Anyone using MAschine2 & Live 9?...some tips needed plz

OKay, I've upgraded to Maschine 2.4.6 and I have Live 9.1 , I'm still making tracks each day in Maschine but I want to arrange in Ableton live.
I've figured out how to route the midi and audio in separate Ableton midi and audio tracks but i'm not sure yet how to record and separate different patterns into Live.

Is anyone out there using this MAschine and Live combination? Any help would be great as progress is impossibly slow for the last few weeks

 

This may be of help: http://maschinetutorials.com/maschine-2-2-update-recording-midi-into-ableton-live-9/

 

If you have PUSH this works very well also and is pretty straight forward. It allows you to load Maschine Groups into Live drum racks and record them using PUSH. Once you set it up and save a Live Template you are good to go. It can all be a little daunting with the many ways to record Maschine. I still scratch my head adjusting faders in PUSH and Maschine simultaneously. This all could be simplified if NI chose to..

http://tekmonki.com/2014/01/22/sequencing-maschine-drum-tracks-with-ableton-push-controller-update/

 

...I use them in a combination, in which I strictly devide tasks between the two. I use Live mostly to compensate Maschine's deficits. In my case the arranger, automation and audio tracks. Mixing, FX and the midi parts (the actual music) stay in Maschine (or in serveral instances of Maschine) and Live is just sort of laid around this. That way I still can use Maschine's controller for all the creative work (playing & mixing) and avoid going back & forth between the two (e.g. sending midi notes for drums from Live into Maschine always made little sense to me - Maschine already has a midi sequencer, so why bypass it for no good reason).

I only use midi clips in LIve to trigger Maschine scenes, so that I can avoid using Maschine's arranger and use Live's timeline instead. I use Live's automation to automate Maschine parameters and with that I can go beyond Maschine's scene paradigm (i.e. automating parameters over several scenes).

I use Live's audio tracks and freezing for parts that eat too much CPU. Depending on the track I use either one or serveral instances of Maschine. If it's a bigger project with lots of instruments and a high CPU load (my laptop's quite slow), I use serveral instances and I devide them into musically meaningful sections like e.g. one instance just for drums & percussion, one for brass, one for strings, one for keys etc.. Then I can use Live to freeze whole instrument sections. (Theretically you could also drag & drop audio of Maschine scenes into Live's audio tracks and automate switching the Maschine plug-in on and off at these segments, but I don't practice that method.) Another advantage of using these sections is that I have the material already grouped so that I can use Live for a stem export.

That's basically it. Hope, it can be helpful.

 

Loachm - I'm intrigued by your Maschine/Live workflow. So all your actual VST instruments reside in the instances of maschine that are loaded into Live's tracks? What I don't understand is how you freeze tracks in Live if the instrument (VST) is generating the sound in Maschine ? I thought the freeze feature would only work if the sound itself was being generated in Live's environment ? For example, if you have Massive loaded into a Live track, and freeze it, it will bounce the midi into audio. If you have Massive loaded in Maschine as an instance in a Live track, and using a midi clip to trigger that sound in massive, does freezing it work the same ?

Regardless, I've struggled to find a good Maschine/Live workflow that works for me. I'm currently just using the drag'n'drop method, where I essentially build-out midi patterns of my song in maschine (standalone) using multiple groups and a few scenes. Once the song is substantially completed, I drag the patterns as audio into Live's tracks, then arrange, automate, master...etc. This method works pretty well but it can get tedious if you have numerous sounds/patterns that all individually have to be ported over to Live. However, once I do get everything in Live, its really fun to 'assemble' the track using various combinations from Session view to move audio clips into the Arrange view. From there, I can automate, dissect, add fx and manipulate the audio stems in Live's arranger to achieve things that are very difficult to achieve in Maschine's arranger. If I need to change a sound or pattern, I can recall my maschine project and then port any changes back to Live again. This works pretty well but for some reason it seems like it could be more efficient.

Louis- I honestly don't see NI making it any easier to use maschine with controllers other than their own. While PUSH is an amazing controller, NI wants you to buy their controllers to use with maschine. I suspect this is the same reason you cannot purchase maschine software without a controller. You need to use it with a maschine controller. If they made it too easy, people would just go buy the software or the cheapest hardware (i.e Mikro) to get the software, then use any 3rd party controller they want (i.e. Push) to operate maschine. It just doesn't seem like a wise business move for NI to sell hardware units.

 

Since updating to 2.4.6, I am really digging the audio export by scene. I then import these scenes in Live session view and go from there.... I've been trying many variations of Live + Maschine with audio + midi routings and all that, but I tend to abandon them sooner or later. Too complex and CPU heavy. I tend to be the most creative with Maschine standalone, at least for the general idea of the track. Then move somewhere else when it's time to create a more complex arrangement.

