Ableton users with Maschine - workflow

I'm hoping this thread will be more of a discussion where people will share what workflows are the most productive for them-as opposed to some Maschine VS Ableton, etc, thread...

I'm mainly an Ableton guy (though I do use Cubase a lot as well as I often need to transcribe midi stuff), but I have fallen in love with NI sounds. I now have a Komplete Kontrol, Ultimate 10, and a Maschine Mikro. But still-at the heart of my studio is Ableton as my DAW. I totally love the sounds of several of the maschine expansion kits and I am trying to find the best workflow ways to work with those expansions within Ableton. The frustrating thong for me is that it feels like the maschine kits are really trying to force us to use Maschine as a DAW. Even with the ability to drop midi clips into Ableton, the whole process feels really slow and-frankly is a real energy killer for me.

It seems like I'm forced to choose between speed and efficiency (ableton and Push) or great sounds and massive frustration as my project grows and I want to do edits, arrangements, automation, effects, etc (Maschine ->Ableton).

In my ideal world, I'd be able to buy a Maschine expansion pack and open each song as an ableton project where the kit is mapped to a drum rack and the individual instruments are on their own ableton track so I could use the sounds of the Maschine song to create my own song-using the included kit song as a template if I wanted to...

I'd love to hear about other peoples workflows and how you have overcome this bottleneck in productivity?

 

Mbira check this out-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sf03tBWb9p8

I use to use maschine with live, but switched to studio one.

 

Right on. Thanks for sharing that. That could be a good workflow for those that want to work with audio clips and assemble pieces in ableton. For me personally. I like tweaking the instruments and working within midi until all the synth parameters, etc, are doing exactly what I want and then I tend to bounce down at the end of a project...

 

I have to admit the drums of the maschine expansions are Superior than anything that I heard in Ableton live ( but I'm a rookie with Live 9 ).
Usually I just use one instance of maschine in Ableton, I create the pattern in maschine and then drag and drop the midi in an clip.
I don't know yet how to create a second instance of maschine without make them play in the same time...( rookie I said )

BTW great tutorial above .Thx @skinsfandc

 

I wish they were actual audio files... I do feel the same as you. I want to just use the samples and not use Maschine. To me it's still a big clumsy toy. I do a lot of production on it, but transferring to Ableton is super annoying. A lot of the times I just wanna drag in the audio files of samples and basically arrange it all on the Timeline of Ableton. Can't do that with NI because they don't give you the actual samples they give you nki. files I think? So your forced to use their plugins, like kontakt (which I despise), Maschine, and Komplete. I think Komplete is the best. It's light, it's dependable. And you can work with the midi right from Ableton. I wish Maschine was like that...

 

I've gone so far as to create individual midi tracks in ableton for a specific Maschine expansion song. Then you send individual midi channels from each ableton track into Maschine. That way you can play each maschine instrument with push. The problem is:
It takes forever. You have to go to each maschine sound or kit and route the specific midi channel to the specific instrument. You have to do the same thing in ableton. Also the drum kit is then just treated as an instrument in Push and not like on a drum rack. I also had an issue with a couple of synths not wanting to play back for some reason though if I switched the synth then it would work. Long story short-it was a total timesuck and destroyed any creativity I had ready to make music.

 

Eddie-look at the above video that skinsfan posted. If you are just wanting to work with the audio files, then that will give you exactly what you are wanting.

 

As for my workflow. I use it as a plugin, with Mackie controler mode. That way I can stop and play from the Maschine itself. I make my patterns and group there then drag each individual sound to Ableton. Just solo a sound, like pad 1 Kick for example. Then cycle through your patterns with the hardware and drag each into a clip slot in session view. Then add an Audio track to ableton and do the same for pad 2. That way when you're done, if you press the play button for a scene in session view it will be the exact pattern you had in Maschine. Then you can play around a bit or just shift click and drag into your arrangement all at once.

 

He shows how to export a pattern or song audio files. Which I know. I'm talking about all these sounds come from somewhere. They are stored in nki files though instead of just one-shot wav files. So I can't go through ableton and just pull a kick from some group that I like within Maschine. I would have to open the plugin, put a not down, then drag the audio.

 

In the second half, he shows having the samples in folders that he browses to in Ableton...To get to maschine .wav files, go to (on a mac) Shared->Maschine 2 Library (or the name of the expansion kit)->Samples. That has all the organized samples for the kits. You can put that in Places in Ableton and browse to it and hot swap, etc.

 

DUDE! Oh my god!! That's exactly what I wanted. I feel like I just found the holy grail. Thank you soooo much for that. I didn't know they had it hidden in there. This will make my life so much easier as I can drag into operator or drum rack now

 

All of this is incorrect, but just go read my reply in the other thread (re: using Maschine's samples elsewhere) for the answers you seek...

 

Man, finding a files is simple. Just right-click on a sample and use „Find in Finder” – it will take you right to your file.

 

I wanted the whole sample bank tho. So I can work with them from Ableton browser