The Maschine & Ableton Love Thread ;) [upon user request]

[SubFunk]

I have read nothing but great reviews of the Maschine

i think it is actually an impossible mission to find something negative about it on the net, that says everything.

[squelcht]

RAZOR BLADES.

[glitchrock-buddha]

... BUT there's something to be said for dedicated hardware samplers.

Certainly. Goes both way. I've enjoyed pulling up Maschine software in a cafe while I should be doing something else like work though, so it's good having it on the laptop and not needing the hardware.

[mholloway]

the drag and drop midi or audio patterns directly from maschine since 1.5 is just killer, especially in combination with live.

Could you please explain to me exactly how the drag and drop works? I get the basics, that it will create a midi clip that matches the patterns made in Maschine sequencer, but my question is more how you are using it -- do the clips, once in live, then continue to trigger Maschine's kits? And if so, how is that routed? Or are you just dropping them in the midi channel that Maschine already sits in?

but better yet, can you drag a beat sequence (midi) from the maschine sequencer into live and have it render into an audio loop (or some variant process that would result in the same thing?) Basically looking for the quickest way to turn sequences programmed in Maschine into audio loops inside live (that is, ideally without having to 'resample' or render/export....)

thanks,
-M

[delicioso]

Any body who's familiar with the MPC KNOWS Maschine dick slaps it (with an attached razor blade) in the face.

if the maschine doesn't hold samples onboard then you're still going to be wrestling with latency issues. this is where the mpc and hardware samplers pwn the Maschine and any outboard controller.

I haven't experienced any noticeable latency while using Maschine. Feels no different than MPC (I've used several models) in that regard.

[squelcht]

What is this "latency" that you speaketh of? Maschine knows of no such strange & unfamiliar lingo

[Tarekith]

I'm curious how people are using it to control Traktor, seems like two completely types of layouts?

Anyway, thanks for the info Sub, definitely something I'm going to keep my eye on.

[timothyallan]

I had an MPC and sold it as I never used it. I never 'chop' up drum loops and just usually do single hits. If I need to do envelopes etc I'll just use Live. Is maschine only good if you play in your own drum hits on the fly? I'm yet to see a compelling video on it that didn't involve hip hop and just slicing up other peoples music with it.

[mholloway]

I had an MPC and sold it as I never used it. I never 'chop' up drum loops and just usually do single hits. If I need to do envelopes etc I'll just use Live. Is maschine only good if you play in your own drum hits on the fly? I'm yet to see a compelling video on it that didn't involve hip hop and just slicing up other peoples music with it.

Even if you did chop up loops, live can accomplish the same ('slice to midi') in a matter of seconds. I think the main appeal of Maschine for people is simply the physical hardware element. There's all this talk about "you can do all this without ever touching a mouse or looking at a screen!" Which is meaningless to me, since I fundamentally don't agree that avoiding the mouse/screen is superior to needing to use them. But I realize it's a taste thing; physical hands-on has a strong appeal to many people.

-M

[timothyallan]

okay cool, that's pretty much what I was wondering... I just hate missing out on potentially great things.

[v00d00ppl]

I had an MPC and sold it as I never used it. I never 'chop' up drum loops and just usually do single hits. If I need to do envelopes etc I'll just use Live. Is maschine only good if you play in your own drum hits on the fly? I'm yet to see a compelling video on it that didn't involve hip hop and just slicing up other peoples music with it.

Even if you did chop up loops, live can accomplish the same ('slice to midi') in a matter of seconds. I think the main appeal of Maschine for people is simply the physical hardware element. There's all this talk about "you can do all this without ever touching a mouse or looking at a screen!" Which is meaningless to me, since I fundamentally don't agree that avoiding the mouse/screen is superior to needing to use them. But I realize it's a taste thing; physical hands-on has a strong appeal to many people.

-M

co-sign. Its the hands on appeal; mainly a lot of people hate using the mouse to chop up samples, but guess what the mouse will always be better at first person shooters and it will always be quicker at chopping up a record. Don't get me wrong, i still love to chop up records on my EPS or 2000XL, but since I don't have that much ample time lately, i do everything via audition 3 or soundbooth cs4.

different strokes for different folks. If i already didn't have live 8, an mpc, and eps, i would probably jump on this, but since i am being cheap. I won't big ups to native instruments for thinking about the dea though.

