Maschine workflow question

Sill evaluating the theoretical possibilities of Maschine adding value to my setup:

Can I have

- a sequence running in my DAW (cubase, sonar x1, reaper), looping over 4 bars
- Maschine as fx plugin running along

A) if the DAW is running in a loop, and I am in sampling mode within Maschine, what happens with the different "takes" in Maschine? Are they getting lost with only the last full recorded loop range being editable? Or are multiple takes available? Same with MIDI? How are multiple takes handled in Maschine?

B) I want to record 4 bars of audio in Maschine in sampling mode, then slice the audio, map the slices across the keyboard range of ONE pad/sound, instead of mapping the slices across the 16 pads? (I want to slice the audio to capture the groove of the audio and trigger VSTis/different samples in this groove timing, is this possible?

 

A) i don't understand why you would want to run your DAW in a Loop and record different takes?

Maschine has 2 Record Modes, threshold and Sync. Sync starts and stops when the Transport Starts and Stops.

you can do more than one recording though - i have never used this feature.

with multiple MIDI takes, are you wanting to see each take clearly?

B) you can Map the slices to one Sound but use different Pads to play back the Slices - use Apply. and you have the choice of Applying To a number of Sounds if you so wish.

no matter which version you use, if you use Transient Detect, the rhythm of the Loop will be kept and played back accurately. afterwards you can Quantize this and/or add Swing.

sowari

 

? You really don't understand? Multiple takes of a recording, comping the "perfect take" by parts of these takes? Yo never did this? Singing a loop over and over again and then comping the best parts? Daily DAW usage? How do YOU work with audio recordings?

What I had in mind when asking this question: beat boxing a rhythm, recording the loop over and over again in a loop, choosing the best take (or comping the "perfect" take), slice the loop, remap to drum sounds...

that means, while the DAW is looping a region, Maschine starts record on transport/threshold and records ONE huge file (sample)consisting of all takes sequentially, I have to manually cut the one loop I want to preserve and work with?

would you try and tell me how Maschine handles multiple recordings, please?

as with audio, record the same loop mutiple times, choosing the best take, or comping the "perfect" take.

I watches some youtube videos, but I didn't get the picture: it seems as if Maschine deletes already recorded MIDI events in the pattern and replaces them with newly recorded?

 

okay, Maschine is not an Audio Recorder like Logic - or Cubase - is an Audio Recorder.
Maschine is a Sampler and yes. you can record your own samples but Maschine is not a DAW.

if you want to get a good bit, record for 32 bars and edit the best bit. as i said Maschine is not a DAW.

Maschine will not record multiple passes of a 4 bar loop, it will just record it once.

i would use Logic for comping and then put the finished recording into Maschine.

Maschine is not a fully blown DAW and i don't it to be one either.

if i want a good section, i record a longer sequence and choose the best bit. this might be an old school way of doing things but that is how i work. in fact, that is how i would do it in Logic

sorry, but what you are wanting to do is typical DAW style features, and as i have said before, Maschine is not a DAW.

sowari

 

Yes, you are misunderstanding what Maschine and samplers/production workstations like it is. This is not a digital multitrack tape recorder and is not meant to be at all. Think MPC, ASR10, Motif, Korg and not Cubase or Protools etc.

 

How should I know?

I don't want Maschine be anything (apart from some Kore Style Sound Matrix Manager, sometime). I just try to get a Picture of HOW things are done with it, WHICH Things are possible. I am asking questions in order to get a picture, ok? I have to decide wether I save 250€ purchasing Maschine, or save 349€ NOT purchasing Maschine.

 

Myself, I empathize. I have often had to do the same research to discover the "gotchas' that are not advertised; features that should be there (from my experience), but are not included, and the omissions not advertised (why would they)?

E.g. lack of MIDI in the Boss BR-800, global tempo in the DR-880, no ability to use samples in MIDI sequences (Zoom R8), no sequencer in Battery 3, no visible button (for "MIDI Learn") that mimics the spacebar in Ableton Live ..... Some are deal killers, some not, but often the only way to learn are the forums....

 

fair enough

for me the great thing about Maschine is to take existing loops and recycle them. for me it is a real joy to use knobs to tune start and end point of loop individual slices.

the Drag n Drop Audio things is also great - i just love the speed of recording a riff with Massive and how quick it is to put the Audio elsewhere in Maschine and/or my DAW.

combining a great sound with Reaktor and a complex patch in Guitar Rig and then quickly Drag n Drop the resulting Audio.... it is so fast.

fwiw, for guitar parts, i would always record them in my DAW and select the best bits before putting them in Maschine, whereas i would sample my records directly into Maschine and then edit the files.

sowari

 

I know. Why is it, that Maschine users take offense so easily when somebody asks queistions and/or lay into the Maschine concept for their own personal musical ambitions?

