JUNGLE PRODUCTION!! Resequencing loops from Maschine hardware - any advice?

Hi Guys

Have been an on and off Maschine user for about 5 years. More recently I've been making jungle in Ableton as I generally found chopping and resequencing breaks much easier (both as audio or midi). Where I think Maschine has the edge on Ableton though is that it's super tactile and I generally find it more fun to jam and create music (albeit I don't necessarily feel what I make in Maschine sounds as good/complex/interesting as what I typically create in Ableton)

I was however super psyched to see the new Rhythm Source expansion so picked it up yesterday!

I've had a bit of a play around with it, and think the sounds are amazing but I'm really struggling with resequencing the breaks in midi. I can chop them up and spread them across the pads, but I just find the resequencing process a bit of a pain without having to resort to using the pen tool and clicking on the piano roll on the computer (which for me defeats the object of using Maschine and I may as well us Ableton, especially as there's no preview on the note from the piano roll in Maschine - so f**ing annoying!).

I'd love to an accomplished enough finger drummer to just bash it out live, but I'm nowhere near that unfortunately!

Anyone currently creating d n b/jungle/breakbeat in Maschine got advice on how they're currently doing this to create interesting resequenced break patterns? I've seen in the preset groups that there's some really cool break rearrangement, but I have no idea how the producers of the expansion achieved this.

Just for reference, when I chop the break sometimes I'll just chop the whole break on 8th notes and spread evenly across the pads but sometimes I'll also manually slice on the accents of the break so it has a more natural timing. This means the slice length won't necessarily be even across all the pads (so I'll maybe have 1 pad which is the kick and an 8th note long but then I'll have the snare plus the shuffle on the next pad so it'll be a dotted 8th note long, and then the next pad maybe just the snare at a 16th note length)

Any help on the topic would be super appreciated! I'd love to use Maschine as my main DAW as it's so much fun, but find myself gravitating towards Ableton constantly due to the more comprehensive nature

Thanks
Freddie

 

Sorry, can't help you much I'm afraid as I prefer finger drumming my breakbeats these days. I do it usually in a few layers, like 1 pass of hats followed by
kick/snare pass which makes it easier to manage decent enough results.

Only thing which comes to mind is using the note repeat function — This is how I used to program amen runs etc with MPCs. First you chop everything to 8th note chunks, make a sound or a group so that its monophonic (ie assign everything to the same choke ID), then you set note repeat on with 8th note grid, and fly away (still requires some coordination but everything is quantized so its way easier than trad fingerdrumming). This doesn't work for every breakbeat loop, but works for many of them. You can then add more flips to the note repeated pattern with some performance stutter fx.

Ahh yes, one more very important tip for cruising breakbeats - make a lot of variation patterns! You can then also cruise those in realtime, since the Mas sequencer plays the patterns like legato mode in Ableton.

 

...slicing or arranging complex breaks in Maschine isn't ideal due to its technical limitations on that aspect (or, to be fair, as it is not a specialised tool for such rather sophisticated tasks).

About slicing - in order to have your samples production-ready prepared, I'd slice them exactly, i.e. slicing all the shuffle hits as well. As far as I can see, the breaks are sliced in 8th, which will result in two hits per slice on the 16th shuffle. If you're using that 8th slice on or close to the break's original tempo, then it might be fine, but larger tempo deviations might not result in the desired outcome. So slice them to a sound (!), as the breaks most likely will have more than 16 slices and save that as a group ( to keep the pattern). If you want to have several breaks per group, some manual preparation is required. Then you can rearrange the sliced break phrases within a pattern. Finger drumming is not possible in that scenario, of course.

About using the break as a clip - you can also rearrange a break as a clip using the Audio Module without midi editing in the Arrangement View, so it's basically an audio montage. Create a number of clips for the group containing the break and trim start and end of the clips to chop the break, as you need it. If the loop isn't quantised properly, you'd have to turn off the quantisation in the Arrangement View to trim the clip precisely (switching off something in the upper panel to do an edit in the lower panel - logical regarding the hierarchy, but counter-intuitive regarding the work areas ). Then rearrange the break with the clips. The downside of that method is, it only works in the Arrangement View, it only works with one loop per groop, as the clip refers to the group level, not the single sound, so you can't rearrange two breaks differently within one group. To rearrange two breaks at the same time, you'd have to use one group per loop - so might end up having dozens of groups. And the whole thing works with time-stretching, if you'd like to change the tempo. Maschine also uses the same z-plane elastique pro algorithm like Live & Cubase etc. and it's really good, but time-stretching on percussive sounds doedn't work that well with large tempo deviationss as the transient part gets also stretched and it might sound weird and the drums will loose punchyness. Finger drumming is also not possible in that scenario.

So, it's enough to create a track, but in order to do some sophisticated, weird, nerdy breakbeat stuff, you'd still need to do some micro-editing or you create some project templates with more sophisticated tools like Recycle & Battery or Groove Agent to make that micro-editing in a track structure a bit more reliable and less fiddly.

