MASCHINE & LIVE INTEGRATION FOR LONG SETS WITH MIDI SYNTHS

[#1thelark]

I guess you could mix plugin and standalone for more midi-channels?

[supamonsta]

Yes I could, but I finally ended with a 2-plugin-instances setup,

each instance has its own IAC driver bus to allow remote control of live (clip triggering overall) from each instance, and each iac bus is routing a different midi channel, so I can assign the same notes from maschines 1 & 2 to different clips in live,
and each instances receives independant program changes from live clips to trigger independantly the maschines scenes.

the only problem, that is still "workaroundable", is that what goes to the IAC busses, from maschines, is a midi stream of all maschines 16 midi channels, so you can't use the maschine midi channels for more remote control of live,

that is, each instance of maschine is only capable of sending 127 notes on 1 midi channel to live... (live's fault, it seems)

so there are only approx 15 x 8 clips available to be triggered from 1 maschine instance.

my workaround, as I want to use 4x8 midi clips per song for controlling 8 scenes of 4 midi outputs,

is to set up an "empty" live set, with all audio routings and midi assignations done,

in which's slots I can drag and drop saved midi clips blocks of 4 songs, corresponding to my projects in maschines ; each project embedding 4 songs (2 groups per song)

So I"ll always have :

2 maschine instances with each one project loaded (4 songs per project)
2 big "external instruments slots" with always 4 sngs (4track-8scenes clips blocks) in each

then I can change projects in maschine (I think I'll have 4 projects of 4 song for a live set), and drag and drop the corresponding "midi blocks" from the browser in live at the place of the former block

Each maschine instance have the same audio and midi tracks setups, each one outputting 6 sub outs (kick, snares, hihats, sub 3, 4 & 5) in different configurations of sidechain compressions, with midi controllers to send to return FXs

with some precise assignations I made a trick to be able to trigger maschinelive scenes via maschine AND live, and live detects what "song block" to play from midi notes triggered by a pad in the maschine patterns. I use a separate midi trak in live to trigger maschine's scenes via program changes, so Each 4track-8scene midi clips block has the 8 "maschine scenes trigger" midi clips.


here are the screen shots (live midi prefs, maschine 1 screen, with the patterns/scenes matrix, the pattern 1 of group B (song 1 = group A + B) where we can see the note that triggers, in live, the corresponding midi block/scene, and a wide screenshot of the session view with midi clips blocks and the precise sroutings








cheers

[supamonsta]

and when you think that all this shit could be avoided, only if Maschine could send midi Program Changes and Control Changes....

then I would simply sequence the synths from the maschine, using the physical midi out of the maschine and a simple midi cable to plug it back in to Live as a standard multichannel midi input (either connected to maschine physical midi input, or in another midi input of my setup)...

maschine + live MIDI combo suffers from 2 major missing features of the 2 companys:

Maschine lacks the ability to send Program Changes and CCs
Live lacks the ability to receive multichannel MIDI from hosted plugins

[supamonsta]

Fuck me,

the setup I describe Is totally pain in the *** to use.

I now have my DSI tetra and the Jomox T resonator, so I set it all up, and began to experiment with the live set I described in the last posts.

Well, that's not the perfect one.
I'd really love to use only 1 instance of maschine... (instance switchint is horrible, and so much live-show un-friendly...)


Guys, you maschibleton lovers...

how do you manage long live sets with external software or hardware synths in live with maschine???

let's share our ideas!

cheers

[The Carpet Cleaner]

Holy shit

Subfunk's threat makes me want to buy a maschine.

Your threat does NOT make me want to buy a maschine



good luck thought.

[supamonsta]

well, I don't thinks this should prevent from buying maschine, but It's IMHO to be taken into consideration if you wanna use Maschine for live shows, as the main central controller .

if you just want to add maschine to a pre-existing live setup, NO PROBLEM, maschine will be a genius additive

[#1thelark]

How about bomes midi translator?
Can't you do transform mididata from Maschine into a program change or so?

[filterstein]

I've got a template nearly ready that has one maschine instance for drums and serveral for hardware synths.
Inspired on the nachay en lektron stuff on the ni forum.
You can trigger the drum maschine sounds from live clips or you can fire the maschine scenes from a live clip.
Then I've got one maschine instance per hardware synth so I can sequence them seperately from maschine.
When you name the project to your hardware synth you can immediately see which synth you are controlling from the hardware.
Need to assign a lot of pads to midi notes to use the step sequencer, will probably be tomorrow before i finish and upload.