Thank you sowari for your explanations. How have you done things BEFORE Maschine then?

I try to imagine how it will be using Maschine for certain tasks that I currently do with my other soft-/hardware. I try to picture how I might benefit by using Maschine. I'm no live performer, I'm ok using the mouse, and/or my gear.

I see, the things that are easy are "simply render audio and drag it to the DAW. But then again I'll have to use the mouse, whereas everybody sais Maschines strength is its mouseless work.

When I imagine how I'll sample with Maschine as plugin. Ok, recording/comping in the DAW. I can already split a recording at transients with cubase/sonar/reaper. I can map the splitted samples across the keyboard using GrooveAgentOne, BeatScape etc. Sampling in Maschine as plugin means, I'll have to use the mouse (or keyboard shortcut, or gear) to get the DAWs transport running. The again heading over to Maschine and doing things, I already could have done while I'm at the DAW... What's the point?

I have a Roland HPD-15 Handsonic, so I already have (positional sensing) pads, mapped/setup for GrooveAgentOne. I imagine it being much quicker to transient split recordings, drag them to grooveagentone and playing the HPD-15 pads, recording.... What's the point with Maschine? It somewhere sits between my DAW. It isn't a DAW. It doesnt generate sound by itself. I can program beats with my HPD15, step sequencers galore. I can render tracks, stems with one mouseklick...

What is it, what will Maschine give me, what will it add to my setup, to my workflow, that's worth 349€?

Its a serious questions. Please don't take offense.

 

as a hardcore KORE user i build my whole setup around KORE, i decided the only way I can figure out how the work would flow with maschine is to use it so i borrowed a mschine a week ago to figure out if it can replace KORE in terms of MY (!) workflow,
so i discovered a lot!
things i love things i hate..
sstill not familiar with all the tricks you can do with maschine but i think after a week now i slowly get a feeling for it and a picture what it is and what not, or in my case how sampling / sample based production works.
if u want you can pm or skype if u have specific questions about the feelings of a hardKORE fan with maschine.

 

oh, fine! Thanks! Interesting!

Maybe you want to write about your experiences here, your aproach, the goods, the bads, the surprises, the let downs... what it does add, what it does not... I think, others are interested as well... That would be great!

Are you a keyboard player?

 

yes, keyboard player , ok will answer in public but it'll take some time - sorry

 

Super! Thank you! Take your Time!

 

to be honest, i can't see what Maschine will give you.

personally, i have always been someone who likes messing with software that is good for jamming. i have used Reaktor for at least 10 years and live messing with its Sequencers. i know James Walker-Hall's Reaktor work very well and i can see how he has transfered those ideas into Maschine. so Maschine is a logical step from using Reaktor, and to be honest, in addition i always liked the idea of Akai MPCs but i could never justify the price :lol:

i don't like DAWs especially the MIDI side of working in DAWs but i do feel happy working with MIDI Patterns in Maschine. i also like working with Audio in Maschine.

my working methods are come up with ideas fast in Maschine, export them as Audio into Logic, arrange that Audio and mix it - using Logic's and other FX - in Logic.

to be honest, if you are happy with your working methods, i don't see the point of you using Maschine.

sowari

 

so well , very dificult to start, at first let me state that i have already bought a mpd (usb mpc) and a korg nano pad , because sometime ago i thougth this would be funny,
but i never used it, not even once in a finished project. i 'm a keyboard player and i couldn't get a feeling groove or whatever with it, so i thougth this pad style sampling drum grroving kind of music production is really not my stly ( it sucks ) so i stayed happy with my keys and the KOREbeast, now i tried maschine and the pads are very coool it's a lot of fun hitting them and due to the quantization settings and the good response i started grooving and producing very fast. as always with new cool toys time was flying...
i jammed a lot and it's very difficult to desvcribe this it's like playing with a toy tottally easy but it's not like a toy its serious.
after jamming and skipping through samples and loops 'n stuff for some days i thought it's time to try my style, since i only rarely use samples , not every track, my kick is a sine and my snare consists mainly of white noise and now this is where i get stuck, having the sounds already prepared you can samplestyle jam on maschine.
but not with that comfort (browsing sounds), but i think this will be fixed in 1.7
you can do very very much on maschine without mouse but this is all "maschine tasks" everything i have done by mouse , i still have to.
so, you ask, how can it benefit you, if you love music if you want something "fresh" and new getting you out of that everydayness.... this is in my opinion the thing to go. But if you lover to do chords... well i can't figure out a comfortable way... far too less pads, plugin in a keyboard is a thing you can also do in your daw, you don't really benefit that much from a keyboard maschine combo (fx 'n stuff, using the lib) i like maschine for fast sketching other than real producing to the end... i don't like the sequenzer in maschine that much , my fl studio and cubase are imho better. so i try to express my feelings in some quick words giving maschien a rating from 1 least to 10 most

