MPKMINI and sample packs

[Enzotronzo]

Noob here,

I have cakewalk running and wish to make a simple lofi beat.
I have an MPK MINI mk3 by Akai and it works completely fine for VSTs.
I have been unable to source any decent VST drums/beats to create the beat portion, so I look online and most people appear to be using the 'sample packs'.
They are usually full of loops, which I dont want to use, i simply want hiphop/lofi type drums where there is one drum for each pad.
How is this achieved in cakewalk? Do I need to download these individual wav files per drum and then somehow assign them to each pad inside cakewalk?
I wish to tap away to create different drum patterns myself.
Pretty lost at the moment.
What is everyone else using? VSTs? or download samples?
In the future i would also like to use the MPKMINI pads to also trigger other wav samples, not just drums, so am quite interested to understand how to achieve this.
I'm not wanting to use the MPC Beats DAW as they force you to use C drive which is not suitable for me.
Thanks in advance for the help.

[John Vere]

Not sure exactly what you’re after but most of us use a dedicated drum VST. Like I use Addictive Drums.

Most have lots of different kits available and the kit can be played from either your keyboard controller or a set of pads.

You can also create patterns using the step sequencer or just draw them in PVR view.  

There are lots of free drum VST’s available check out the thread that is below this one. I’ve see plenty of lo fi kits for free. 
 

 

Edited September 18, 2022 by Cactus Music

[abacab]

11 hours ago, Enzotronzo said:

How is this achieved in cakewalk? Do I need to download these individual wav files per drum and then somehow assign them to each pad inside cakewalk?
I wish to tap away to create different drum patterns myself.

You will need a drum VST that you can load your samples into. Cakewalk does not include this, so you will need to get one from a 3rd party. Anything that you can load samples into and trigger from a MIDI controller would work, but some are dedicated to drums.

Here is a pretty basic drum sampler for free. It seems to be quite popular! https://decomposer.de/sitala/

Sitala is a free drum plugin and standalone app: Sitala‘s beauty is simplicity. It‘s fast and musical. Six knobs. Sixteen pads. Drag and drop. Playable like instrument.

 

 

And for non-percussion samples there is the free Grace sampler: https://www.onesmallclue.com/

Grace is a stable and compact sampler with a great streamlined workflow and a strong feature set.

 

https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2015/09/14/grace-sampler-free/

https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2010/09/28/bpb-freeware-studio-best-free-vsti-samplers/

Edited September 18, 2022 by abacab

[Enzotronzo]

thanks for the info, I can finally trigger samples through the akai. 

[Alan Tubbs]

Doesn’t Cake still come with addictive drums?  That is what you need.  I never really know what is still included with Cake.

[abacab]

3 hours ago, Alan Tubbs said:

Doesn’t Cake still come with addictive drums?  That is what you need.  I never really know what is still included with Cake.

No. That was a Sonar bundled license. CbB comes with SI-Drum Kit.

Neither Addictive Drums or SI-Drum allows you to import your own samples to trigger, but you could trigger their internal drum sounds from an MPK. Since drum kits are mapped to MIDI notes, anything that sends a MIDI note + velocity should work OK.

 

Edited September 19, 2022 by abacab

[Alan Tubbs]

Too bad.  I don’t use drum synths that much, but AD pretty good.

[MusicisFreedom]

You probably need samplers. I suggest not overlooking them.

Samplers contain sample packs, and over time, they are becoming a fundamental part of almost every producer's workflow.

You can check here one of the best samplers:
https://inmusician.com/best-sampler-vst-plugins/