Ideas view vs. Arranger

I started out in an mk2 but never delved into Maschine until I got my mk3. I know a significant amount of people hate the Ideas view and want it out of their life....but, idk, I kind if find it a bit more enjoyable.

Does anybody use Ideas view exclusively?? What are the benefits of working in Arranger mode vs ideas??

 

Hello

I sometimes use it now, hated it as ist was new. So the names are clear I use ideas view for the firs jam, make a drum loop - double scene - add bass line - double scene and so on then maybe make scenes with only drums and the 3rd added element...... Then I append it to arranger and of course arrange it. The benefits of arranger is for me the linear view and that the sections play one after another automatically like they in the row. In ideas you have to manually switch scenes witch is of course good for what it is. But I'm really torn between using it or not.

Uwe

 

I was using ideas view almost exclusively until recently, when I decided to try to make use of the arranger and really see what I can do within the current limits of Maschine. I'm experimenting with some new workflows that as of now, make Maschine a bit more usable than I assumed for work beyond sketching. I used Maschine almost exclusively as a "sketchpad" before this, and honestly I don't finish much of what I start unless I feel really good about the sketch. I'm making the change toward using the arranger more to get in the habit of finishing more tracks or at least getting something more akin to an arranged beat. FWIW, I make hip-hop/rap beats, so I don't really need to make very complicated arrangement.

 

Ideas view becomes really useful with Jam. Before that I don't think I ever used it much at all.

 

I came to Maschine with a fair background in 'Live' and suspect that, like most Live users, I just slipped naturally into ideas view. I have never really looked at Arrange view and have basically just used Maschine as a sort of sketch pad. Yes Ideas view and Jam go hand in hand. Most of my music is singer/ guitarist rather than EDM (and I really have no idea as far as a lot of the EDM genres are concerned). As I am travelling for 3 months soon with limits on the gear I can take I might start exploring Arrange view though.

 

I like Ideas view and use it all the time. Its a really great feature that I think Maschine has that others dont.

 

I am on the fence about the Jam....nothing I do is performance oriented. At least in a "live set" sense. So considering the above....am I correct that the biggest benefit of a Jam, for me, would be a more intuitive workflow when arranging/sequencing clips in Ideas view from the hardware??

 

I haven't really explored Jam as much as I should but for arranging, editing, sequencing clips it really improves the workflow for me at least. IMHO they actually screwed up a lot when they changed being able to delete a pattern with just a click which just made deleting patterns in arranger a complete pain in the poopyhole. I'd really miss it now if I didn't have it.

 

Other than sequencing patterns live, one of the things I really love doing with Jam is using the 8 touch strips to control perform effects in real time. Either the various components of one effect or multiple effects. This could be a good use in a studio situation. The hands on control of effects when recording. That and the "strum" type playing they enable. IE: everything you can do on the Mk3 touch strip but 8X. I must admit that's the thing that grabbed me the most when the first release videos came out and that's a long time before I bought my first Maschine, which was soon followed by a Jam. OH and another thing that is easier with the Jam is step sequencing, not that I do much of that.

 

I don't know if I would use the term "more intuitive" when referring to the Jam. It takes a bit of getting used to and has it's quirks. It's enables a lot less mouse clicking and more button pushing. The buttons light up, so yes, I think it should work really well in dark live environments. I dont use it live. I used it mostly for mixing and sequencing. It's kind of like Ableton Push but designed for the Maschine software.

 

Speaking of Push....is the 64 button grid capable of playing keys like the Push?

 

For those of you who do use Ideas View, may I ask what its benefit is to you over the Arranger? Are there things you can do in the Ideas View that you can't do in the Arranger?

The only real benefit I see of the Ideas View are the Jam-oriented perspective on Groups/Patterns (allowing users to see (part of) the Pattern set per Group and, therefore, easier switching between Patterns) and as a space separate to the Arranger (allowing users a sketchpad and a canvas, as its name implies).