my common sound design task 0
my NEW sample style sound tasks 8
trying to jam to get some ideas 8
trying to get an idea /melody from my head to maschine 3 (it was to complex - keyboard and dawa was easier)
trying to get easy idea from head to maschine 7
mixing tasks 6 i don't mix that much but the usual thing are there and quick accesible
wasting time 10
doing things faster 3
things that i can't figure out or not possible: a lot of routing and arranging stuff
also there aren't that much scenes and it can get messy compared to a daw.

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new day
only little time got some already finished tracks that i really love from my mate who originally owns this maschine, tried some things out very happy , just wanted to add from a programmers view ( this is what i get opaid for ^^) maschine is state of the art.
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you gain nothing more from maschine than a maschine and no it can't replace kore because it is not kore i heard this so often and i never got it...now i got it
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next day
hmm plugged in my keyboard , like in kore, had a lot of fun, maybe maschine can replace MY kore?
noticed that i do some chord stuff in maschine but hated it the other day, now doing it in maschien because it is easier ^^
-----------------------------------------------
next day
hate the routing tabs buhuhuhu where is my kore? why load kore into maschine? i like loading maschine in to kore with this i can do a whole set of tracks in one.
maschine had no bug yet, i think kore would have crashed several times ...
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if the question is buy or no buy? definitely buy. at least i will do.
if the question is can it replace kore? in some things.. hard to answer since i use maschine there are very little tasks i do with kore, if in 1.7 soundbrowsing from ni plug in is integrated i think i would only do some routing fx stuff in kore but wait... i did that half an hour a go and i missed some functionality from the maschine :/

the stuff with the oruting and tracks-- don't really like but i put maschine in my daw and everything is ok again ( it's ok but kore is wow ^^)

this scenes and groups stuff is cool very quick arranging andf stuff but on the other hand it is also a ltittle messy and limited...

so far there's only one question left i have... what about 3rd party plugins preset browsing in 1.7 , 1.8 or whatever?

hope there aren't too much typos not my native language, and lack of sleep, hope it helps u so far.

 

You can already browse plugin presets (including third party) from the hardware in MIDI control mode:
http://www.native-instruments.com/forum_de/showthread.php?t=135063

You can also browse plugin presets in Maschine mode and have the preset names show up in the hardware's displays when you save them as modules:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urz-c_GpnsY"]YouTube - ‪Maschine 1.6 browsing plugin presets from hardware‬‏[/ame]

As far as doing this in Maschine mode and also have the preset names show up in the Maschine hardware without having to save them as modules beforehand, this will likely be the case for NI plugins for 1.7. Third party plugins will follow at some point. All we know is that NI had already implemented it when developing 1.6 but left it out because it still needed work.

 

Mad's tip does not let you Browse Presets in the normal Maschine Browser. those Presets are part of the Sound Module VST Instruments Preset view.

as you say, you can only see Presets - in Maschine's regular browser, after you have saved them and Maschine Presets.

and lets not speculate what will be included in the 1.7 release until there is a clearer announcement. and i am not sure where you got that info about what was left out of 1.6?

sowari

 

Thank you so much Marcel# for your time and effort!

 

damn I couldn't even read any further than this post I surely hope it all worked out but sowari wasn't taking offense, he was being helpful, it's ok to ask anything you want of maschine, it's ok to spend your money on maschine and try to make toast with it if you want but maschine is not a toaster. you guys are all musicians, you've got allot of nerve telling sowari don't you know what reapeating a 4 bar loop is for in your daw" when you didn't even know what a drumsampler is for...... seriously that wasn't cool.
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you need to read your own f...up post really. .. Mr. I don't want maschine to be anything........... well it is something.......... it's a f...cking drum sampler...... Logic is the best recording comper out of all the daws, so just stick with that sheeeeeeeeesh

 

@the hamburgler, thanks for the support i didn't take offense Re: TabSel's comments. he is still very upset about Kore's discontinuation, so i understand it when he gets defensive.

fwiw, Marcel#, seemed to answer TabSel's questions.

sowari