 

the way I do it is:

get break I want to use
slice it using the Maschine slicing tools. usually need to fine tune and tweak the slices.
once it is sliced I change the project tempo to the one want to use. Then if im going for the jungle feel I will pitch up the break a bit.
otherwise I tweak the envelopes etc. until the break is sounding good at the new tempo.
then once im happy with how its sounding I resample the entire thing to pad 1 in a new group. So pad 1 now has a sample of the whole break at the correct tempo. I then make sure that one shot is engaged and then duplicate it pad two. I then find the next important hit, probably the snare or the next kick and delete everything before this point. I then duplicate the sample to the next pad and find the next important hit and remove everything from before it. I repeat this as many times as needed until basically 4 or 5 pads triggers the break from a different start point. at the most important bits of the break (it good to have as couple version of the snare, some shuffles and kicks).
I then make sure that each pad is choking each other. I have a silent pad so I can stop the break from playing when needed. then I turn it up load and start jamming beats.

other things you can do is have some pads with reversed versions of the break, or versions with FX on or whatever really to spice things up while your jamming.

it takes a bit of set up, but once you have done the work the possibilities are endless and its loads of fun.

 

Lowpass - thanks for the tips!! The method which your describe is the way that I've mainly done this in Maschine so maybe I just need to practice more to get my live pad drumming a bit quicker so I can keep up with the timing (and go back and edit the midi in the events section if needed after). I think that my main issue with this method was the drums were constant and I like to add in pauses at certain points. Your idea on the silent pad is so simple and something I've never thought of!

 

aye yep, it will always come down to practice. maybe build up the BPM over a few days, but once you get into the flow, you find you don't need to go that fast, its just hitting the right thing at the right time. also if you do like a bit of silence you can have a chops set up with only a few hits in, or ADR envelope. just to throw in everyone and again.

but yeah the silent pad was game changer for me. can't remember where I learned it but was well chuffed when I did. so simple and effective.

 

...this whole thing would be a lot easier, if Maschine would have some sort of sliced one-shots. You'd slice a loop, copy it a couple of times to several pads and then adjust the start and end points on each pad according to the respective drum phrases of the loop. The result would be the same, as you've described, but without the need to resample the loop on a specific project tempo. The benefit is, that the loop always fits to the tempo. You can do this with rex-files & Battery, however, you'd need to save each phrase as an individual rex-file (just clip the loop by moving Recycle's left & right marker), as you can't offset the starting point in Battery (it would always play from the beginning of the loop, not a later starting point). So, if it's not about jamming with drum phrases on pads, the fastest way to rearrange a break is still slicing it with Recycle and then rearranging it in your DAW on an audio track (easier to identify the phrases, instead of having to deal with those midi stairs). As I wrote, I don't think, with its feature set Maschine isn't the most effective tool to work with breaks...

 

There's some really great programming on some of the demo projects in the new Rhythm Source expansion.

I'd love for NI to do a video on how they put the pack together and show some examples on how the creators made those demo tracks.

I think it's great that they've released a pack dedicated to jungle, but I think a little help is needed from them on how to help users get the most out of the pack

 

i haven't looked at this pack yet, but I only use the above technique if im working with actual breaks and loops. If I have one shots then I will just programme them as one shots. so if this pack is like the others - preprogrammed one shots - I would just programme my own patterns.

 

I agree, Maschine is not ideal. well I like after the prep work is done, but doing the presswork can be a bit boring. I haven't looked at battery in a while, but have been have had a play with redux on occasions. which seems more of geared towards working with breaks. but the learning curve is a little too steep with it being tracker style. So maschine still seems to be the one I use most when working with breaks.

 

The the demo patterns for each kit are actually a nice combination of single one shots as well as as well as reprogrammed breaks.

 

Been really digging this guy on YouTube last few days

https://youtube.com/channel/UCtApLtFem3vzSrLcCY-W_mg

All in Ableton but a lot of concepts I can take into machine here.

I think one of my main takeaways is the use of ADSR envelopes. I think I pretty much always use one shot mode but actually i think using sustain and changing midi note length gives a but more flexibility

 

Are you into classic Jungle or more modern tech type of stuff?
So many jungle bangers were made with drum-machines way simpler than Maschine, just 8th / 4th notes slices, if there's a lot of swing / shuffle just readjust the slice start points so they start on transients.

Something like this does not require any advanced features, simple MPC1000, it gets more into jungle-breaks from 25s mark forward:


The above doesn't require a massive finger drumming skill, a bit of practice and quantization after recording should get you there. Maschine can do this and much more with it's current feature set.

 

Yeh, that guy is pretty dope on them pads! My fave



No reason why you couldn't use Mas for similar playing

 

Not sure if anyone mentioned this already but...
If you slice your break to a single pad and access the slices through keyboard mode (as against mapping across 16 pads) it's easier to manipulate the sequence via the hardware by using note select and the note up/down function. It makes manipulating individual chops more difficult so it depends what you're wanting to accomplish but if you just want to mash out a **** ton of amen variations, quickly without any mousing around it's a good way to go about it.

 

Thanks for all the helpful comments guys!

Been giving thing a bit more time over the last couple of days and really happy with the results

Best workflow for me seems to be s combination of duplicating the break to different pads on the accents and then finger drumming in as well as I can live but then going into the events section and editing hits via the hardware afterwards.

Seems to give me a nice combination of live "happy accidents" but then also finer control when needed.

I must admit, giving some time to learning my way around the events sections and editing individual Notre via the hardware has really been a gamechanger. (This vid is super helpful btw - ) Aswell as giving more thought to ADSR instead of just everything in one shot mode.

Really impressed with the new Rhythm Section pack. Will try and upload some tracks when I'm done

Feels like we're getting a great resource together here for anyone looking to make jungle/breaks/choppage on maschine! Let's keep the tips and comments coming!