Let's see how long I last on this export method

 

I haven't played with the scene export feature yet. I'm curious though, lets says you have 5 patterns in one group, but you only use 3 of them in your scenes . How do you get those 2 additional patterns into Live ? Or do you only work with the scenes you export into Live ?

 

yeah, only patterns which belong to scenes are exported. For the others, you might have to drag and drop

 

Ah, so either create a lot of scenes or drag/drop a lot of patterns. Choose your poison, I guess.

 

Well, the scene export makes sense when you have already fleshed out the basic sections of the track, each in its own scene. Then it's quite convenient to take the audio exports, add them to your DAW to recreate these sections and then arrange from there to your liking. This is imo better than just exporting a bunch of patterns and then you have to figure out which goes with what....

 

loachm
Thank's for your input.. Your method sounds interesting,
I wish I could get my head around your way but there are a few things I don’t understand.

So, mostly all of you tracks are in Maschine? and if so how are you automating them from Live or is this just for the audio tracks?
You say you use them in combination, do you mean Push and Maschine or Live and Maschine?
Only using midi clips to trigger Maschine, are you using Program or Midi notes for this in the Arrange or Session?
Any chance for a Live and Maschine Plug screen shot? That would help a lot. (Thank you if you can..)
We are all always looking for a smoother workflow to control the project,

D_J_K

Thanks, actually what I meant was for NI to make recording the Maschine plugin to a DAW a little more simplified.
(not to use other controllers for Maschine operation..)

 

...guys, I'll post a project with explanations tomorrow - cheers!

 

...I've reworked a factory library project, as if I had done it with Maschine & Live to demonstrate the workflow. Writing the explanations (the why's and dont's) might take a bit, though. I'll post everything tonight or tomorrow at the latest...

 

Thank you! Don't rush but glad to hear something in the works..

 

Really looking forward to seeing your method loachm! Thanks for doing this.

 

…thanks for your interest! I’m a little under the weather currently with a having a slight fever (while it’s almost 86 degrees outside), so I didn’t write what I’d actually wanted to, but rather revised something that I’ve written earlier to explain this method – so, sorry, that it’s still quite long…

So…

I recreated that factory project as a Live arrangement to show how I would have done it in Live if it were my track. I usually start in Maschine and create some patterns. When I know that I'll turn it into a track, I take it to the DAW. What I'm doing there is that I basically group the parts of the projects into musically meaningful sections using multiple instances of Maschine. Usually I end up having a couple of instances and, like this demo project, it can happen that one Maschine instance can only contain one instrument (like the sub bass). So one Maschine instance may be for the drums, one for the basses, one for synths etc. (Note that I separated the staccato strings from the “pad” sounds – I would also devide instruments with regards to what they’re playing).

In some cases doing this may seem like some sort of waste or ineffeciency, it requires a bit of work and a slightly heavier CPU load in the beginning (sometimes not – haven’t figured out the reason, yet), but having these sections help me to maintain control while I'm composing and they make things more efficient in the course of the production.

Almost everything still happens in Maschine - midi sequencing and mixing, as I like to keep using Maschine's workflow. I only use Live for features, that Maschine doesn't have or where Maschine sucks, as I want to avoid any confusion about what I do with which application. And since I've drawn that line I'm not running into so many problems anymore. So Live is just doing the sequencing of Maschine scenes and provides the audio tracks and automation curves.

But actually every major DAW can do this (maybe except for the scene jamming part) and maybe if NI would have communicated solutions like this, the whole argument about whether Maschine is or should be a DAW wouldn’t have happened. For me Maschine is an instrument with some sequencing features (just like Live had been advertised as a sequencing instrument prior to v4).

Anyway, benefits for me using Live as an add-on are (and you don’t need the full version, the “free” bundled version Live Lite can do this, too):

a) when I run into CPU trouble, I can freeze instances

b) I can automate the things I like and don't have to perform several takes with the controller when I don't want to (but sometimes I want to perform)

d) I can automate things beyond scene boarders, as I'm not tied to Maschine's paradigm anymore (that’s why I did the filter sweeps at the beginning)

c) I can even jam with scenes, if I wanted to. Usually I know how I want to arrange things. (I’d recommend only using Live scenes, not Live clips, as there are some things to pay attention to)

e) I can have audio tracks and a freeze function and I can use whichever I need in certain production situations

f) because of having the instruments in meaningful sections I already have everything ready for creating stems

g) I'm not a big user of Maschine kits, but since the main work stays inside of Maschine, working with the kits (switching them) still functions. I don't get why people send midi to Maschine and route the single audio streams back to the host and mix there. It makes things more complicated - Maschine already has mixer and a midi editor (the one in Live really isn't better) - so why double things. Doubles just the work.

