main production tools. Shadow said: "At the time, in 2002, I felt as though ‘The Private Press’ was the best record I could ever make on the MPC, and I was eager for a change. It was also important to me that I not get stagnant and start repeating things I had done in the past. So I switched it up and forced myself to "go back to school," in a sense. I felt that if I refused to rely on the MPC and learn new techniques my music would change, for better or worse, and change was what I craved most."

"A tea kettle, an [Akai] MPC 60, and the E-mu 6400 sampler. I have a very small studio, and along with that I use the [E-mu] SP-1200. They’re both very old pieces of equipment from about 1987. They’re both mono. The quality of the sampling on the SP and the MPC is quite low, so any sample you put in there comes out the other end with the sound of that machine. The MPC has a bit more memory, it’s a bit more versatile, and the SP is very brutal, very gritty, and it has a great rock solid feel, even though when you analyze it the groove is actually quite wobbly. [The limited sampling rates] help me create a style rather than wallowing around in a laptop that’s got unlimited everything and 2,000 plug-ins and every keyboard ever made. I prefer to acquaint myself with two or three bits of equipment that are quite limiting, and just push those and that limit." - [Mr. Scruff in the Studio](http://www.xlr8r.com/features/2008/04/mr-scruff-studio)

"Sonically, we did it in my older studio before I had Pro Tools on an [Akai] MPC-60. We came up with a really cool drumbeat, and it all started with that. Jed was doing all the keyboard parts, and it was a very keyboard-oriented song. Then Jed came up with that quirky trumpet. We were talking about Miles Davis, and he actually played that with a trumpet sample. It was just so cool, it sounded like the night. It kind of had that feel. So that's what we went for."

Following the meeting with Large Professor in the late '80s that led Preem to switch to the Emu SP12, he also used an Alesis drum machine, and eventually settled on the Akai MPC60.

In this video with Red Bull Music Academy, Just blaze says he used an MPC 60 at 01:00:52.

At 0:54 Warren G says, "Plugged my VCR into my MPC 60".

the first installment of Marley Marl ‘Classic Recipes,’ he shows you how he produced the beat for the 1991 Grammy award-winning chart-topping single “Mama Said Knock You Out” by LL Cool J. He discusses the collaboration and the production process of the track, as well as methods and tools that were used, including the Akai MPC60 and E-Mu SP-1200, the preferred sampler

In this video at 6:50 Havoc talks about his intro to production and first pieces of gear "...Yea when i first started...everybody knows that i started with the...y'know the MPC 60.."

The Dynamic Bass System lab

Albums which use AKAI MPC-60 : • Revolutions • Chronologie

1st paragraph and 24th line down robin lists this as something he uses.

At 14:10, Kay shows her MPC 60.

In the *Beastie Boys Book*, in one of the essays about the recording of *Check Your Head*, Ad-Rock refers to "Mike's MPC60 sampling drum machine."

sharooz takes future music on a studio tour

Among the gear in this picture, Jonathan Snipes of clipping. has a TR-909, a TR-808, a LinnDrum, an Oberheim SEM, and an MPC 60.

> The **MPC 60** came into our lives after we finished our first record and had to figure out how to play our songs on tour. We felt like bringing our old sequencer and drum machine on tour was stupid — too fragile. We wanted something that saved to disk. The MPC (MIDI Production Center) is a sampling drum machine (you sample your own sounds and assign them to these cool big pads) that can also play other electronic instruments via MIDI -- it is a sampler, drum machine and sequencer all in one. With the 3.0 system software upgrade and SCSI interface (so we can save data to a zip disk) available from Roger Linn’s website, we souped up the MPC 60 so it was no longer functioning like a thing of the eighties (although it still does not have nearly as much sample time as the more recent MPC 2000, 200XL or 3000). Although it ultimately became this central creative tool for us (we made all the beats on "Feminist Sweepstakes" with it including guitar samples, bass-lines, synthy parts etc), I learned the basics of how to use it in one mind-bending 3-day weekend when I sampled all the drum sounds from the HR-16B onto the MPC and replicated all our old beats and song structures on it. Then I re-sequenced all the MIRAGE loops so that the MMT-8 was out of the picture too . . . it was a pain in the ass. But in the process of doing all this reprogramming shit I discovered this whole world of stuff that I could be doing instead. I can’t tell you how much I treasure the MPC now. It’s like a friend or an arm . . . it doesn’t seem like a piece of equipment, but like a very special robot with human qualities and idiosyncracies capable of making artistic suggestions. I really really love it.