 

I don't think there's anything you can do in ideas view that you can't do in arranger. The functionality is practically the same. Really, to me, ideas view is just a different way to visualize and organize the content of a project - it offers nothing new practically speaking (I don't own Jam). Still tho, for my workflow, especially early on in a track, I'm not thinking linearly, and so I find the visualization helpful - I'll often create several scenes off whatever inspiration I'm running with and see what emerges.

What I'm doing now that is new for me, is I'm beginning to use arranger to start bringing a linear structure to what I've laid in idea view, which also impacted the way I use ideas view (e.g. now I create a "transition" version of all of my scenes in ideas view to facilitate linear arranging in maschine). I think that was NI's ultimate goal, but I always avoided the arranger just out of frustration with it's limitations for arranging. Now I'm actually experimenting with linked scenes, adjustable scene length, doubling all patterns to fill the entire scene, effects send group for live group muting with The Finger, and the "make unique" feature, and finding than the arranger is far more usable that I was giving it credit for.

 

the two aren't mutually exclusive, you know.

I write all my sequences in ideas view, and it's fast & fun. It feels very much like using Ableton's session view. I'm not worried about the arrangement of my song, because that will come later. I'm just building all the pieces -- verse 1, verse 2, chorus, breakdown, outro, etc. I can easily jump between them, copy and paste patterns between them, make variations on them, etc. Ideas view is perfect for this. Then I can either decide to build the 'song' in arrangement, or export the pieces to arrange in my 'main DAW'.

If I'm sticking with Maschine and not exporting, I just jump over to my empty arrangement and build up the song by inserting all the different sequences I built in Ideas View. Since they are named appropriately (again, 'verse 1...' etc) I can just insert them into arrangement (using the + button to add a scene, and then choose the scene I want from the drop down) building my song is easy as Pie. If the order of something doesn't work, I can easily remove or swap out pieces. It's all fast as hell, frankly.

I never understood the haters of ideas view. It was slickly implemented and it massively sped up my workflow. Working exclusively in the arrangement page to simultaneously build sequences while also worrying about the overall order of things / arrangement wasn't ideal to me at all, there was always a collision going on. Since I always start by creating separate sequences and worry about the 'arrangement' of them later, as already explained, ideas view makes things much much smoother. It's the Ableton approach, really, session vs. arrangement, though of course Ableton arrangement has way more features and also an -actual- arrangement timeline, like a proper DAW, whereas Maschine's arrangement isn't really that at all. But it works. And since you can insert / remove / swap-out scenes from all the stuff you've made in Ideas View with just a click or two, it's fast enough.

-M

 

Before I got Jam my biggest problem with Ideas View was that for me in order for it to be useful I needed to be able to see Ideas View and Arrange View at the same time which curently is in no way an option. If it were I'm sure more people without Jam would find it more useful.

 

For what reason you want to see both at the same time?

Uwe

 

FWIW, I mostly work mostly in Ideas view at the beginning and keep appending to song view as I go along. I switch to song view when I am almost y done and re-arrange as needed. And then adjust patters as needed. Works for me.

 

Purely for positioning.... If I can't see both at the same time (as you can with Jam) then there's no advantage over using the pattern option on Maschine Controller and whilst that is usable it is just so much quicker and easier with Jam. If I have to keep switching between Ideas and Arranger then why? Makes no sense as it slows everything down.

 

I use ideas view almost only almost nowadays. Arranging in Maschine is honestly kinda bad, so this is when I move on to something else, often Live. In fact, I like the ideas view in Maschine a lot more than the one in Live, mostly because I like the concept of scenes - and I also like the clear connection between Ideas and the Arranger. The disconnect in Live is something I never really stopped being annoyed by.

 

Ableton has scenes too, since they're much, much more advanced the benefits might not be so easily obvious...
There's no disconnect, quite the opposite, you can go back and forth between the two modes, you can even select a section on the arranger and convert it to a new Scene, it automatically creates new clips and everything, pretty amazing.

There are a million things you can do which is awesome, but like with that many options comes a much higher learning curve than with something basic like Maschine, once you learn it it's hard to go back tho..