A Tradition of Innovation
For the DJs and electronic musicians at Sweetwater, Akai Professional has been a household name during the majority of our careers, if not our lives. It's safe to say that modern electronic music owes a lot of its evolution to the Akai samplers that dominated the market for decades. Their MPC line alone transformed the growing hip-hop movement and shaped the way producers created EDM. While there are many other players in the world of sampling and sequencing today, Akai Professional continues to pave the way with new and innovative technologies.
Akai Professional: The Beginning
It all began in 1986, when Akai Professional released the S900, a 12-bit, 8-note polyphonic sampler that changed the way producers approached sound design. Now it was easy to upload your own samples and create playable instruments from them, and the X7000 keyboard sampler released later that year made it even easier. The S series continued to evolve and thrive well into the '90s, and each new model made sampling even more accessible.
MPC: The Box that Changed Music Production
While the S series may have revolutionized the sampling world for more mainstream music, the MPC (Music Production Center) series gave rise to entirely new genres of electronic music. When the MPC60 first hit the market in 1988, electronic music changed forever. This notably affordable sampler (designed in large part by Roger Linn) featured a revolutionary 16-pad layout and a groove-oriented sequencer, which provided nontraditional music producers — largely hip-hop/rap artists — with a comfortable way to create beats.
The Industry Standard
At the same time, the early MPC models' powerful sequencers also accommodated linear songwriting. That quickly made them the industry standard for MIDI-based music creation adopted by every type of electronic music producer and formed the background for such genres as house and trance, as well as a broad range of EDM genres. As the MPC line progressed, this sampling capability expanded, only to be superseded by the advent of computer-based sequencing.
Continuing to Break New Ground
While the MPC lineage continues to evolve even to this day, Akai Professional didn't stop there. They were among the first to cater to the emerging computer-based beat- and groove-production market, with their highly popular APC line, which many Sweetwater artists still use. Today, Akai Professional's MIDI controllers cover a broad range of pad-based models, MIDI keyboards, and DJ gear, among others. Their quality and innovation continue to make them a popular choice among Sweetwater electronic musicians.
