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

[jbone1313]

Live is so much more than Maschine + VST Hosting.

Drum Racks are way more powerful than Maschine. More complex, yes. I have actually gone back to Drum Racks after becoming frustrated with Maschine's limitations.

PS: My Maschine is for sale here: http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=147479

[SubFunk]

@ glitchrock - I agree totally with the drum racks thing. I too was relying on them before Maschine. Now I look @ Abletons drum racks as a joke compared to Maschine. Everything is controllable-tweekable-editable with ZERO mapping. God bless you NI. God bless...

If maschine gets the ability to host VSTs I can see myself never using Live and doing everything in Maschine. I think 1.8/2.0 needs to have this functionality.

for live playing yes i can defo see that as well, for a whole production i am not sure... i am happy with maschine plus live. (or maschine plus whatever daw)

for my personal idea of a rocking performance a traktor / maschine integration would be the killer, nothing else i need.

and i can smell it coming...

[starving student]

@ glitchrock - I agree totally with the drum racks thing. I too was relying on them before Maschine. Now I look @ Abletons drum racks as a joke compared to Maschine. Everything is controllable-tweekable-editable with ZERO mapping. God bless you NI. God bless...

If maschine gets the ability to host VSTs I can see myself never using Live and doing everything in Maschine. I think 1.8/2.0 needs to have this functionality.

Lives songwriting arranging capabilities crap all over maschine but yeah, maschine for life and all that!

can you change time signatures and tempo on every scene in maschine hmmm?
what about loop recording for your vocals and instruments hmmm?
how about crossfading between sample clips hmmmm?
what about freezing and flattening with efx hmmmm?
what about routing a single audio track to like 40 other tracks in live with different settings on them hmmmm?

and what about looping experimental freeform improvisation running your instrument of choice into live or from a softsynth from within live..............live kicks the ass out of ass son, and don't you forget it.

[Poster]

I don't understand why Ableton co-developed 3 dedicated Live controllers and none of them addresses drum programming..
3 controllers that basicly do the same, 2 of them even coming from the makers of the MPC..

[dna598]

I don't understand why Ableton co-developed 3 dedicated Live controllers and none of them addresses drum programming..
3 controllers that basicly do the same, 2 of them even coming from the makers of the MPC..
I don't understand why Ableton co-developed 3 dedicated Live controllers and none of them addresses drum programming..
3 controllers that basicly do the same, 2 of them even coming from the makers of the MPC..

May i reccomend the Padkontrol?

I have apc40 and launchpad and still think my Korg Pad kontrol rules over them.

I only just thought the other day to map all the session view scenes to banks on the PK.

Doing this has totally opened up ableton, surprisingly more usefully for me than the apc/launchpad. Heres why...

On the PK, scene 1 does drum racks WITH velocity. Which is already a winner.

I then have the first 16 (or more) session view scenes pre mapped across remaining pad banks.

16 scenes ready to fire, no red box, instantly there for mashing up. Potentially 239 more scenes two taps away with on the PK! (requires mapping but just save template and youre good)

As the pads are touch sensitive it makes very light work of recording and improvising and succeeds where the apc/launchpad fail.Accuracy and playability.

It makes Live an instant musical paintbox machine upon loading!

[delicioso]

May i reccomend the Padkontrol?

padkontrol can never be compared at all to what Maschine brings to Live, other than that they both have drum pads. And Maschine's pads are even more expressive than padkontrol's which is saying a lot.

[dna598]

May i reccomend the Padkontrol?

padkontrol can never be compared at all to what Maschine brings to Live,

Yeah man, I know. As you can see I am merely recommending it.

I dont have maschine, I'm sure it's very good.

[starving student]

but maschine is much doper in the dedicated groovebox arena

[SubFunk]

but maschine is much doper in the dedicated groovebox arena

and it is the most fun thing to use ever, the fun factor is unbeatable.

leading to ass kicking music without nerdy fuss.

[continuous]

so best fun

[Poster]

@dna598
I still have a PK, catching dust since I got Maschine..

What I meant is that Live has all the ingredients for drum/groove programming but no dedicated controller..
While Ableton has previously stated that a dedicated controller was somewhat impossible because of the many various kind of users whom all have their personal needs they do come up with 3 controllers that basicly do the same. And while they're not exactly allrounders I do see that they address a larger part of the userbase.
I personally have no need for a clip launch grid though I might be interested in using a Launchpad with MFL..

Look at drumracks; they follow the 4x4 grid standard for which there are many 3rd party controllers available, so I can see why it might not be interesting to come up with again a 4x4 controller..
However; they all miss one thing; the secret handshake with Live.. (as in; the 'red ring').. That's where Ableton could've competed with all other 4x4's..
Imagine being able to browse samples, inserting new clips, have a stepsequencer, browsing up down the pad scroller, inserting FX and have them mapped to knobs automatically, inserting instruments for things other than drums, maybe even insert instrumentracks inside drumracks, all done from one controller..
A secret handshake could make this possible..

