Maschine sequencer

Hi all, I'm new to the forum and pretty new to Maschine also. I purchased Maschine Studio last year and am finding everything brilliant but I just don't get with the sequencer and the arrangement of full songs. I was using Reason for years before I stepped up to using Maschine and I particularly liked the drag and drop nature of the sequencer. I curious to know what people's work flow is like. Do you use Mashine to create full songs or use external sequencers?

Thanks
Sam

 

Hello Sam & welcome,

there are many opinions about Maschine - what it is or what it should be and you'll notice that, if you'll spend some time here.

You can use Maschine to create full songs, but it depends on the type of music you're creating, i.e., really generally speaking, something with simpler arrangements. Maschine has a lot of shortcomings regarding midi editing, sample editing, slicing, arranging, mixing, time-stretching/pitch-shifting - pretty much everything. It's just offering more like a basic toolset - a bit like what has been standard a couple of years or one or even two decades ago, respectively.

That being said, you'd still be able to pull off a lot of things, if you're either experienced or persistent enough. What Maschine is offering (even more in conjunction with Komplete), is a production suite with hands-on access to the instruments' controls and, in my opinion, a focus more relying on performance rather than production. So, for me it's more like a production tool rather than an independent production environment. For me the best use for it has been as a sketch pad (but still a comprehensive one) to create new ideas and patterns. I also rather consider it as an instrument with sequencing abilities - kind of what Ableton Live was prior to shifting it becoming a DAW with v.4. What I really like about it is that you can play it like an instrument, providing you a more musical approach, rather tha sitting in your chair a producing just with a mouse. But, for me, that doesn't mean that everything should or can be done with the controller - the tasks leaning more towards a production work are better done with a mouse (don't worry, of you don't know what I mean, I'm just refering to an on-going discussion here about how Maschine should work). I don't want to write too much at this point, but if you like to, we can elaborate on it another time.

About your question of arranging, keep in mind that the "Arranger" of Maschine is just a play list for your scenes, and not a full-blown arranger with a timeline like traditional DAWs have. That means, you just will be able to create a sequence of your single scenes. That may be frustrating, as, at this stage, you probably will find it annoying that you can't shorten or extend single elements (patterns) within one scene (they will loop the entire time), automation of parameters beyond a single scene is annoying/impractical, as, simpy speaking, the concept of Maschine doesn't allow a look beyond a single scene, yet, and you won't be able to record muting of single sounds or patterns to lay down an arrangement. All these things are better done in a traditional DAW with a timeline and audio tracks. So, the best way right now to use it regarding arranging is to perform your ideas in Maschine and, if you have enough stuff for a basic track, drag it into you DAW and arrange and finish the track there.

 

Maschine is phenomenal for making patterns & scenes with the controller & software, but beyond that, it can/does become a PITA

 

Thanks for the responses guys. Does anyone know if it's possible to record Midi notes from Maschine in to Reason? That would solve all my problems!

 

...you might want to try a virtual midi driver like loopmidi,select it as an output in the midi out tab of maschine and as an input in Reason. But I'm not sure how stable these solutions are. Also, if you actually want to stick with Reason, you might want to check out the Nektar Controllers, as they offer a deeper integration with Reason. Perhaps they might even offer you the ability to program sequences in Reason (I think, I remember you can use them for that in Bitwig Studio)...

http://www.tobias-erichsen.de/software/loopmidi.html
http://www.nektartech.com/Products/Reason

 

I feel you. Trying watching some the adsr maschine tutorials to help you with this.

 

If you can't apply Maschine's way of arrangement immediately, you probably never will or you genre simply does not allow you to.
Move to Ableton, stop wasting time
https://www.native-instruments.com/forum/threads/why-does-maschine-not-develop.232367/

 

Just started using shift + pattern change my whole way of getting it done with maschine

 

Just curious...how so?