He disliked reading instruction manuals and wanted to create an intuitive interface that simplified music production.

Linn described the MPC as an attempt to 'properly re-engineer' the Linn 9000.

According to Linn, his collaboration with Akai 'was a good fit because Akai needed a creative designer with ideas and I didn't want to do sales, marketing, finance or manufacturing, all of which Akai was very good at'. His company Linn Electronics had closed following the failure of the Linn 9000, a drum machine and sampler. Linn had designed the successful LM-1 and LinnDrum, two of the earliest drum machines to use samples (prerecorded sounds). The original MPC, the MPC-60, was a collaboration between the Japanese company Akai and the American engineer Roger Linn. Grooveboxes, machines that combined these functions, such as those by E-mu Systems, required knowledge of music production and cost up to $10,000. The MPC was designed by Roger Linn (pictured in 2010), who also created the LinnDrum.īy the late 1980s, drum machines had become popular for creating beats and loops without musicians, and hip hop artists were using samplers to take portions of existing recordings and create new compositions.

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