Maschine+live Audio/midi Integration

Hi dear fellows,

I'm an ableton live user since years now, for composition and live shows (felectro house techno breakbeat...)

I bought Maschine in january 2010, and I've been messing with it and ableton live since, to finally manage to make a decent integration of the 2 in a big audio / midi setup allowing me to play long live sets with lots of improvisation, and using external hardware synths (could be softsynths too)

The major point was to be able to trigger the scenes and patterns of a song, mutes, fxs, from the maschine, while havin the synths sequenced and "program changed" by patterns in maschine.

so we got a setup with :

Ableton live (6 to 8)
2 instances of Maschine plugin
Hardware or plugin synths

The 2 major problems are:

1)Live doesn't receive multichannel midi from hosted plugins (it receives all data of all 16 channels of the plugin as one merged blend channel)

2) Maschine doesn't sent Program Changes (to change the presets of each synth when triggering a song in maschine) and Control Changes (to have complex midi automations in the patterns)


So I've struggled a lot those days (weeks?), and found a way to get it working :

I'll speak for 1 instance of maschine for now, as my live set embeds 2 identical track-groups, one for each maschine instance.

I have made a standard maschine project, it "embeds" 4 song "slots".
Groups 1+2, 3+4, 5+6, 7+8 each contain a song of 8 scenes (you can make it bigger)
I put all the drum shots on pads of the first group of each song, some glitches and rythmic elements, and the sounds/samples on the 2nd group of the song.

In the group 2 or B of each song (groups 2, 4, 6, 8), I have one pad acting like an ableton live scene trigger. the sound SRC is MIDI OUT, channel 1.
Each group2/B-pattern of EACH 4 SONGS send a different NOTE to this midi channel.

I set up a midi track in live, to receive midi from maschine, and then route it OUT of live via a virtual midi bus, IAC DRIVER (mac os X feature). Live is set to receive midi track input from IAC driver.

Each Maschine instance has its own IAC driver bus (midiyoke for pc) to allow remote control of live (clip triggering overall) from each instance, and each iac bus is routing a different midi channel, so I can assign the same notes from maschines 1 & 2 to different clips in live,
and each instances receives independant program changes from live clips to trigger independantly the maschines scenes.

the only problem, that is still "workaroundable", is that what goes to the IAC busses, from maschines, is a midi stream of all maschines 16 midi channels, so you can't use the maschine midi channels for more remote control of live,

that is, each instance of maschine is only capable of sending 127 notes on 1 midi channel to live... (live's fault, it seems)

so there are only approx 15 x 8 clips available to be triggered from 1 maschine instance.

my workaround, as I want to use 4x8 midi clips per song for controlling 8 scenes of 4 midi outputs,

is to set up an "empty" live set, with all audio routings and midi assignations done,

in which's slots I can drag and drop saved midi clips blocks of 4 songs, corresponding to my projects in maschines ; each project embedding 4 songs (2 groups per song)

So I"ll always have :

2 maschine instances with each one project loaded (4 songs per project)
2 big "external instruments slots" with always 4 sngs (4track-8scenes clips blocks) in each

then I can change projects in maschine (I think I'll have 4 projects of 4 song for a live set), and drag and drop the corresponding "midi blocks" from the browser in live at the place of the former block

Each maschine instance have the same audio and midi tracks setups, each one outputting 6 sub outs (kick, snares, hihats, sub 3, 4 & 5) in different configurations of sidechain compressions, with midi controllers to send to return FXs

with some precise assignations I made a trick to be able to trigger maschinelive scenes via maschine AND live, and live detects what "song block" to play from midi notes triggered by a pad in the maschine patterns. I use a separate midi trak in live to trigger maschine's scenes via program changes, so Each 4track-8scene midi clips block has the 8 "maschine scenes trigger" midi clips.


here are the screen shots (live midi prefs, maschine 1 screen, with the patterns/scenes matrix, the pattern 1 of group B (song 1 = group A + B) where we can see the note that triggers, in live, the corresponding midi block/scene, and a wide screenshot of the session view with midi clips blocks and the precise sroutings




here is the ableton setup :

(midi clips here only for 2 synths, but you can have up to 16 midi clips)





Now I got the setup and song formats, all is working like a charm.

Just waiting for my DSI tetra to be shipped, and I'll have my new 4-voice analog synth ready to compose with this killer MASCHIBLETON DUO!

cheers

 

OK, this DOES NOT work like a charm, it is just painful to play with that setup. Switching between instances is a great painful and time-consuming job.


if only the sounds output assignations could be saved within a group, then it would be really much more easy, there would be no need for multiple instances. :angry:

I'm back to the building of the "perfect" setup for long live sets with ableton live and maschine, since i received my new hardware gear (DSI tetra, and Jomox T resonator),

and the only thing that really annoys me besides the lack of program changes and control changes sending ability, is that I have to use at least 2 instances of maschine, and for each I'll have to load projects at least 2 times for a 1h30 live show...

and switching instances does not allow REAL LIVE TWEAKING (say, I wanna mute some sounds on instance 1 while changing scene in instance 2 and un-muting the instance 1 muted tracks just when instance 2 new scene begins... this is impossible. :angry: )

If only I could load some new groups when I need while the rest is playing (say, 2 groups for a whole song), and have all sounds already assigned to individual outputs...

Any idea?

Maschine doesn"t seem to be designed for live shows I guess...