The final payment was made on my MPC Key 61 early last week. It took me over a year to pay this thing off, but she’s all mine now! I’m happy that I own it, and I don’t see the need to upgrade to a different MPC at this point. This thing has 4GB of RAM in it, just like the MPC X SE, and it does everything fast and quickly. It’s held up very well even with me setting plates and headphones on top of it! I wish Decksaver would release one of their units for it, but that’s wishful thinking. Hopefully sometime soon they will release one, but we’ll see how that goes.
I am trying to start making some Dub style beats on my Key 61, as I’ve found that I like the sound of Dub samples a lot. I’m looking forward to the next time I have some money to go to the record shop and search for some good dub/reggae vinyl records to sample. For now I’m using Splice.com and I’ve got some good stuff to work with in the interim. I’m already working on a banger of a beat on the Key 61 this Sunday AM, and I’m going to flesh it out and use some vocal samples on it as well. Maybe some will be me and others will be vocals I pull from Splice.
Music has really been a great savior of my sanity. It keeps me grounded, and I need to make sure I keep doing it even when I’m tired after work and just feel like gelling. It’s very important to be creative in your life, whether that’s painting, making music, coloring, carpentry, or whatever you’re into. Creativity is what separates us from the animals, so we need to hone and cultivate that part of our makeup. It really sucks that with the 9 to 5 wage slavery most of us are caught up in, we don’t have very much free time to be as creative as we’d like.
If you’re a young person reading this, make sure you take advantage of living at home with your parents and only needing to work part time or not at all. Use your free time to pursue creative endeavors and find your passion. I was trying music when I was at home, but I didn’t go at it full bore and ask questions about it like I should have. Otherwise, I would have gone after it more vigorously in my youth. If you like to play video games, that’s fine too. Just use your time to get a stream going, advertise it, start a Youtube channel, and find a way to monetize what you enjoy doing. That will be the new hustle in this technological age we’re in right now. Jobs of the past will go to AI and robotics, so people will need to earn income by having a popular Youtube channel or Twitch stream. The Future is Here!