Is it really practical to produce an entire track in Maschine?

These are precisely the issues. Creating the patterns is fantastic, fun, quick and intuitive, but combining these into a full arrangement within Maschine is far from ideal. I'm still getting my workflow down as far as DAW integration. For production and library music I need to keep the flexibility of changing the tempo, so not terribly fond of rendering the patterns to audio until final mix down because utilizing timestretching can introduce artifacts. I like to have a visual representation of relative lengths of patterns, scenes, which midi drag into DAW gives me.

 

We Need A Spectral Analyzer B4 Timestretch Cuz Da Beatz B Bangin My Mpc Has Dat Maschine Sux

 

If I just want to arrange the tracks I have created, I drag and drop the .wav tracks onto the FL playlist, and if I want to monitor the sounds a route them to a mixer track. I can use them together or separately, no issues here lol

 

Ok, neat...so WAV is the way for you. Cool, that helps.

Just one question - once you are in FL, and have begun arranging, and adding more sounds, do you ever find that you may want to tweak the EQ/reverb/whatever of, say, your snare drum in a loop - and since it has been rendered as audio on import, you cannot do this?

(well, not without going back to Maschine, anyway)

This sort of issue is my main reservation about importing as audio. Is it ever a problem for you.

By ‘them’ do you mean your Maschine groups?
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No offence taken.

Yes, the ears will always have the final say, but my understanding is that a spectral analyser can help you in instances where parts of the frequency spectrum are getting a little cloudy, or muddy - and help you decide where best to roll off frequencies to resolve/improve the matter.

I’m still learning, so I’m keen to hear if you think differently.

Sure, it is easy to hear the distortion on a peaking digital signal, but I keep reading that you should keep various channels under ‘-x db’ etc in order to maintain headroom as your track builds - to ultimately leave headroom for mastering.

Is that not part of the reason for using meters, and keeping your levels at a certain point? Or am I completely on the wrong path?
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No offence taken.

Yes, the ears will always have the final say, but my understanding is that a spectral analyser can help you in instances where parts of the frequency spectrum are getting a little cloudy, or muddy - and help you decide where best to roll off frequencies to resolve/improve the matter.

I’m still learning, so I’m keen to hear if you think differently.

Sure, it is easy to hear the distortion on a peaking digital signal, but I keep reading that you should keep various channels under ‘-x db’ etc in order to maintain headroom as your track builds - to ultimately leave headroom for mastering.

Is that not part of the reason for using meters, and keeping your levels at a certain point? Or am I completely on the wrong path?

 

I do all of my EQ work in FL, and if i have to change up a snares reverb/effects, i would either drag and drop the changed effects from Maschine, or have a dry sample/WAV in FL and work with my FX chain in FL for advanced editing. once you drag and drop, the WAV is what it is, until you change it in another host or redo your drag and drop.

and by 'them' i mean standalone Maschine, or Maschine as a VST

 

dude you always say this ****, I respect your opinion but you don't respect anybody elses, why do you say most users? most users have been asking for those simple capabilities, the ridiculous thing is that you do use those simple concepts in making your own music, you just don't want maschine to be capable of doing so with-in itself, but you have no problem with running maschine with your daw and doing all of these simple concepts like mutes, tempo, map, better automation and arranging, its just oxymoronic to always be telling people who come from platforms or hardware machines that are capable of doing these things that they're is no need for it in maschine. how you gonna hate on better muting in maschine that **** just doesn't make any sense, now personally I don't care that you like doing mutes in your daw and refuse to think about doing them in maschine cause that's your thing, but you just posted that you know people have their own way of doing **** so why not lend a helping voice to folks who would like to do simple things in maschine instead of discouraging them.

 

:lol::lol::lol:
Nobody's hating on "better muting". Mind your own assumptions and think before putting words into other people's mouths.

 

For me, Maschine isn't really capable of creating whole songs yet. It has no concept of "global" at all. What I usually do in my workflow at some point is record all kinds of knob movements across the whole song. Say I have some software synths that I want to record filter changes over time or even some of Maschine's internal effects. This seems to be impossible in Maschine on a global basis.

Automation only works per pattern. So what I would have to do is basically make a pattern so long it spans across the whole song, which will result in whichever scene that pattern is in ending up as long as the whole song as well. At that point I can't switch or arrange scenes anymore at all because that will stop the long pattern with all its automation.

Sadly I don't know if NI will ever implement any global automation, or wether it's even possible at all without completely reworking the whole sequencer.

 

But you can automate beyond pattern/scene borders from your DAW?

 

Since this topic discusses the practicality of producing entire tracks in Maschine I don't think it's relevant. But sure yeah, it's possible. At that point I wouldn't run any VST synths or such in Maschine at all though, but in the DAW instead.

There are some workflow issues using Maschine inside a DAW imo, but that's another topic.

 

oh ok my bad........:|

 

What happens if you want to apply EQ (or compression) to just one drum sound, and not your whole audio loop of drums?

Say, for example, after importing your rhythmic loops, you start adding extra elements to your track. You then decide that your snare, for example, needs a little more punch to cut through the mix.

Do you then have to go back to Maschine, re-do the EQ on the snare (or choose another) and re-import your audio back into FL - to then see how it fits within the mix of your track?

Does this result in a lot of jumping back and forth between the two applications? I would imagine that could get pretty annoying.

 

as i said elsewhere, if you solo a Sound in a Group, and can therefore Drag n Drop individual elements. i would never Drag n Drop a whole if it had the main Drum elements of my Track. i would only Drag Drop a whole Beat if it was being used as a tops loop or additional layer.

sowari

 

Ah, cool. That makes sense.

Do you then group each bit imported audio from your rhythm, so that all your drum sounds can be effected either individually, or as a group in Ableton?

 

i prefer using Logic for mixing. but i do both: individual and group - using a Bus Channel.

sowari

 

yes but how can you make arrangement, or remix of hip hop track, editing is impossible, no way
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This is stupid, if you want to add some fill or something different, you have to come back to maschine, but you dont know how will it sound with vocal, then back again, its pretty shitty. it would be nice if you have 16 outputs and can directly record audio to your daw, you just switch through banks, and press button and it records directly in daw with song. because i dont belive maschine will ever be able to handle working on songs like this

 

Easy bro,

arrange scenes,

ie into

havescene 1 1/2 as intro
main verse 16 bars 1/2/4/ bar each scene differnt pattern variations
chorus 4/8 bars, differnt scene
verse 2 ....
outro/hook.....


same thing,

once you have all your scenes in order hold scene on maschine, tap pad 1(scene1 intro) press the last pad which holds a scene on there,

then when maschine is played it plays from intro to outro.

scenes and patterns is the key to building up a full track IE Beat

i cant use maschine as it is now in its current state for tracking vocals, or mixing vocals , as i need more control over them

but heres a example of a beat i done and arranged all in maschine except the vocals

http://soundcloud.com/godfatherc_productions/saigon-bring-me-down/s-ecesD

 

yes everybody can do that, but i cannot edit patters, what if i want f...ing fill i cannot ad it and listen to it with vocal, but i have to do it on maschine than add it to daw and pray that it sounds good, or to record it over vocal, i cannot EDIT. I cannot do arrangement of the song like in daw. where i can manipulate it, i can. what if i want in some part of the song make some changes! and its not fully integrated with daw, this drag and drop sucks!

 

im not sure i catch what you saying?

 

Thats a hot track Bro good mix>