To Maschine Or Not To Maschine

[Syncretia]

What's the advantage of slicing stuff up in Maschine over Ableton?

Simpler/Sampler seem like better samplers than Maschine to me.

If you want to play the slices, why not use a mid keyboard, or use Maschine as a controller in Ableton?

Swing/Groove
Another workflow issue with Maschine is Groove/Swing. If you use the straight up Swing grooves in Ableton, you can sync with Maschine. Otherwise, you're screwed. The only way you can make this work is to drag the midi out of Maschine and in to Ableton.

[Ryanmf]

In short, warping is a wonderful bit of technology that has the capacity to completely fuck up the feel of a sample that didn't come out of a sequencer/drum machine. In Simpler/Sampler, you can either slice by musical intervals, or you have to warp to be able to set specific slice points.

With Maschine, I can chop a sample MPC-style without any concern that I'm altering the sound of the source material. With Live, I can't.

(To me Maschine is also a much more efficient, low-friction tool for sketching out ideas and creating a bunch of variations on drum patterns, but that's probably more of a personal preference thing.)

[regretfullySaid]

With Maschine, I can chop a sample MPC-style without any concern that I'm altering the sound of the source material. With Live, I can't.

Can you be more specific with that? Why can't you do that in Live?

[oddstep]

In short, warping is a wonderful bit of technology that has the capacity to completely fuck up the feel of a sample that didn't come out of a sequencer/drum machine. In Simpler/Sampler, you can either slice by musical intervals, or you have to warp to be able to set specific slice points.

With Maschine, I can chop a sample MPC-style without any concern that I'm altering the sound of the source material. With Live, I can't.

(To me Maschine is also a much more efficient, low-friction tool for sketching out ideas and creating a bunch of variations on drum patterns, but that's probably more of a personal preference thing.)

fair enough with the workflow thing... plus maybe the maschine just works for you..

but slicing on simpler/sampler gets rid of the warping. there are not any warping artefacts on the audio played back by slice to midi. its not warped. Many people try slicing to midi and then post on the forum saying, why is my drum beat out of time?
I will buy you Rotterdam if I am proved wrong.

[oddstep]

...starts looking for credit card...

[Ryanmf]

In short, warping is a wonderful bit of technology that has the capacity to completely fuck up the feel of a sample that didn't come out of a sequencer/drum machine. In Simpler/Sampler, you can either slice by musical intervals, or you have to warp to be able to set specific slice points.

With Maschine, I can chop a sample MPC-style without any concern that I'm altering the sound of the source material. With Live, I can't.

(To me Maschine is also a much more efficient, low-friction tool for sketching out ideas and creating a bunch of variations on drum patterns, but that's probably more of a personal preference thing.)

fair enough with the workflow thing... plus maybe the maschine just works for you..

but slicing on simpler/sampler gets rid of the warping. there are not any warping artefacts on the audio played back by slice to midi. its not warped. Many people try slicing to midi and then post on the forum saying, why is my drum beat out of time?
I will buy you Rotterdam if I am proved wrong.

Well, I'm in the market for a new Rotterdam, but unfortunately you're right. Looks like I'll have to buy my own.

When I was writing that post I forgot that the warping effects are stripped when slicing to MIDI. However, the fact remains that when auditioning the sample and setting slice/warp points, it just doesn't sound right. I know it's a minor thing, and for some people it's of no consequence at all, but it's always gotten under my skin.

With Maschine, I can chop a sample MPC-style without any concern that I'm altering the sound of the source material. With Live, I can't.

Can you be more specific with that? Why can't you do that in Live?

As far as sound quality, technically I can do it, but not in a way that suits me (see above).

