Making Reaper Slave to Maschine v2

Hi Forums,

Recently acquired a maschine unit, and I am getting rather frustrated trying to incorporate it into my system/philosophy...

So I really like the stand alone Maschine workflow (easy to record/overdub/change patterns/change scenes/tweak sequencing) all with the controller. Very productive and facilitates generating complexity.

However...
loading multi-out vsts in Maschine isn't as nice as the way reaper handles it. With omnisphere I usually have between 3 - 6 patches loaded at any one time.

So my dilemma is this:
I want my multi-out vsts (omnisphere/kontakt etc.) to loaded in Reaper where I have complete multi-out templates for them - but I want them to be fed midi from inside of Maschine... And here is the reason why:


For example with maschine loaded as vst, if my Scene 1, Scene 2, and Scene 3 are each four bars long and I place a four bar omnisphere midi item starting at bar 8 ending at bar 12 on the Reaper timeline (so it lines up where Scene 3 is in Maschine) on normal playback my reaper midi item plays with maschines scene 3. (i.e. Scene 3 plays with the midi item I have starting at bar 8.) HOWEVER, if I switch to 'scene mode' in maschine and retrigger scene 1 or 2, the reaper transport doesn't jump back to bar 1 or bar 4, it just keeps playing straight down the timeline... therefore if I trigger scene 3, I get the material in maschine at scene 3 but not the midi in reaper that is positioned at bar 8. I get wherever we are on the timeline since I hit play...

All in all I want to use the solid sequencing / midi generation of Maschine, but feed my 'keyboard style midi' to vsts loaded into Reaper --- the reason i'm going through all of this is in order to try and find a way to sync the freaking transport! If I have all of my midi in maschine then the transports don't need to be sync'd --- but I don't want to have to use all my plugins in Maschine (i.e. use Maschine as my DAW)... I know I mixed in a lot of terminology and ideas so I will check back tomorrow to edit, clarify...

I've seen people using ReaRoute to get audio from Maschine into reaper (and by-pass the soundcard issue).
I've seen that LoopBe1 could be used to route midi from Maschine into reaper...
I've seen that I can map the transport controls to Maschine using action list...

But there are NO actions for controlling things like switching scenes in maschine --- I.E no way for Reaper to know the length of and starting/ending point of the scenes in Maschine... not having this on the fly switching and creative outlet is killing me.

I am super happy with the Maschine software (i.e. if I don't use the controller, and I only arrange scenes in ways that line up with my arrangements in Reaper (much like a re-wired ReDrum)) -- but the controller's functionality is just epic in standalone, but it won't play nice with Reaper's timeline/sync.

Thanks to all of you with advice,
Whoobs

 

this is possible using rearoute and something like midi yoke.

 

Hi The Unfu**withable,

I've got Reaper and Maschine playing a little bit nicer now by using LoopBe30 (a varient of MidiYoke) and ReaRoute. I've got my Maschine studio set to Export Midi Clock information --- but I can't seem to get reaper to accept that data and sync to the Maschine timeline... Any ideas..?

Off to see if the Reaper forums can help.
http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?p=1313433#post1313433

Whoobs

 

right click on the play button (in the transport section) and choose the appropriate settings in the context menu.

 

Hey dude, thanks for coming back to look:

In this case what would the appropriate settings in the context menu be --- do you use MTC or SPP? I've tried all of the ones that were available and non worked... What does it look like for you in this scenario?

The ones that looked most promising were 'Maschine Studio In' (I was expecting to see 'Maschine Studio Out') but couldn't find that... I turned on 'Maschine Studio Out 1' inside the Audio/Midi settings of Maschine...

Do you use a midi cable between Maschine Studio and your soundcard or are you doing it through the USB? Because in that case wouldn't we choose to sync to the soundcard midi not Maschine?

Thanks again for the look,
Whoobs

 

In no particular order:

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=85363
http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=19691
http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=75474
http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=126182

(via http://bit.ly/1bJctMa )


In a nutshell, though, REAPER can't sync to MIDI clock.
Furthermore, it seems that it never will, due to how it operates (too much rides on it "knowing" what is coming) - see threads for more details if you're interested.
Best I came up with was to send a MIDI note to REAPER (from whatever I wanted to be "sync master") and map that to the tap tempo action. Crude, but it works. To an extent.

 

:|

only now i realize that the op wants to sync via midi clock. i always thought he meant midi time code.

 

Thanks for those links Mr36... is it Midi Clock or Midi Time Code that Maschine can send externally?

I'm not at my workstation --- but I was hoping to use whatever the option in Maschine is... File --> Send Midi Clock/Time Code(?) I don't remember which way that dialogue read.

I just want to find a way to sync Reaper to Maschine - I was hoping that this feature would do it... The Unfu**withable --- do you sync Reaper to Maschine? What does your contextual menu look like when you right click on 'play' in the transport area? You choose all MTC inputs or something?

I want to use either MTC or SPP not Midi Clock.

 

FUhhhhhhh...

It looks like the feature is called "Send Midi Clock" annnnd Reaper can't handle that...

Is there really no "Send MTC" feature in Maschine???

 

no.

i work in stand-alone mode 90% of the time. the other 10% i use maschine as plug-in inside reaper.

ok wait...you don´t need to sync maschine and reaper if your scenario is as follows:

- all sequencing is done in maschine
- your virtual instruments are hosted in reaper

so why do you see a need for syncing both?

 

Yeah - you've got a really good point. I guess I just wanted everything, the whole boat. I really appreciate all your input though. Checked out your website and enjoyed some of the tunes, keep it real.

-Whoobs