[leedsquietman]

Can someone please tell me that Maschine in combination with Live is shit.

That latency and glitching is appalling, that the workflow really sucks and that the last thing I need to do is purchase Maschine, which is seriously expensive here ... (not doubting the value, but when you have a hard time scraping pennies from under car seats and down the back of sofas to buy a quart of milk, etc).

Seriously I have about 17 cents to my name, still out of work and in a crappy mood. I don't wanna read about some other mofos loving their Maschine

cue John Lennon 'I didn't mean to hurt you, I'm sorry that I made you cry, I didn't want to hurt you, I'm just a jealous guy ...'

[apyssjw]

As stated by one of the posters above I really don't get why people hate the mouse as an input device. In my opinion it is truely an amazing 'controller' for won't of a better word. I don't understand why people need about 10 different controllers to do the same thing you can do with a mouse in two seconds. I have an apc40 and I use the knobs extensively but I wouldn't trade the mouse for navigation etc. But it's a game of opinions Brian.

[SubFunk]

I had an MPC and sold it as I never used it. I never 'chop' up drum loops and just usually do single hits. If I need to do envelopes etc I'll just use Live. Is maschine only good if you play in your own drum hits on the fly? I'm yet to see a compelling video on it that didn't involve hip hop and just slicing up other peoples music with it.

Even if you did chop up loops, live can accomplish the same ('slice to midi') in a matter of seconds. I think the main appeal of Maschine for people is simply the physical hardware element. There's all this talk about "you can do all this without ever touching a mouse or looking at a screen!" Which is meaningless to me, since I fundamentally don't agree that avoiding the mouse/screen is superior to needing to use them. But I realize it's a taste thing; physical hands-on has a strong appeal to many people.

-M

well, it simply works any way you want it to, to start one possibility is to use it as a plugin within ableton or any other host (comes with VST, AU and RTAS plug) and you can instantly swop (while the sequencer is running) between midi mode (controlling your sequencer or any other assigned midi control, instruments, etc.) and maschine mode (controlling maschine no matter where the focus previously was!!! with all it's functions within the host and everything is alway 100% top notch in sync) and then obviously you can render or resample or do whatever you want, like you would do with any other plugin.

or you can drag out of maschine a midi or audio pattern and just drop it into ableton (or any other DAW), the point is that as squelcht described the way you create patterns with it is somehow very different (hard to explain, you need to really use it to understand, i have an PadK as well and with maschine it's totally different) and the midi patterns you can obviously drag into any midi channel that contains an instrument and then use it further from there in ableton (do what you would with any other midi pattern in ableton) or you can choose that maschine creates an audio file out of your midi pattern you have in maschine with the choosen sound in maschine, the audio loop is 100% accurate and you drop it into an audio channel of ableton and it will loop synced along... just plain awesome, just so awesome... that i have no words for it, it's really something i consider for once perfect.

or you can at any time 'traditionally' render any part or loop or loop section, or a whole song as audio.


@ tarekith, the conrol editor is super powerful, and will still become even more powerful, it took me 2 days to create the perfect traktor template, but now i have it the way i was always dreaming of... if you have maschine i am happy to send it to you and share it, but it is layed out for 100% manual
mixing and manual beat matching, cause i come from over 15 years of turntables and like the little human 'glitch' when betamatching and doing long, long mixes with corrections, i made my layout for 3 decks and fx and many, many other functions including browsing and loading all on one layer!!! with one sub layer on the knob page for switching to fave crates and some other layouts... and that all with total visual feedback of all functions. no need to ever touch the computer again once i placed it in the booth, the only thing i need is visuality to it, to see the tracks in the browser and to have every now and then a little glimpse at the waveform, absolute perfect, same accounts being the general controller for Live (i also customised the standard template it comes with) and logic (the MCU mode, i also customised a bit) and the standard templates are all great as well, traktor, battery, live, massive, pro 53, mackie control, etc, etc.

there are also plenty of people out who made already heavy alterations to the maschine as a live controller with different remote scripts for any type of workflow....

and did i already mentioned that maschine standalone is the utmost fun i had in years making music?

[silveriofunk]

i've been thinking abouth the Maschine recently since at the moment i am using the launchpad and an Mpd24, a bit annoying really and i just want one controller... for everything.

gotta start saving now!