[Shell vent] Maschine + Vocal Suite = awesomeness!

Hi gang!

At first I wasn't sure if I should post this in the Maschine forum or this one, but considering that I'm not specially addressing Maschine alone I figured this is the best place....

When it comes to the world of synths and DAW's then I don't believe in betting on a single horse. Often diversity, especially within this field, is key. This is how I got started with Ableton Live + Reason at first (complemented by Cycling 74's Max environment). And why I decided to add Komplete into this mixture as well. Basically my home studio evolves around Live which is 'enhanced' by Komplete which gets expanded with Reason.

Why mention all this? Context. See, when I recently upgraded all my stuff (this included the upgrade to Reason 10) I got introduced to a new Reason device which seriously intrigued and fascinated me.. At first I couldn't stop playing with this critter:



Humana is a voice synth developed by Sound Iron and I can't begin to describe how awesome this instrument is. I'm sure everyone within this field knows what impact a good vocal track can have for your material. Depending on genre of course but still.... Well, this critter simply requests that you plug it in and start playing. It really is that simple!

Best of all: this is included within Reason 10 by default. Yah....

Now, I'm honestly not trying to advertise for other companies here but when I like something... I vent, and maybe sometimes push some boundaries but trust me: this is very much ontopic.

So why bring this up you ask? Good question! See, when Native Instruments suddenly started advertising SoundIron bundles for 80% off my curiosity was aroused. For reasons shown above.

And then I discovered a pretty affordable Vocal Suite... I was sold.



If you're like me and are impressed with the sound which Humana can produce (I'd be in so much agreement with that) then prepare to get your mind blown when you start experimenting with this package.... This is something else indeed. It's Humana all over but without the obviously presence of an artificial sound, and that will raise your quality a dozen times if not even more!

Take my screenshot directly above... Orange: Bass (male), Yellow: Tenor (male), Green: Alto (female) and finally: Cyan: Soprano (guess ).

This (default) setup alone can blow your mind away, I'm sure of that. Such pure and good sounding voices... it's seriously something else. And the best part... If you own Kontakt you can edit and expand on this as much as you'd like (unfortunately the product page(s) don't make it clear if you need Kontakt or if the players will also work out).

So where does Maschine fit into all this you now wonder?

Well... To me Maschine is so much more than "just a beat machine". I'm well aware that NI describes the Maschine as a "music production and performance instrument" but in all fairness: percussion is music too. And isn't the Maschine basically a drumpad first and foremost? I mean, that 4 x 4 grid is there for a reason, right?

I mention this because I fell into the same "trap" if you will. My initial goal was to get a high-end replacement for my MPD24 drumpad controller, and I decided for Maschine for the simple reason that the Maschine pads plain & simple blow the MPD pads out of the water. I'm not exaggerating, I'm not trying to make things sound more exciting than they are: this is the plain & harsh truth. This stuff is so much more responsive...

When I started with Maschine I focused on loading groups first and only paid (more) attention to percussion.

Now, a few months later, I consider the Maschine to as my front portal into the Komplete universe itself and with that an invaluable expansion for my home studio (which, as mentioned, evolves around Live, Reason and the Ableton Push controller).

And in case you're wondering, it's because of reasons like this:



First you may notice that I have the 'Voices of Gaia' loaded, which is one of the SoundIron vocal instruments. What I basically did was select one pad on the Maschine and then browsed for 'instruments' (instead of 'groups'). I then loaded both 'Gaia' and 'Rapture' (on separate pads) and then changed the root note for 'Rapture' so that I could directly access the section I wanted.

SO here's the thing... Once I selected the pad (which now contained the instrument I wanted) I switched to keyboard mode, as shown above. Now all 16 pads play my instrument in different pitches. Step one completed. But there's more. Sure it's "only" 16 pads but NI did something about that: notice the bright dot above my touch strip (left middle)? I set that to 'pitch' so now this functions as a virtual pitch wheel. I can't even begin to describe how much I enjoy having this horizontally vs. vertically! My Ableton Push also has a touch strip (which is much longer btw) and it's vertical. Nothing bad about my Push, quite the contrary(!), just a solid example of how these two controllers can complement each other so much!

See, when I use Maschine then I can easily make the pitch "fit in" with another pad, thus I can more smoothly move (or shift) between sounds, even though I have less pads (16 vs 64) and a smaller touch strip. Less pads also means less room to guess because you're roughly working within one octave.

With Push not so much. Or better said: I can do the same, but the workflow is quite different (I love how I can 'play' Maschine using Push when it's loaded, this is a groundbreaking feature for me); it's not as 'direct' as when playing the Maschine. Sometimes, seriously, less = more.

And I'm also quite impressed with the amount of tweaking I could do while I was only using the Maschine controller and nothing else. I started exploring these instruments using Maschine in stand-alone mode (so only using the Maschine controller). 40 minutes later I decided to compare my discoveries with the 'real deal' so I started Live, Reason and then loaded Kontakt within Live after which I loaded 'Rapture' and 'Gaia' again. Obviously I can now do a whole lot more tweaking with the sound, but even so: all the basic requirements were also accessible from Maschine. I didn't feel limited at all, in fact it sometimes took me less time to produce specific vocal sounds using Maschine than it did with my full setup of Live + Kontakt (= mouse + keyboard).

Alas... in conclusion...

If you're looking for vocal support for your material then you should seriously consider this one. For E 179 (limited offer) you get a massive collection of vocal samples which can be used in all sorts of ways. From your general oh's and ah's right up to whispers, whistles and even Arabian sounds (which have always something magical to them IMO).

And if you do decide to pick this up and you have both a keyboard and a Maschine controller at your disposal then I can seriously recommend to forget about your keyboard for now and start playing on the Maschine instead. It may very well surprise you.....

Thanks for reading!

 

Your vent posts are always informative. Love reading them.