h) all of this also could be "future-proof", as I can port these Live projects back to a single Maschine project, if I want to or once Maschine is mature enough and has what I'm missing. For that reason I also use a Maschine FX instance as a master effect rack and try to stay with Maschine as long as possible (unless I decide using Live more again and the I probably don't care). Maschine has four audio inputs that can be addressed in Live – maybe that’ll offer interesting possibilities, too. Ever considered Maschine as a comprehensive effect rack that allows you to store (and thus reuse) parameter automations? Anyway, of course this porting back thing would also require a bit of work (e.g. recording the automation curves back into Maschine as midi data), but archiving projects always is.

I know some may regard this as a huge work-around - I have been told so in the forum and I agree that all of this should be possible just in Maschine. But it isn't and I don't like hitting walls all the time, so I have to search for my own solutions. I'm trying to do this to stay independent of the developments and in order to be able writing music instead of feeling the only thing I can do is to complain (I'm not judging, I rather sympathise ). I just want to be able to do something and not feel like a turtle on the back, so I experimented with my workflow and adapted to this method – it takes a bit getting used to, but currently this method works and I hope it will continue to do so.

Don't let the use of this project as a showcase give you a wrong impression. If your projects in general also use as little elements as this one, all of what I described may seem like overkill, so that's why I don't know if this workflow might be useful to you. And if you have fast computers, you probably don't have to care as much as I have to (old laptop). But I need to do that as I don't use one shots and loops a lot, but rather tend to layer a lot of instruments and effects to create my own sounds. I also always use Kontakt Instruments and Guitar Rig and using many instances of them can get very CPU-heavy. For me one Maschine plug-in instance in Live works more like an instrument rack with built-in midi sequences and I usually have groups with several instruments and routings in it. So, one Maschine instance can get quite big.

Just a few remarks on the Live project - I have included the original Maschine project so that you can compare it with the recreation and the single Maschine instances in Live - take a look especially at the differences between the “arrangements” in the single instances and compare them with the original arrangement. It’s funny that it’s called “Arranger” in Maschine. It isn’t, nor it’s a sequencer. It’s actually just a scene list that is executed sequentially.

Every scene is assigned to a midi note (or program change number) – I prefer midi notes, so that I can merge multiple Maschine scenes in one midi clip in Live (see, I don’t have to care about not being able to merge Maschine scenes anymore). The Maschine scenes are sequentially assigned to midi notes, starting from C-2. Pay attention to the position of you scene in Maschine – if you have, for instance, four scenes and the forth one is on position six, you won’t be able to trigger it with midi note D#-2, but rather with F-2 – this can be confusing at first. So don’t have empty Maschine scenes in between and you’ll be fine (or name your scene according to the corresponding midi note).

I also recommend that the midi trigger clips have the same length like the Maschine scenes (i.e. the longest pattern of all of your Maschine instances) to avoid displacements between your patterns. That’s why I would avoid jamming with single Live clips (unless they have all the same length). But if you like polyrhythms or displacements, it might actually be quite interesting. However, don’t blame it on Maschine or Live, if things get out of hand.

To understand the concept – in order to sequence patterns in Live, the patterns have to be in the scene list in Maschine. So think of the Maschine “Arranger” just as a pattern container now, all the sequencing/arranging happens in Live. And you can also work non-linear if you jam with the scenes.

You also have to have something to stop Maschine scenes. Once triggered Maschine scenes will loop continuously until they get a new trigger. That’s why I always have these empty patterns as silence scenes on scene 1 because I know I will always need them. I use this empty pattern, because Live might have a problem, if the scene is empty (I noticed it might lose sync after 32 bars, if the first scene is empty, but this only happens in Live, it didn’t happen in Cubase). I would use also use these silent patterns, as, although you could also work with switching off the plug-in via automation in Live, this wouldn’t work, if you’d want to jam with scenes, so I came up with these silence clips (clips with a Device off command wouldn’t also work well as they would kill of release phases or reverb tails).

Anyway, that’s it. Sorry, that it’s a lot to read - if you have any further questions about the setup and how it works, I'm happy to answer them.

 

@loachm - Hope you are feeling better this week. I finally had some time over the weekend to study your Maschine/Live template, so I wanted to provide some feedback, and share some of my ideas using maschine in standalone.

First off, big thanks for sharing this with us -- its always interesting to see other people's workflows and ideas . Nice little tune you have there too !

