Ableton Forum

beats me wrote:

Stromkraft wrote: every time I try Maschine (have it in the studio) I hate it. I dislike the libraries, the layout of things, the interface, the limitations, the workflow and above all I hate the presets. It's a bit surprising as I love Komplete.

Which Maschine do you have? I had the regular Maschine and was but then I got Maschine Studio and am . Also I got a shit ton of expansion packs. I quickly got bored with the factory presets. Are you on the most current software version of Maschine?

Maschine 2. It's not mine, but my music partners. We have a couple of expansions. I guess I'm just more cut out for drum racks.

I built a drum machine in Live you might like.

I wanted to play with a real drummer style feel and i achieved it in a few cool ways

first I decided with cells to use in my kit and I decided 24 sounds was the way to go.

I then took an old Roland DR-770 and recorded the MIDI patterns and arranged them for my kit

I then did some unique MIDI routing and now I can have the HH pattern move to the ride, cowbell, floor tom or ghost snare. It's unlike any drum machine I've used before and totally like a real drummer.

I did all this in Live 7 so No M4L needed. I use Lives Arp to create rolls live so as a pattern plays I can add to it,

Now I can mix and match kits and patterns for parts and make new drum parts quickly and easily with a cut copy paste technique.......

I use samples from every source I can get and keep a very neat library of the 24 sounds I chose, Kick, Rim Shot, Hard Snare, Med Snare, Ghost Snare, HH Closed Tight, HH Closed Loose, HH Open........etc..........

It sounds like a real drummer with killer fills and everything I could ask for in a tight band....

By far my favorite part is I take the Kick drum MIDI and route it to create unique in key baseline automaticly as I jam.

I just started using MoleKular ,an NI Reaktor ensemble, and now I can jam the drum machine live and every else is trigger off it. Tons of fun, hope that gives you some ideas

For audio interface check RME, best performance there is, rock solid.

Four acoustic drums check out Addictive drums, they are light on resources unlike other libraries and good for live performance, sound pretty good and have many expansions. I particularly like the Vintage dry pack.

As for the drum machine it self you could Maschine as a host for addictive drums.

As I understand you want drum backing tracks to accompany you playing live.
I wouldn't bother with Maschine. One of the drum libraries like Addictive Drums, BFD2 or Ezdrummer 2 should do the job just fine. All of them offer recorded drumkits, with addon libraries in various styles available.
There are MIDI grooves included, which where recorded by professional drummers. With Ezdrummer 2 you can easily add variations to "intensify" the drumming as you intend to.
Look into the various Youtube clips reviewing the drum libraries.
A pedal which lets you step through scenes in Live would be useful.

Some good suggestions. And yeah, Maschine is not the end all be all drum machine. It really depends on your wish of involvement and how to interact with the drums.

Asymmetricalmusic wrote: I then did some unique MIDI routing and now I can have the HH pattern move to the ride, cowbell, floor tom or ghost snare. It's unlike any drum machine I've used before and totally like a real drummer.

That's an awesome idea, I hope you don't mind if I steal it?
Well if you'd mind, I'd still do it

Asymmetricalmusic wrote: By far my favorite part is I take the Kick drum MIDI and route it to create unique in key baseline automaticly as I jam.

my approach was similar, just that I always had programmed two different kick lines that could be made to bass lines that play of each other.

now with your method from above I can just switch the midi of both and get an inversion and thus get two bass lines for the price of one

As far as drum sounds go, right now I'm playing the Korg Kronos, Yamaha XF and Roland Fantom G drum kit sounds in Ableton 8 via Kontakt. A fellow on eBay sells those boards' entire sampled soundsets in Kontakt format for $15-ish each.