[filterstein]

Well here it is, the last 3 tracks are to sequence an external instrument from the maschine patterns.
If you need more you can duplicate the group track and change the external instrument.
Every track has notes, so i guess it should explain itself.
Just load the live set, everything for maschine should be loaded with it (I hope..).

download live set:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~sensing/media/NiMLiveControl.zip

[supamonsta]

Interesting design, thanks for sharing, I'll have a deeper look at that when at home.

I'm pretty sure If we all can share our ideas we may reach something great!!

I know there is no single way of working with this duo, but sharing all our ideas will help all of us find our way(s)

[supamonsta]

are these "group A" to "group H" tracks each containing an external instrument device?

Watching your screen capture, I don't get it... these A to H tracks have an audio out set to "group" , and a midi in from "2-remote"... what is that "GROUP" and this "2-remote"???

how do these A-H tracks receive audio from maschine outputs? external instrument devices?

cheers


EDIT : OK, I got it, "GROUP" is the live 8 feature for grouping tracks and having all the grouped tracks sending audio to the "master group track", isn't it?

[filterstein]

are these "group A" to "group H" tracks each containing an external instrument device?

They are grouped tracks, they receive audio from maschine's external outputs and can send midi to the same groups.

a midi in from "2-remote"... what is that "GROUP" and this "2-remote"???

2-remote is just my midi keyboard, you have to replace it with your own if you want to play sounds from maschine with it.

Just load the set and see the notes for each channel.
If it doesn't make sense, I'll try to explain it better.

[supamonsta]

thanks,

I edited my last post since I had understood the live 8 group stuff (I'm running live 7)

thanks for your last precision about "2-remote".

I hope we'll keep on sharing our Live+maschine ideas


For now my BIGGEST concern, is not really about routing audio and midi ins and outs from maschine to live and vice versa (got it now), but about the workflow to be able to play long sets from maschine(s), as I'd like to use the minimum number of maschine instances, while triggering Live midi clips from maschine patterns (as if those live clips where indeed maschine patterns)...

I'll be back when I'll have more pertinent ideas.

Cheers

[filterstein]

to be able to play long sets from maschine(s), as I'd like to use the minimum number of maschine instances, while triggering Live midi clips from maschine patterns

With the plugin you can only use midi notes on 1 channel , so you can trigger as many clips or live scenes as there are note numbers in midi (127?). That's probably a bit limited for live use.
I think you're stuck to using maschine hardware midi and virtual midi ports.

[supamonsta]

so you can trigger as many clips or live scenes as there are note numbers in midi (127?)

exactly!!

I use this to trigger ableton scenes (several midi clips at once for several midi channels), so that's 127 available scenes to trigger from a maschine instance,

if I use, say, 8 scenes for a "song", that allows me to have 16 songs available from one maschine instance... that's quite OK for me (16*6 min = 96 minutes, + the time used for transitions - and that can be long because using the T resonator, grain delay FXs, DJ EQs... allows really, really cool transitions..)

that aside, the other problem is within maschine : one instance, with only one project, won"t make 16 songs (or perhap's if I play minimal-minimal-techno, with only 8 sounds per song, lol )

so there is still the need of loading projects...
I'm trying to build a setup allowing to load the less possible projects for a live set (I think 4 songs of 2 groups in a project is the best middle solution, because 1 group per song is too less, and 4 groups per song is for me too much...)


If only one could save the individual sounds output assignations within the groups...

that would allow just to load groups on the fly, and it would be really, really cool (I asked this in the NI forums feature requests)

How about bomes midi translator?
Can't you do transform mididata from Maschine into a program change or so?

Yes I may manage this, but 2 problems arise:
1) I'm already using IAC driver (2 busses) and farmpad, so I'd like to avoid using another 3rd party parallel thinking stuff because my brain won't support too much complexity...
2) I could with this send program changes to my hardware synths, but not the CCs motions (I quite allways have CCs motions in my synth midi clips, say, pitch motions, cutoff motions...), so I would still need ableton midi clips...

thanks for helping anyway


cheers