Mainstage 2 and Maschine

(Didn't find any mention of integrating Maschine/Mainstage elsewhere in the forums, apologies if this is a dupe of anything)

I loaded up Maschine as an AU instrument in Mainstage and was sad to discover that I had no way to trigger patterns, scenes, etc. The transport controls on the hardware don't work when used as a plugin, and as far as I know Mainstage doesn't have much in the way of transport controls itself.

I use Mainstage for all live shows, and I have a bunch of hardware synths that I like to use as well. I spent a few hours messing around, and here's what I came up with:

1) Install Soundflower (http://cycling74.com/products/soundflower/) then run Soundflowerbed. I put it in my startup items.

2) Use Maschine as a standalone app. Open it first, and make sure that both "Maschine Controller (MIDI output port 0)" and "Maschine Virtual Output" are turned on in the MIDI Outputs preferences.

3) Set the Audio Device to "Soundflower (2ch) (18 In, 18 Out)".

4) Turn on "Send MIDI Clock" in Maschine.

5) Open Mainstage, and at the concert level turn on "Get Tempo From MIDI Input" and select "Maschine Virtual Output" Now you can control the tempo in Mainstage using the hardware dial. Yay!

6) Open Mainstage's preferences and select the audio input to "Soundflower (2ch)". Create some audio channels for Input 1 and Input 2.

7) Connect the physical MIDI out port on the Maschine to the MIDI input on your external hardware and set their clock source to "External" or "MIDI In" depending on the synth.


Once I did that I was able to play hard synths, soft synths, and Maschine in harmony. Kind of a hack but it does what I need. Watch out for CPU usage though, running Mainstage 2 and Maschine in tandem doesn't leave a lot of overhead.

 

thanks for this

sowari