Maschine for better arrangement

[mc1392]

Guys,

I hate working in Live's arrangement view.

Do you think Maschine or Maschine Mikro would help?

I feel Like Im getting stuck with the loops in session view, so when it comes
time to do an arrangement, frustration.

Can anyone testify that Maschine has improved workflow, specifically arrangement(transitions,drum breakdowns,sweeps)?
When it comes time to do arrangements in Live, it's like an energy drain, I just dont want to
do it.

Yes I do record my sessions to arrangement, but the extra tweaking,etc.. is not fun in Live.
I understand you can do sweeps etc in Live, but the time it takes is killing me.

I hope Im making sense. Please don't kill me.

[dazzer]

Got no idea about Maschine, I was trying to justify buying it in another thread.

But what's so tricky/wrong with Arrangement view? Transitions/drum breakdowns/sweeps you mention - why can't you do them?

[Tarekith]

Personally I felt arranging in Maschine was one of its weak points, but that's just me. Maybe these will help you though:

http://tarekith.com/assets/pdfs/ArrangingSongs.pdf

http://tarekith.com/common-arrangement-issues/

http://tarekith.com/7-quick-arrangement-tips/

[mc1392]

Got no idea about Maschine, I was trying to justify buying it in another thread.

But what's so tricky/wrong with Arrangement view? Transitions/drum breakdowns/sweeps you mention - why can't you do them?

When I tried dragging and dropping from session, I can't seem to land on the exact spot that I want.
Do I need to click on the exact time in the arrangement, then drag and drop?

Feel me? seems a lil awkward.

I miss the Sony Acid, where the horizontal scrolling is easily painted in.
I guess I miss the paintbrush.

maybe that is what I am in need of. I'd like to see

[mc1392]

I think my problem is too much stop and go, which is due to the nature of ableton live.
I want to be more fluid.

I tend to work in session mode, since arrangement I don't like. It feels very awkward.
Im thinking laying down first-take arrangements in Maschine then bounce into ableton for more tweaking.

[djadonis206]

Maschine's a drum machine, not a sequencer. Check out NI's Maschine forum to get the low down how users feel about the song mode (aka arrange view). I personally thought it was weak.

I get the most out of Ableton's Session view and Arrange view by using the APC40. I come up with stuff in Session and then record into Arrange via the APC.

Probably the best arrange view I've experienced is Logic's. But I'm not much of a Logic user these days.

[dazzer]

Got no idea about Maschine, I was trying to justify buying it in another thread.

But what's so tricky/wrong with Arrangement view? Transitions/drum breakdowns/sweeps you mention - why can't you do them?

When I tried dragging and dropping from session, I can't seem to land on the exact spot that I want.
Do I need to click on the exact time in the arrangement, then drag and drop?

Feel me? seems a lil awkward.

I miss the Sony Acid, where the horizontal scrolling is easily painted in.
I guess I miss the paintbrush.

maybe that is what I am in need of. I'd like to see

In Live do stuff in session, drag it all into arrange, if it doesn't drag to the beginning of the song then just move it there, scroll in, if you've got loops of different lengths just drag them to the same length, select all, drag them all - just like 'painting' in Acid. If they won't drag you need to enable 'loop'. I used to use Session view exclusively, never finished a bloody song, so now my initial doodles are in session but once i've got something nice going on, get started ib it in Arrange.

TBH it just sounds like you need to learn Live a bit more.

[starving student]

omg maschines arrangement super sucks compared to lives, you had better try it out first, not making a beat but arranging on that thing I'm certain you will assault your salesman after five minutes. Maschine is great at a many things but arranging isn't even close to being one of them.

[UltimateOutsider]

While I think Maschine is great, I cannot recommend it as an end-to-end song arrangement tool.

It's excellent for putting interesting beats together quickly, but the song arranging- while quite easy to use- is very limiting when compared to Live. When I'm not using it to throw together drum loops, I use Maschine pretty much exclusively as a nice multi-timbral Kontakt-like VST.

A lot of Live users flip back between Session and Arrange view many times while putting tracks together; it's very easy to move clips from one view to another. It just takes some experience, because it's a pretty unique setup.

[mc1392]

Pardon, I meant to say lay down the initial beat with Maschine.
Then bounce to ableton to complete the arrangement.

I think I need more speed at the start of music making process.

[UltimateOutsider]

Pardon, I meant to say lay down the initial beat with Maschine.
Then bounce to ableton to complete the arrangement.

I think I need more speed at the start of music making process.

Well in that case, this is exactly what Maschine's good for. It's very easy to get patterns OUT of Maschine. It's quite another matter trying to get them IN via anything other than the pads or VST UI.

It takes a little while to understand how Maschine works with MIDI (there are different layers and types of MIDI operation), but once you know how it works it's pretty versatile as a VST.

[invol]

As someone that came from Pro Tools and Logic, before turning to Live as my personal primary music production tool, I can say that you can do most anything you need to do. It is very frustrating at first, and takes a bit of getting used to, and does not have a lot of the convenience features of the big DAWs. I've been trying to tell them for years that they need to give Arrangement View more attention. That said, what it does do, it does very well. You can dump everything into another DAW, but I found that the time it takes to do that takes at least as long as just finishing everything in Live. I would just spend time learning all the little tricks and workflows that make Live's Arrangement View work for you.

Cheers,
Brian

[mc1392]

everyone has made great points.
I def need to get better with the arrangement view.

I think my current workflow is leaving me exhausted/bored by the time
I get to the arrangement.

I'd like something like maschine up front, then polish in Live, etc...


Thanks for helping me sort this out mentally.

[ttilberg]

Mc, there are some very excellent keyboard shortcuts to learn, and general tricks to use. I'll give you my favorite when I'm back at my desk, on my phone at lunch right now.

[glitchrock-buddha]

Maschine has no arrangement. And as a plug-in, it's integration, or lack thereof, will make things even more frustrating for you. I love Maschine but it's not going to help your live arrangements. You'd need to trigger scenes from Live, which only makes it harder toarrange, or bounce out to audio continuously, or trigger by midi notes, which is no different from what you already do in live, using Maschine as a sound module.