How to stop looping a 1 bar pattern in a 4 bar scene

Hi,

Sorry if this question has asked before but I've tried so many ways to overcome it but failed.

Take the project (NuStyle) as an example. In Scene (Bar 17 - 20), the bass (Pattern 1 of B1) was only one bar long but it keep looping even the song reached bar 18 to 20. Sometimes, I only need the bassline appear for 1 bar while the drum pattern keeps going... How can I do this?

As in the attachment, it is kind of misleading that I think Pattern 1 (bass) only played for 1 bar long....... But it keeps looping.

Regards!
Piggy915.

 

duplicate the bass pattern, double in twice and then delete the events from the last three bars.

 

LowPass gives you one option of how to do this, but there are other ways, which may or may not suit your needs better (sometimes they will, sometimes they won't).

You can duplicate the bass pattern and just make the pattern longer (i.e., do not use the "double" command, but just extend the length of the pattern by holding PATTERN and turning the pattern length knob to 4 bars).

You can also look to using additional scenes to get these and other effects in your arrangement, though this method is not suited for this particular situation (due to having multiple longer patterns).


And I see what you mean about it being misleading, but this is the way that Maschine works, at least at the moment: patterns shorter than the length of the scene (which is defined by the longest pattern) will loop indefinitely.

 

good point, don't know I didn't say that, as I do that a lot to.

I double up more though, its easy to delete stuff then add it sometimes. depends on how certain you are that you only want one bar of bass.

 

NI should really steal a feature from logic in this regard and give every pattern a loop on/off switch. Wouldn't that make everything easier?

 

I don't think it would personally. I think it will be a pain turning loops on and off all the time. I like that everything is just ready to go at all times. if you have bits with loop turned off it could take a while to find what s doing what when you get back to a project after a break.

 

Then the new pattern behavior should default to loop on? Simple. And one glance at the arrange view should tell you if loop is on or off if you forget about them later.

 

Easiest solution is press pattern on the controller and adjust the pattern length parameter of the bass group to match the longest pattern. This will create empty bars and it will not loop before the scene ends. You can also do this on the GUI with the pattern length parameter.

 

I wouldn't call that easier at all. With that method if you only have 1 bar's worth of data you have to stop and figure out the length of the longest pattern in the scene and then add the appropriate number of blank bars to the end of your pattern data. Pfft.

Now that maschine has a real timeline it should be possible to not only loop patterns but decide arbitrarily where they should go. Not just at the beginning of every scene.

 

I meant the easiest way with what is there now. Also, it's easy to see on the GUI or the Studio the length of the patterns for the groups and just rotate the knob until it lines up.

But yes, there indeed needs to be improvements to the arranging in general that would help here as well.

 

Firstly, robertge, I do get where you're coming from and agree that some improvements to he arranger are required and others very welcome, but...

You obviously think differently to me when working with music in Maschine because I pretty much always know how many bars the current pattern and how long the current scene is, so there is no need to "stop and figure out" how many bars extra I'd need to add. This is, to my mind, a very easy method indeed and while I wouldn't be against loop on/off, the current possibilities of achieving this are not convoluted at all.

Hopefully the option will come to either combine patterns into new, longer patterns (including the option to insert blank bars) or to use multiple patterns per group/scene, at least according to he kind of grid that is displayed in 2.0. However, for the time being, Maschine does not work his way and when you want to "arbitrarily" put a pattern wherever you want, you must use a scene as a kind of marker for it.


More generally and to no-one in particular...
Some issues about the arranger and other parts of Maschine, while valid, do raise a question of whether users might get more out of Maschine if they embraced what Maschine can do and how it does it instead of wanting/expecting it to be Logic et al. Yes, arranging could be a lot better and smoother, but many things are possible the way it is if you get to grips with the way Maschine handles arrangement.

 

Yeah... a loop on/off tab would help but by default it should still automatically loop shorter patterns.

9 times out of 10 I'm gonna want that short pattern to keep looping... but if I don't wont it to loop give me the ability to turn loop off.

 

It's funny. IMO, Just seems like NI is so against making Maschine a DAW until AKAI does it with MPC. Then you can open your wallets again, boys. LOL

 

I am used to a DAW, and I understood and appreciated the function of scenes and patterns in the previous maschine versions. However it was NI that decided to add an arranger, and such as it is now, it is currently lacking.

 

How exactly do you see that it has changed? Not disputing it has (a little), but how do you feel it's changed?

 

Because there is a real arrange view now that is trying to be DAW-like.

So instead of every scene set as a static size based on the largest pattern, now the sizes are properly represented, so what comes natural for a lot of people is to want to manipulate that data directly.

If you have a 16 bar scene in one group and you want to insert a one-off little pattern on a different group that plays in bar 12 for example, that's a pain in the ass we can all agree.

So if Maschine is trying to be a simple drum sequencer that's one thing, but it's also trying to be a DAW-lite it would seem, and I'm a firm believer of go all the way and "go big or go home." Maybe it'll get there in small steps.

 

I agree that adding a bar anywhere other than the start of a scene is more of a hassle than it needs to be.

But I don't see a big difference in Maschine 2.0's arrange window & 1.0's arrange window. In 2.0 it is clearer that 1 bar is repeated in a 12 bar scene, since that first bar is less transparent than the repeating bars... but unless I'm missing something, I don't think Maschine 2 is trying to be anymore DAWlike than Maschine.

 

Totally agree, I don't think maschine is trying to be a daw either, it has a ways to go to achieve a complete groovebox status first. I think there are allot of users coming to maschine from using software that haven't had he experience of a real groovebox and so don't know about the functionality out there that exist to make complete songs but that doesn't come from a daw. Many maschine users think that when you talk about muting and recording mutes that you're talking about something you need a daw for, but far from it!

 

Thanks all for the replies and I don't know why the arranger behaves like this....

If I have a 4 bar bass line and in order to have some variation along with the drum beat (Group B), I need to create 5 patterns

Pattern 1 = Bass on bar 1 only (rest of the Bars are empty)
Pattern 2 = Bass on bar 2 only (Bar 1, Bar 3 and Bar 4 are all empty)
......
Pattern 5 = Bass on all 4 bars

Not to mention I need to create different Scenes....

Oh man, suppose you are a busy producer who is managing / producing 5 projects simultaneously . By just looking at the arranger window from the software ... It didn't give you a full picture of the song arrangement. You will see a 4 bar red color pattern but it actually contains few notes on bar 3 only. Until you have a clear brain or a good naming convention say "BassLine_03" means Bass on bar 3 only.

Also, placing a pattern must be "start of a scene" is also painful to me..... Why don't NI let the user place their patterns freely on any bar along with the drum beat with mouse click or by the controller ?

I came from Cubase and Studio one and I have an intention to use standalone M-Studio to replace them. So my concept is Linear Linear Linear....

In simple words, I think most of the users will welcome an arranger window with "What you see is what you hear" fashion.

 

You're exactly right. If they give us a new arranger view, it better behave like one.

I don't understand how people can create music with interesting variation and changes in a simple way using maschine, so I have to conclude that most maschine-based music is repetitive. The demos sure are.