The range that the controllers would then cover would be much broader; a 4x4 that is dedicated to drums and grooves that does a bit of clip triggering on the side, the APC that is dedicated to clip triggering and does a bit of drumprogramming on the side.. perfect overlap..

As I said before, I never got along with drumracks that well, Maschine addresses most of the things I didn't like..

[The Carpet Cleaner]

thanks jake,

ok here's a bit more info to clarify the scenario:

a friend of mine is considering switching from akai mpc to NI mascine -> daw sequencing. in his setup, it would be to run DFH superior (FYI, its a multilayered drum sample plugin) as a VST / AU instrument (in either Live or Logic).

he is considering buying maschine so that he can sequence in there (as with akai mpc) but instead of using maschine's sampler for sounds, he would like to set the midi to go to the DFH superior (he would only need one midi channel). when finished with sequencing, he would transfer the midi data from maschine back to DAW and then bounce... can u confirm we are talking about the same thing?

sounds like u are, but sometimes its difficult to explain this stuff unless ur in front of the box!

thanks again,

j

Yeah thats what I'm doing, only in my case I tend to use it for synths etc. All you have to do is set the source for a pad to midi out and then pick the channel you want to send midi on (from 1-16). You then enable maschine virtual midi out in the midi preferences and then enable midi in for maschine virtual midi output (select track and sync so that you can sync live to maschine) within live's midi preferences. Then you open up a midi track in live set it to monitor in and then select maschine virtual output and the channel you chose earlier in the midi from drop downs. Finally back on maschine you enable keyboard mode for the pad that you set to midi out. This then gives you the full 128 note range on that midi track going from maschine to live and allows you to use maschines sequencer with all its hands on overdubing recording erasing etc goodness.

Phew hope that makes sense, sorry about the lack of pictures (which I know would help) posting from my phone right now...

How do you handle Maschine's drums then? Are you running those 16 channels back to another instance of Maschine? I've fiddled with Maschine's workflow till I'm blue in the face. While Maschine is great standalone, I've never been able to get the workflow of taking my Maschine projects to a DAW for arranging.

I hope the above makes it clear, but I'm not using these 16 channels for maschines drums, these are 16 channels of midi that I use for sequencing other vst's. With regards to drums I tend to programme these in maschine, but route the audio into ableton on 8 different channels. The first way I do this is I use the external instrument plug in on 8 different tracks with each one taking sound from a different pair of maschines outs (via soundflower). Then what this allows me to do is to drag the pattern as midi (check pattern drag mode as midi and set sound midi batch setup to sounds to midi notes) into live and then when I'm on an empty scene in maschine I can trigger the drums in maschine using the dragged midi clips (enable maschines virtual midi input in maschine and on output in ableton's midi preferences turn on track for maschines virtual input) in ableton. Bear in mind that this only works for drums and samples etc, if you try and do this for a pad where you programmed a pitched progression it won't work (due to the way this works by assigning a midi note to each pad and then creating a clip with a corresponding pattern)

The other way I do this is I have 8 audio channels in live set up to monitor in each of maschine's 8 outputs and then I have pattern drag mode as audio and drag the loops out as audio and arrange them as audio in live.

To be honest each method has its pro's and cons and depending on my mood / the track I'll use either...

Hey,
today I tried to use maschine to control vst/plug-ins.
So I did what you explained, setting each pad to a channel (acutally you can do all of that, just by selecting Sound MIDI Batch Setup of a group, and select Sounds to MIDI Channels.
Then in Live, create MIDI 16 tracks, with input from maschine, chan 1, chan 2, etc...
It wokrs it's cool
However, I cannot use my piano keyboard anymore with that.

I can use my keyboard with regular sounds from maschine, in other groups. But I'll like to be able to use my midi keyboard to go to maschine, then maschine sending the midi signal to the VSTs in Live.
Is that possible ?

Thank you

[delicioso]

FYI, a free 1.5.1 update is now available. The update contains a number of improvements and some fixes.

New Controller Editor version 1.2.5.409 included
Quickbrowse fix: Hitting a PAD sets focus in browser immediatly
Browser focus on MASCHINE controller and in SW in sync
Additional steps for waveform zooming on MASCHINE controller
screens via shift + knob 5
16 velocity mode is polyphonic now
MASCHINE AU FX crash in Digital Performer fixed
Bouncing with Reflex FX fixed
Text entry for numbers 0-8 and keyboard shortcuts p & q fixed. Shortcut Ctrl/Alt+Space is no longer supported
MAC driver crash fixed, new driver version 2.4.12 included

[T.I.M.]

cool, how does the mpc do as a midi control surface with visual feedback?

that was low Sub, very low

Actually on the 5000 there is a window that lights up and shows what you hit.

[nylarch]

I kind of agree with the fact the Ableton needs to do a drum machine tightly integrated with drum racks. Drum racks are amazing except for the cramped interface - if you could access the power without having to stare at the interface so much it would be unbeatable.