In terms of process, they're worlds apart. Forgive me if I'm explaining something you're already familiar with, but the process on Maschine would go one of two ways:

1. Load clip, open sampling mode, select slice. From here you can choose to slice by splitting into equally sized segments (4, 8, 16, or 32 of them), or—predicated on automatic BPM measurements which I find to be as good or better than Live's—sliced on the grid into quarter, eighth, sixteenth, or thirtysecond notes, a process which takes into account global time signature settings. Finally, there's a transient detection mode with adjustable sensitivity which generally works very well, and when it doesn't, individual slices can be added or removed at the user's discretion. Further, each individual slice's start and end points can be manually adjusted (as can the automatically detected BPM) before the slices are applied to a group of pads. (Not possible in Live without setting a shit-ton of warp markers.) Alternately, the slices can occupy just one pad but be spread across the keyboard and triggered via MIDI from a host/sequencer, from an external keyboard, or in Maschine's "Pad/Keyboard Mode". I find this method to be faster, more precise, and more flexible than Live's slice to MIDI feature, and unlike with Live, I don't have to adjust the global BPM to ensure that the slice points are in the right spots and to prevent my sample from sounding all wonky when I'm working on it. I will say that I do like Live's option to save custom slicing settings/racks that are automatically populated with the settings/effects/macro mappings of my choosing.
2. Load a clip onto a pad. Immediately duplicate clip to a second pad. Begin a process of adjusting start and end points and re-duplicating the sample to put just the hits/segments I want on the pads where I want them (I say "hits" because this is especially useful for chopping drum breaks) without even thinking about slicing the whole thing. The entire process is non-destructive and the start and end points for each chop can be adjusted at any point in the future. This method is much more MPC-like, both in terms of the thought process behind the technique, and the fact that once I've loaded the sample (which I could do from the controller if my Maschine library weren't such a mess, I prefer to just drag in audio clips from Finder) I never touch the mouse. I hold duplicate, tap the pad where the sample is, tap the pad where I want to put the copy, and start twisting knobs to focus in on the segment of the sample I want to use.

Also—and again this is just personal preference—aside from 128s (which are fucking awesome) I find the pad grouping in Maschine to be much easier to manage than the MIDI-note based shifts in a drum rack filled with samples, or switching between several drum racks on several different tracks.

[regretfullySaid]

Yeah ok, thanks, I see what you mean.

[bunkers]

Maschine?

[panten]

Maschine?

It's that thing that people keep going on about, y'know, that sounds like a drum kit falling down the stairs.

[oddstep]

that was close.

[kb420]

Maschine is the MPC of the Modern Age!!!!

[panten]

I thought that the Renaissance was the MPC of the Modern Age, minus the portability bit.

The Maschine is the Maschine of the modern age minus the portability bit. What's your point?

[kb420]

I thought that the Renaissance was the MPC of the Modern Age, minus the portability bit.

The Maschine is the Maschine of the modern age minus the portability bit. What's your point?

The Ren is following the leader now. Maschine being a hybrid software/hardware device was the first of it's kind. Maschine is much more developed. When the MPC first came out, and they were still being designed by Roger Lynn, they were revolutionary. The MPC 60 being the first, I believe. They continued to develop with more and more features up until the MPC 4000, and then they actually took a step back with the MPC 5000, which Akai didn't even bother to fix all of it's bugs. Now they introduce the Ren, and it's still plagued with bugs, while Maschine seems to have more features and less glitches.

[panten]

It's still not an MPC or Standalone is it?

I've also heard that the sequencer on Maschine is more complicated/idiotic compared to the Ren.

[kb420]

It's still not an MPC or Standalone is it?

I've also heard that the sequencer on Maschine is more complicated/idiotic compared to the Ren.

No, it's not standalone, but are any manufacturers even making standalone sampling drum machines any more? It's kinda like rackmount samplers. No one is really making them anymore. I'm not saying that people aren't still using them, but you don't see any new models being made and developed anymore.

The sequencer is different than the Ren, but I wouldn't call it "complicated/idiotic". I used a MPC 3000 for years, and Maschines' sequencer is fine. Actually, it can do some things that my MPC 3000 couldn't.