Thinking about leaving maschine...

So this may be a little ramble, and long.

First, I produce hip hop beats. Mostly sample based.
But Ive been on maschine for almost 2 years now. First the MK1, now the studio. I love maschine, and the workflow it gives me with fast creativity. BUT, I hate the arrangement hassles (the infamous ones heh). It becomes a hassle to arrange things out, into a full beat. One thing off the top of my head, is what do you do if you want to add a Synth sound, to overlap Scene 2 into 3? You can't.

Also, now that Im getting a little more productive and active, Ive noticed how much of a P.I.T.A it is to try and collab with someone. Thats just a complete waste of time in itself.

Like I said, I love the up front, fast workflow. Nothing I have found is faster to chop samples up with. Ive tried it as a plug in with Logic, and well, that was a ****** headache. I don't mind switching fully to another program, its just leaving the sampling aspect maschine carries behind, is what will be hard.

Maybe I should keep a 1000$ piece of equipment to just chop samples, then export just the chops into the EXS on logic?

 

how do u start making a song ?

 

Select Scene 2 & 3 as a loop, record.

 

^ this. you don't even have to have a patterns created Machine will make new ones as the play head line enters into the new scene (with record on). This is also a good technique for adding automation across multiple patterns on the Maschine timeline or if you need to make a delay automation tail or reverb ring out after the pattern has stopped from the previous scene or to "split" MIDI patterns during live jam. Also a helpful technique to "have multiple patterns" in one scene if you bounce your patterns audio loops and trigger the loops over multiple scenes and patterns.

 

Yeah. No problem to overlap more scenes with an instrument!
I create all my songs with maschine only.

 

But the instrument has to be in its own group in order to get this to work?
I think i dont understand exactly.

 

Yes ,just imagine groups are tracks

 

I'm using this workflow at the moment , newish to maschine , and last night I spent at least 7 hours using maschine studio without a monitor (the 42 inch plasma right in face) and I am shocked at how easy it was , I can navigate the patterns and tracks in the scene arranger using my computer keyboard cursor .
I'm no musician and to be honest I've wasted years ,never really achieving anything in a daw just starting things and never finishing them.
This is how I'm using it .
Make your pattern length 1 bar , set the loop marker to 4 bars , create 4 scenes , create 4 patterns , I just leave them named as they are ,as later it will help with editing and song position,
So I now make a drum beat , I know it's only 4 bars ,but for now I just loop that and start to add more groups for each new sound ,and have four patterns for the four scenes for every group,
Then I duplicate each scene with patterns eg pad 1 is 5 , 2 is 6 ,3 is 7 , 4 is 8 then reapeat 5 is 9 and so on till I hit u hit 16 (or u could continue as much as you want ,you could do 64 scenes with 64 pattern,- 4 pad banks and it will be 64 bars ,if you left the pattern name they should follow in suit , so pattern 16 is bar 16 etc so u have a sort of reference point .and when you want to edit patterns at song positions u can just go to the pattern no that corresponds to the bar number on all groups.
Yes I know it's a 64 bar loop , but now you can go back to the start and remove patterns don't delete the pattern but if you don't want what's in it just clear the midi data, edit patterns so that you start to get more structure , you can set the loop points at different places to edit different sections ,
you can use the cpu keyboard arrows to navigate groups and select patterns on the arranger /patterns window on the hardware, removing unwanted patterns or selecting which ones you want to edit .
may work for you ,may not , tbf I've going just started using it this way, but It did seem really simple
May attemp to do a video

 

Hrmm that sounds interesting. Never thought to do it that way. Have to give it a shot!

 

It's sad that so many clueless noobs who never bothered to read the manual or really put in the effort to learn how it works have perpetuated ignorant myths about "song mode" and arranging in Maschine so that this now "infamous" myth gets regurgitated and accepted at face value.

 

heres a quick template .took about 2 mins to create. u can see more whats going on ,I've removed some patterns from the first 8 bars but there still in the pad bank so can be used if needed.
Don't normally lay out empty patterns like this to start , but thinking about it , it's prob better ,as all your patterns are in the right place by number, you can just fill in the patterns , if you want to copy a pattern go into the pattern and copy the midi data and copy that to the empty pattern .

 

If you go though all the various demos you get with the expansion , you can see the various ways that they've been put together , these can be useful in explaining how it can work.

 

Wouldn't do it. They will either have a new controller either the first of next month or announce something September 1st. Maschine 3 I think. Kontrol Keyboards will be probably get the maschine studio screens later down the line I think. If you get akai, good luck with the bugs and dealing with tech support if you have issues. You should read this about working at numark/akai:
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Numark-Reviews-E28500.htm

Found that interesting. Good luck with whatever you decide.

 

Problem solved.

 

@Myrical_Lyfe it would be a bad move. Maschine is being improved as we speak.

@skizm, what are you talking about, what is the myth about "songmode" in maschine?

 

i go thru cycles of using a particular interface or production system and when i get burned out or struggle to make the good ****; that usually means my time is up on a particular device.

even though maschine is the easiest to use; i spent a day messing with different beats and trying to get something that I felt was worth keeping.

was trying out some different samplesover some pre-exsisting drums i made on another occasion.

and at the end of the day i recall finding a good sample but could not make anything good with it; switched over to the mpc studio loaded the same sample and made something dope within minutes

this dont mean mpc is better; but certain interfaces trigger different responses in creativity and force different a workflow; and sometimes that change is needed to get back creative.

 

First off, thanks for all the replies. I was severely frustrated that day.

@Aldred411 thanks a milli for that template. I used it on the last beat I made, and it was awesome. I started using logic, and everything sample wise, is just so much easier. NO annoying time stretching issues, easy to chop and lay across a keyboard. BUT, then I go to make drums, and its hell. Mainly because I can't use maschines midi mode, since its never worked for me, it just freezes, no matter the program. And I can't open the controller editor for some reason, it just crashes.

Its just all frustrating, finding a good, all around work flow.

 

Logic isn't great with maschine tbh , I've found that either make your song in maschine then load logic load maschine and your song then just route maschine audio to logics mixer , add audio fx ,u can automate the audio effects .
Or you can use maschine to make the beat bit by bit and drag the midi into logic , but I find this gets too complicated . Or again just route the audio .
Ableton seems to be the way to go with maschine.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/fl4fubi7dioa4eb/a1ylFMn0iu
Google how to set this up , Freemasons maschine logic swing , Should be a utube vid.

 

Im going to check that out. And yes, I tried routing in logic, and it seems like a workflow killer. I stupidly downloaded Ableton before and never used it before the demo ran out. So now Id have to buy.