So my first impressions of your template. It's so CLEAN ! Everything is so well-organized , properly-named and visually appealing . I like how you used a midi effect rack to organize and call the different scenes from Maschine. Thats a neat idea that I may need to borrow for something else. I also really like your choice of categories for the sounds and instrument types. Just the right amount of categories to keep the right sounds and instruments together, but not too many to over complicate it having more instances of Maschine than needed. This is definitely an 'outside of the box' approach, more so than any other Maschine/Live workflow I've ever seen . I can tell you put a lot of thought into it. Really good job.

I read your entire write-up as well, which was important for me to really get a complete understanding of what you intended to achieve with this.

Since I've never been a fan of using Maschine as a VST in another DAW, I've developed my own template based on maschine in standalone that I can use to assemble core elements of a song , and use to either arrange in maschine or to port all samples into Live for arranging there.


So in terms of workflow, I'm going challenge you on few things based on my maschine standalone workflow. Please only take this with a grain of salt, as I am simply doing this to share ideas and encourage discussion. I'm not trying to advertise that anyone's workflow as being better than the other.

True, but I accomplish the same thing in Maschine without much trouble. Using carefully named and pre-prepared patterns , I bounce audio by draging'n'dropping each sound into a "bounce slot" which are sound slots within the same group. Each "bounce slot" is essentially just a container to drop an exported sound, with a sustained C3 midi note pattern so that I can quickly play back the bounced sample in context of the mix. From there, I adjust volume, etc of the bounce to achieve the same leveling and mix that the instrument had. I then bypass the VST and leave the original midi patterns intact. Takes less than 1 minute per bounce. And because all bounces remain with the same group, any FX on that group channel remain intact.

I can "unbounce" the instrument later by simply activating the VST and recalling the original midi pattern(s). I can then manipulate the instrument or change, add, etc. midi patterns as needed, then re-bounce.

Each instrument gets its own group, with each group having 3 distinct sections. Each section is essentially just a container for each part of that instrument (similar to your Intro, Main A, Main B...etc). Each section has capacity for 4 audio bounces, again all neatly organized and color-coded in 3 pattern banks. Each bank has room for 12 more patterns as well which I typically sub-divide between midi-instrument and bounced depending on the track.

Not sure I'm fully understanding this, can you explain more ? When you say automate, do you mean having better control of what patterns go into the scenes that are controlled by Live ? Or do you mean automating parameters in Live ?

This I totally agree Live is better at automation. Maschine still has a lot of room for improvement in this regard. This is one of the main reasons I port my samples into Live before I arrange a song . Live's automation tools are really good.

My workflow in maschine standalone obviously cannot resolve this in any way other than porting things over to Live. But, here's what I struggle with in your workflow. Besides the one example where you have automated maschine to fade into the song, what else can you automate ? What about automating maschine's sampler or 3rd party plug-ins ? Just looking at Maschine as an instance in Live, I really don't see any parameters that can be automated globally .. I suppose you can add Live's audio or midi effects to automate some things. But what if I wanted to automate a plug-in's paratemeters like the attack knob in Massive or a cutoff filter in Sylenth1 ? With this workflow, all your instruments still reside in Maschine, so any plug-in automation is limited within maschine, correct ?

I definitely would consider this if maschine just had better automation tools. Although Live's effect rack does this pretty well too, and you get its automation tools, so I really don't see the benefit . Am I missing something here ?

Again, just playing some more devil's advocate here. I don't see how this workflow eliminates the age-old issue of pattern looping through the length of the scene in maschine. In this workflow you are only utilizing Live to trigger things in Maschine, so Live really isn't doing anything with audio itself and the arranger is essentially just a series of midi clips that trigger various scenes (or pattern groups) from Maschine. The Live arrangement is simply just 4 bar midi clips that must remain the same length of the scenes in maschine. For me , this takes away many advantages of Live's arranger in being able to freely manipulate the audio/midi patterns in any fashion. In my workflow, once I've gone through the arduous task of porting all samples into Live , I can at least take advantage of Live's arranger by cutting, copying, merging, extending, etc. the audio clips while building out the arrangement. This is possibly where we have different needs or priorties in our personal workflows that separate us as muscians .

