Maschine as VST in Ableton Live (full, useful tutorial)

[delicioso]

ok, something is going wrong for me somewhere.

When i try to change the post/pre fx tab so it says maschine, it doesnt give me that choice maschine is not there as an option? whats going on?

Are you using a VST or AU version?

[critsheek]

YEAH, I red some more posts and realised what was going on. ready to rock now though. ooosh!

[Regrind]

hey guys, I have set everything up as St Joe and HHUDS and Mixtape say, with the 8 midi tracks into Live -one for each Maschine group. Now when I play from one of the groups in Maschine, I hear the sound, and also it shows up on the right track in Live in the equalizer lights. Then when I hit record, it lays down the midi notes. So far so great. But then I go to playback, and there is no sound (though the equalizers are moving). Weird, so I try one of Live's instruments. Same thing. So i try a youtube video, no problem, sound is on. So I try live's metronome - sound is on! So live is hearing sounds from maschine, it's writing midi notes, its sound seems to be coming out through my fasttrack pro (well, the metronome anyway) but neither the maschine tracks it's laid down nor those from its own instruments will play back with any sound. This is driving me nuts. I even did St Joe's template all over again, same thing. I guess it must be with the audio and midi/sync options, but I don't know. Please someone help me!!! (MBP OSX, Live 8.3, Maschine 1.7, Komplete

I don't quite understand. Did you get it to work or not? I'm having a similar problem. Especially with the root key deal and was looking forward to trying your solution this evening. Let me know.
Thanks.

[mebitek]

Hello,
I'm experimenting something with ableton and maschine as vst.
I'm able to route each maschine group into separate ableton tracks. it's pretty cool!
So for example, in maschine group C I have two different bass instruments. It routes from maschine out 4 (midi channel 3, note range c-2, F#8).
I just want to create two different scenes in ableton that play this two different channels:

Maschine
group C = 1 - LFOed, 2 - Adrenaline

so ableton midi clip 1 will play LFOed bass and ableton midi clip 2 will play adrenaline bass.
How can I do that?

thanks to all!!!

p.s. I realize that I can use PGM messages to control maschine scenes. But maschine have just one channel enable to do that. so if I set scene program change into maschine and assign midi channel 3 I can only change instrument for this channel and not for the others.

[Lyos92]

Hello !
I've got? a problem, I do everything like you but the "midi data" (yellow bar) doesn't work...
ANy idea?

I can't use Maschine as a midi controller

Thanks !

[Peels]

So I was beating my head against the wall, searching forums and youtube for days, and I finally worked it out:

This was all working for me unless the melodic parts (i.e. bass, etc) were Reaktor ensembles. If they were, the pads would light up in the shape/sequence of the melody when I triggered a midi clip directed at that Maschine group, but no sound. I saw that the midi light was blinking in Reaktor when the notes hit, but when I looked closer I saw that this was at the ensemble level and not also at the instrument level.

So here's the fix, written to be user friendly for those with the barest knowledge of how the Reaktor works, just in case:
In the Reaktor vst, click the button that looks like the universal symbol for "connect to other things." It's the same symbol that soundcloud app uses, for instance, to share a track to social media. Anyway, click that to activate the editing view in Reaktor. Drill down to the instrument level by double clicking first on the ensemble (rectangle with wires coming out of it and going to L/R outs), then double clicking on the instrument inside that view (i.e. Lazerbass, Photone, Gaugear, etc--often the same name is used at both the ensemble and instrument levels, which is confusing I suppose). Once you're inside the instrument, right click in any empty green space to bring up a dialog box, then click on "instrument properties." That will open up a properties pane on the left. At the top of that, click the "connect" tab. Then in the "channel" box at the top, scroll your mouse up and down through the options until you get 'omni' in the box. It's *below* all the midi channels, but might not show up if you just scroll down right away. God love Reaktor. Anyway, once it says omni, Reaktor will send any midi channel to the instrument, and you should be good to go.

Sorry, this could probably use a video. But if you follow the instructions carefully, you should be good. This is a really specific problem: you'd have to be trying to use a Reaktor vst inside a Maschine vst where you want it to receive any midi channel other than 1. But hey, hope that helped someone.

[Erik Mitchell]

Just wanted to say this was extremely helpful!

[thegoodsirjames]

Hi guys
Just wanted to mention something that I have found to be a much better alternative to this. It's a great tutorial above but for someone like me there were just too many issues and complications for the different things I wanted to do (probably reflects more on me than the guy who did the tutorial, I admit!).
Anyway, definitely if you have Push, and probably also if you just have Maschine, you should take a look at: http://audiomodder.myshopify.com/collec ... vst-bridge
If you just have Maschine then I think, at the very least, what you have is what everyone is discussing here, but already configured for you (I would have paid the $20 AUD just for this). But if you have Push, it allows you to use all Maschine drumkits on Push's sequencer (using the Vst and therefore Maschine automation or using Ableton drumrack) and load and play most Komplete instruments from Push, giving you (if you have Push) way more pads to use than Maschine does. I'm not a tech expert so the guy who made it may want to correct me on a couple of things I've said, but for me it's awesome and well worth a lot more money in terms of how quickly it has sped up my workflow. I still use the Maschine software but generally not the hardware now, as I have Push. And of course I use the Komplete sounds a lot more than I used to. So I think NI and Ableton both benefit from this.

[eiko]

i had the same problem as Winterpark and vmcjr1. and the suggested troubleshooting didn't solve it. I had already enabled the box and changed the midi channels.
As i found out now, in sound midi settings you define the sound range as well.
so you do the same thing, right click on the sound slot of group B (for example) -> enable -> choose the channel -> THEN ADJUST THE RANGE LOW NOTE, HIGH NOTE AND ROOT NOTE.
if low note and high note are equal, keyboard mode doesn't work. makes sense...

[dru_waxaw]

So I have a problem here if someone could respond please:

I'm pretty sure you have this for an earlier version of Maschine. You cannot right click on the Project Name or Group and enable Midi settings.

How do you do this for Maschine 2? Beating my head against a wall on this trying to get Ableton Live 8 to work with Maschine 2. No luck.

[Peels]

So I have a problem here if someone could respond please:

I'm pretty sure you have this for an earlier version of Maschine. You cannot right click on the Project Name or Group and enable Midi settings.

How do you do this for Maschine 2? Beating my head against a wall on this trying to get Ableton Live 8 to work with Maschine 2. No luck.

You have finally struck the frustration that besets all Maschine 2.0 + Live users, unfortunately. They've made radical changes to the way 2.0 does midi. Groups now can't export or receive batch midi to/from a single midi channel. I think that's the most concise way to put it. It's kinda hard to explain.

The Maschine forum people have proposed some workarounds, I believe. I would suggest searching that forum for "batch midi" though, and you'll most likely find something to help with your specific issue.

Word on the street is that they're gonna put things back the way they were not next update, but the update after that. But in the spirit of not keeping my fingers crossed, I'm using Maschine 1.8 as a VST in Ableton for the time being.

If don't mind Maschine's sequencer for drum programming, you can always use Ableton clips to send program changes and work around things that way. Max For Live makes things extra helpful, as (I believe) someone has written a patch that sends program change messages out continuously so that no matter where you jump in the timeline Maschine will play the right pattern. Don't take my word for that, though.