Ableton Forum

Hello everyone, I could use a little help.

I own a maschine mk1 controller running the 1.8 version software and here's the deal: I bought maschine to use in my DJ set to create do drum loops on the fly and layer the music I was playing and it worked very nice. Now that I started producing I can't make maschine useful. I'm using it as a vst in ableton and routing each sound to a audio channel in ableton but it feels like I'm using just an over complicated drum rack. It won't let me create patterns longer than 1 bar, I'm using effects in ableton and not in maschine and transferring what I created in it to the arrangement view in ableton seems like a pain in the ass. So I wanted to hear from you guys if there is a nice and truly useful way to integrate maschine and ableton or if I should just sell it.

Thank you!

RafaMrqs wrote:Hello everyone, I could use a little help.

I own a maschine mk1 controller running the 1.8 version software and here's the deal: I bought maschine to use in my DJ set to create do drum loops on the fly and layer the music I was playing and it worked very nice. Now that I started producing I can't make maschine useful. I'm using it as a vst in ableton and routing each sound to a audio channel in ableton but it feels like I'm using just an over complicated drum rack. It won't let me create patterns longer than 1 bar, I'm using effects in ableton and not in maschine and transferring what I created in it to the arrangement view in ableton seems like a pain in the ass. So I wanted to hear from you guys if there is a nice and truly useful way to integrate maschine and ableton or if I should just sell it.

Thank you!

IMO using Maschine + Live in parallel is cumbersome. Using Maschine as a controller for Live is probably the best workflow other than some occasional sounds and using Maschine as a sound module.

That said a few of the things Maschine will give you.

1. A drum sampler a bit more flexible than Simpler. (Battery is probably better though than Maschine though and works a little better in Drum Racks IMO). I especially like the vintage sampler modes.

2. Drum synths. (I like Maschines better than M4L).

3. A better way to Browse your Komplete library (assuming you have Komplete).

4. Note repeat.

5. Generally better kits than what Live has to offer.


i find with DrumRacks though and Ableton I have a better sequencer than Maschine alone for my workflow.

That said though, I think the key if u plan on using Maschine as a module, it would be good to set up some good templates (possibly setting Maschine up as either a drum Rack or instrument with its multi outs already configured).

I use it so that two people can work on an ableton track simultaneously and keep the maschine work saved into the ableton set. Mostly jamming, one on machine, one on ableton. Later on, when ideas work, the brute force way is to record machine straight into audio clips in ableton. This can be a way to capture the human feel of any on-the-fly tweaks and mutes. Another more flexible solution is to trigger maschine scenes using ableton dummy clips. I end up using a mix of both. Sometimes a recording started from maschine but ended up sliced into an ableton drum rack.

Also these 2 are not true:

RafaMrqs wrote:It won't let me create patterns longer than 1 bar

and

RafaMrqs wrote:transferring what I created in it to the arrangement view in ableton seems like a pain in the ass.

You can create up to 128 bars within 128 scenes.
But if you set ableton loop in 1 bar, maschine will loop 1 bar respectively.

And transferring from maschine to ableton is really easy. You just drag & drop (midi and/or audio.)

Upgrade to Maschine 2.0

I don't know Maschine pre 2.0 but I know that it integrates very well with Ableton Live and I use it all the time.