I have always had this idea for a Maschine/Live workflow that takes advantage of the patterns and scene structures in Maschine, but only sends midi back to Live which then triggers the instruments. Quite the opposite of loachm's workflow in that all the sound generation, arranging and mixing occur in Live, and Maschine is essentially just a big midi bank that takes advantage of the pattern and scene structures. You could have up to 16 channels/groups streaming midi from Maschine into Live, and then each of those routed to the corresponding instruments. Yesterday, I got as far as getting one channel of midi routed out of maschine, but for some reason as soon as I add any other instrument, maschine suddenly stops sending midi (or Live stops receiving it). I'm not sure if this a limitation is with Live only allowing one VST path folder (which I hate). Who knows. The other limitation is that I believe Live does not segregate incoming midi signals by channel. I think it merges all incoming midi into one channel. This makes this workflow virtually impossible since all incoming midi signals would need to be routed by channel to their corresponding instruments. So there goes my idea.

Anyway, sorry for the long post. I hope it encourages more experimentations

 

...thanks - it's better now, but seems to be a very persistent infection and it's fading out slower than I hoped. (10 days - what the...) The tune is not mine, it's a factory project. I used it, so that everybody could open it. I actually didn't put that much thought into deviding it into sections - I guess, it's more about knowing what parts you'd "mix" together when you would be creating stems. But that's probably a whole different story - in short, the instruments, the frequency ranges and what's actually being played are the guidelines - that last one is the reason why I separated the staccato from the sustained strings. I probably would have devided the drums into two sections, but I wanted users of Live Lite also to be able to open the project.

The midi racks in Live are great for drum maps or key switch maps - wish Maschine had something similar, but I guess, we're supposed to buy Light Guide keyboards

...if we're not challenging each other, we wouldn't find out new things, would we? So, thanks for taking the time to read everything & write this!

I use that one sound / one group approach as well and I also record little bits into the free sound slots. But using Live at one point in the productions doesn't happen because of one of these aspects I mentioned, but because of all of them. And I agree, it's possible to compensate CPU-load with these little bounces here and there and I do that, too, but for me using Live works better at some point (when I need to do bigger strokes while still needing to work on details in context with all the rest). So, arranging and automating are much faster and more flexible then and some instruments/effects can get so CPU-heavy and/or I'm doing such intricate stuff (playing with velocities, nudging notes), that freezing a couple of sections simply works better for me. Upgrading the computers would help, but currently I'm a lot on the road, so I hardly use my desktop anymore and I'm not investing in a killer laptop, so this is just my personal, current workaround.

But that workflow you've described also works very well for things, which involve a lot of resampling and/or parallel processing. For instance, it's perfect for designing D&B sounds, when you resample, chop it up, process and sample it over and over again - from one sound to the next such a group can become a version history of a sound, which is quite useful.

To automate any plug-in that's loaded in Maschine via Live the parameter has to be mapped to a Maschine controller. Then this mapped parameter needs to be enabled for host automation in Maschine (the triangle on the left in the centre panel of Maschine, then Automation and Host - or Midi, if you want to). And then you need to register these controls in Live by clicking on the triangle left of the wrench icon of the Maschine device in Live. Activate configure and then click on the mapped parameters in Maschine. These will appear in Live and you can have a total of 256 parameters there. You can now access these parameters in Live's clip automation, as well as in the timeline. You can record automation into Maschine, but that works only with midi automation, not host automation. And it only works, if you record the automation of a CC first and assing that to a Maschine controller afterwards. We had a discussion about that in the forum here:

https://www.native-instruments.com/forum/threads/modulation-in-maschine.231728/page-2

I also use Live's audio tracks in addition, if I need to do some audio arrangements. And, you're right, it doesn't change how Maschine's pattern list works & behaves, but for me it can make things more flexible. That's why I use these silence clips. They allow me to simulate blank spaces in an arrangement and thus I'm also able to place a one bar pattern of one Maschine instance right into the middle of a 16-bar pattern of another instance. That way I can arrange more freely. I admit, it requires some preparation and some wrapping your head around and of course, I would also like it to work better and more simple and everything, but it doesn't. However, doing it that way I found that I wrote more music again and became less upset, so it seems to work at least for me.

But I hear you with your struggles - finding a workflow isn't a piece of cake and still the programs sometimes don't make it easier, but rather complicate things. I'm annoyed with Live with a lot of things and also with Maschine and I'm still a bit pissed that neither Live 9 nor Maschine 2 solved the question to decide just for one (I rather lean towards NI, because I want a tight integration with their instruments, but, quite frankly, not the joke that KK currently is). But I concentrated on Live's and Maschine's strengths and not their weaknesses and, interestingly enough, they can complement each other quite well, if I draw certain lines. And so I'm quite happy about the fact, that I have adapted to ways that I can, very relaxed, look forward to Live 10 and Maschine 3 (at least I think I will ), because I might not need them so desperately.

 

Awesome tips.

 

...íf you own a push i recommend this: http://www.audiomodder.com/ ...