[Guide] - Cubase + Maschine MIDI Routing & Integration

Oh... Sorry, my memory failed me since I've switched to Ableton a while ago; literally every other daw allows to set a VST as an Input afaik. :S
Uwe303 is correct, you have to make a bunch of Bus sends.
I'll delete my previous post so I dont confuse anyone else reading.

 

D-One, Thanks for this great explanation. I'm new to both Cubase and Maschine, so it probably was more difficult for me than those who are more experienced with these products. I sympathize with the problems some have reported as I've been there and found that everything has to be setup perfectly in both Cubase and Maschine to make this work. Downloading D-One's example from Drop Box helped me understand the final piece of the puzzle. I believe I can put together a reasonable workflow with this setup but I will see how this works out in practice

Since the setup takes attention to detail and can take some time I created an example project with a track for "sounds to MIDI notes" for single shot events like drums and then several other tracks for instruments with "sounds to MIDI channels". Having this example with all the Cubase and Maschine setups in place means I won't have to go through this process for each song.

For those who have run into problems, I found that when things appear impossible to work that deleting the Maschine group and starting again helped me to get it working. While seemingly obvious, when playing the pads on machine you will hear both the sounds on the track selected in Cubase and sound from the corresponding group in Maschine. For this reason I put one instrument per group in Maschine and color coded the Cubase track with the Maschine group.

This was done on a Mac using Cubase 11.04.41 Build 448 and Maschine 2.14.5 (R891).

 

Wanna add my statement of gratitude to D-One for the insanely helpful tutorial

If anyone has any thoughts on this little hiccup I am struggling with, it would be greatly appreciated. I got Mashine with the intention of using it solely as a controller and never planned on using it as a sequencer as sequencing within Cubase just fits my brain better. So I'm very stoked with D-One's Example A1 and use that extensively, however ever since I first got it working I have been needing this other element and am finally asking for help. I don't think it is addressed in the other two examples, or elsewhere in the thread, but forgive me if I am wrong as I often don't understand tech things in the initial read-through.

Anywho, I desperately need to play tuned 808s on the pads of the Maschine. I load up a kit, find a lovely, heavy, long tailed 808ish sound, hit the "KEYBOARD" button on Mashine and go to town in a bassdrum bliss and need to figure out how to get that bangin into Cubase. Its easy with my S88, but so much more productive goin MPC style with the pads on Maschine. Any thoughts?

 

Just follow the example for the B2 Bass Group, but use a Sampler with the 808.

 

You switched to Ableton eh? I have been sitting on the fence about this for... a few years now, lol, and I've installed Ableton Lite and watched some vid tutorials, etc, but... I just have never really get started and rolling with it like I got started with Cubase sx2 ages ago. I've spent SO MUCH time in Cubase that.... its like an instrument for me, and my brain doesnt like the idea of changing it. I would *love* to have the option to use Live, tho...

But. If you make some Live + Maschine, etc, tutorials and docs of the quality you've made for other integration, such as Cubase + Maschine, I bet my growing pains would be MUCH LESS!!

Seriously tho, do you have any recommended resources such as videos or documents that someone genuinely interested in Live might look at? I still dont have the whole workflow in my brain, such as new project, new track, new instrument, route instruments or effects, put down midi, play back midi, route live input, route MIDI controllers, etc.

I put about 2 hours into it a couple months ago and then forgot about it.

 

Me too, i like reaper but I'm a cubase guy, bought the 11 pro update yesterday with a discount and will get 12 on top if it will come out. Reaper would be more than enough for me cause I only mix in my DAW, but I'm so used to cubase. Maybe I'll buy reaper too and switch that way gradually, it's really cheap and you get two major versions.


Uwe

 

Yes, same here, I started with SX2 but In my case it wasn't super hard as I mostly used Cubase for recording vocals / instruments, mixing, post-production, and arrangement details, if I also used it for actual production it would have been much harder to move on. I struggle with the ideia of being stuck with a SW that for whatever reason you don't believe anymore, I feel like some companies actually rely on this "trap" feeling...

I guess it all depends on the reasons you considering switching and how serious you're about it, If you really feel you would be better off with something else you just have to commit and accept you're gonna struggle for a couple of months and you're gonna work a lot slower until you learn the new SW and fully adapt, midway thru working on something you might have to google how to do this or that, which is really a vibe killer and most likely the first few songs you make are gonna be trash... there's no way around that, so you gotta keep in mind the long term eventual benefits. I went thru the same thing when I moved from Reason to Maschine, albeit Maschine is A LOT easier to learn than a modern DAW.

There are a lot of areas where Cubase is far superior to Ableton tho, especially in terms of traditional multi-tracking, so it's really hard to know if it can even work for you without committing first and sticking with it for a while.

One thing that helps to move on is and making a purchase, as you said with demos and such you tend to try it out for a bit then close it when you're struggling... and then forget about it. Spending some $ can force you to justify it.

TBH most things arent this complicated (as integrating Maschine into a DAW) that justify an in-depth technical guide, at least if you mostly work ITB which is my case.

I never changed workflow much when changing software, they're all sort of the same once you learn the basics, the only thing that might require quite some adaptation is 'Session View' in case that's a reason for you to be considering Live but even that is pretty much the same as 'Ideias View' in Maschine just a ton more advanced.. What really changes is the tools to do small things, QoL features, etc, all put together is a lot of info but you learn that as you go/need.
I would try to find some producers you like on twitch, the number of producers there have been increasing and while watching someone make music real-time can often be boring you also learn tons of tricks, personally since I don't have time or patience for live streams I follow YT recap channels such as Sol State: https://www.youtube.com/SolStateMusic
Lots of DAW's are used by again with basics you can apply anything to virtually any modern daw.