Maschine Plug in Reaper - MIDI Mapping / Routing

I've been working on this for a solid 5 hours. Five.

Here's the situation: Maschine 2.12 is a plugin inside Reaper. Yes, I know there are newer versions but I'm sticking with 2.12 for now, as I did with 2.8 a while back, etc.

So, I have each Group on a separate midi channel-- 8 groups, 8 midi channels (1-8).

There are four drumkits on Groups A-D (Channels 1-4) and some misc "chops" and loops, on Group C (Channel 5).

Let's say I want to chop up a loop, and easily Slice it, in the Sampling View. Ok. Awesome. I got 16 slices from a 4-bar loop, each slice is a quarter-note long. Cool.

Where to Apply it? How about a new group? Awesome. Let's put those slices on Group F. Note-- Manual mapping is used on all of these Groups, for more control. This is Midi Channel 6, with the Root Note starting at C3 (all of the groups are the same).

When I record the slices, one by one, as steady quarter notes, into Reaper.... sometimes only the first pad is recognized, like I didn't hit the other 15 pads. Other times, it's fine. I'm recording the MIDI output from Maschine (in Maschine mode). This has nothing to do with Maschine in MIDI / Controller Mode. I'm trying something else.

Everything works great, except this slice mode. I choose a new Group, because I have control over the octave range. If I slice it to a pad in the same group (thus enabling Keyboard mode), it uses octave C-2. I don't want that. I want to play everything from a small range if a midi keyboard is connected, or the Maschine pads themselves.

The behavior is just inconsistent. What's worse? This obvious bug--- when I save the Maschine Project as a "Template" of sorts (saving its state inside the Reaper project it belongs to)... sometimes the routing is not remembered. Routing I mean, the Root Note for Group A, or the Octave Range for Keyboard mode for some of the other groups. Sometimes it's C1, sometimes it's C3.

I saved everything as C3, and the Root Note as C3. But it is forgotten, and I KNOW I saved it correctly and in the right place. I'm meticulous about saving things in the right place, with matching filenames, etc.

Can anyone shed some light on this? Why is this behavior so ridiculously buggy? Seriously, it drives me nuts. I prefer using Maschine as a plugin inside Reaper, not so much standalone. The workflow's better for me. But when it comes to slicing a loop and chopping it up, why do I get this weird buggy midi note behavior? It's making me consider buying a Push 2 and switching over to Ableton, for all my slicing needs.

I can't be the only one experiencing this, am I?

I can absolutely get video sometime this weekend, narrating and explaining. It is NOT correct, whatever is going on. It seems like it's always on a random midi channel, too. Sometimes 9, sometimes the next in line, sometimes even the next in line. I tried applying the slices to different groups, as a test. Either none of the midi is recorded correctly (silent upon playback even though the piano roll shows I hit those pads).... or it repeats the same note, etc.

Annoying as HELL.

Following image-- this is me hitting pads 1-16, on Group E, F, G, then H. The same exact group, copied over to the other groups, with only the MIDI channel changed. Notice how everything's in order, EXCEPT THE THIRD ONE. I verified that all routing was 100% right.



Off to sleep. Thanks for reading and any possible help!!!

Small edit-- Ok, for THIS screenshot, I had Group G as "Sounds To Midi Channels" (oops). BUT... the weird behavior is consistent, even when all the stuff is set to "Sounds to Midi Notes." Sometimes I just hear nothing with playback, even though you can see the slices going upward, as they should.

 

What are you doing as far as "Manual Mapping" goes? This:

?

Side Note: Since this is a template you're better off pre routing "Group F" (or any other Groups reserved for slicing) this way when you apply the slices to the Group the MIDI IO settings are already there, which should save you quite some time.

Did you setup 1 Reaper MIDI for each equivalent Maschine Group? On your screenshot, it looks like you have a Reaper Track receiving MIDI from all MIDI Channels at the same time.

 

Yo D-One! How are you my friend?

Yes, I'm trying to record the Midi Output, hence the one track. I can't figure out how to do multiple tracks, though, as my brain is fried. I'm trying it this way because I want to be able to stay in Maschine Mode while recording the MIDI into Reaper, instead of having to switch over to Maschine Midi Control Mode. As far as recording the midi in (on individual tracks) while in Maschine MIDI mode, that is working as expected.

Yes, my manual mapping (for Slice to New Group) is:
Group MIDI Manual / Host / Channel 9 (Group A2) / Start Note C3 / no Thru
Sound Input Source None, Channel 9, No thru
Sound Output Source Host, Channel 9, Transpose is auto, as the group is Sounds To Midi Notes

I forget how to pre-route and save the routing when applying slices to a new group (or to the same group)... can you walk me through that again?

Thanks so much man!

 

I'm good bro, hope you are too.
You have to create a Reaper Track per Group and set it to receive MIDI from MAS-Plug, each using an exclusive MIDI channel.

Here, post #8
https://www.native-instruments.com/...e-not-in-controller-mode.173562/#post-1869345
That's for a ReaSynth but the principle is the same.

 

Ah, that's where I went wrong... ugh. Forgot certain parts of the routing. I was doing Midi ALL > 1, Midi ALL > 2, but when recording output, it needs to simply be Midi 1 > 1, Midi 2 > 2, etc.

I NEED to make a video of this.

Thanks again, so much.

What I noticed though (oddly) is... loading the Maschine Project (with the routing)... it is often forgotten. Even when loading the correct Project. That was my biggest issue. That's why I had to re-do everything. Reaper was (mostly) fine, but Maschine changed everything and screwed it all up, as I hadn't opened this thing for a year.

The filenames were the same, to match the Reaper Project Template / Maschine Project (it's a failsafe, in case the save state isn't total-recalled). But, oddly.. it was forgotten. I tried re-saving... so far, so good.. but odd that the original Maschine Project routing was changed when I KNEW I saved it right, and tested in Reaper extensively.

 

No problem.
A video could help or just write down the settings, or take a few screenshots. I'd say the most important part is understanding why each setting has to be the way it is, if you grasp the "why" you can redo anything based on logic and your template has space to evolve over time as your workflow also evolves. With that said even I often go to my Cubase guide to re-check stuff and I don't even use Cubase anymore.

If you been using that template for while it's a bit odd that it only started causing problems now, maybe a Reaper update had a bug, I doubt it's on the Maschine end since you been using a old version for a long time... But it could also be a bug caused by doing something very specific. Hard to know without a lot of testing...

Anyway, my advice is to never have only one file of your template, have at least 2 for Reaper and 2 Maschine project saves, in case the files get corrupted, accidentally deleted, or anything unexpected happens. For the Reaper template make it a read-only file in your OS, this will also prevent accidentally saving over it.