Editing Tools (or lack thereof) — By Design

I was genuinely surprised to find the only options for editing MIDI and/or audio is either the Pencil Tool, or the Bracket Tool.

Is this going for the less is more limitation style workflow? Where's everything you need to navigate the MASCHINE software?

 

by design maschine is designed to use with a maschine hardware controller. ofcourse a DAW like protools/live/flstudio has a lot more to offer to manipulate/edit midi and audio. but what are you looking for exactly? and with which controller do you use maschine?

i can do the usual actions right here from my mk3. no need for pencil tool or anything involving the mouse. and this goes from starting a project until the point i want to mix it down into my DAW.

so maybe if you can describe exactly what you want to achieve we can help you further...

 

In a nutshell... Yes.

It has to do with what b-r@nno said, Maschine is designed with a hands-on approach in mind, it offers a different approach to what is the most common way of making/editing music nowadays: Mouse/Keyboard/DAW which can be both a blessing or curse depending on the person using it and their needs. If you're coming from a DAW perspective with a lot of clicking around micro editing you have to do quite some adapting or split your workflow into 2 sections imo.

As you noticed Maschine often doesn't give you the option to choose which tool you want to use: The controller or mouse/keyboard, it chooses for you which can be an arrogant way to go about making software IMO, but again... there's pros and cons to it. Because NI follows this "everything has to be accessible from the (bigger) controllers" rule only basic editing is possible since complex stuff is really hard to implement with a limited set of buttons and knobs without overcomplicating the controllers. Quite a few users like this approach especially those who write their Music in a more performance-oriented way rather than with tons of editing, this would be the crowd that Maschine fits the best imo.

The fact that there are cheap entry-level Controllers might also be a factor preventing a lot of things from being accessible from the software to prevent product cannibalization: "Want more functions? Then buy a bigger controller!". (speculation, of course.)

Personally, I would love the option to be able to do more with keyboard shortcuts, commands, and a mouse even if the more complex editing options weren't available in the hardware... because for some things a mouse or software-only functions are just 10x faster but I dont think the "Maschine way" is changing anytime soon.