Ableton Forum

Basically my question is this: What is the best Live 9, Push and Maschine workflow. I have been trying to find an elegant solution to this conundrum for ages but there does not seem to be one. I absolutely love Maschine! I love the sounds, groups, the computer -less workflow etc. I desperately wish that Maschine was more of a DAW like Live. That way I could put an end to the constant integration dilemmas. Sadly, as we know, it is not a full DAW. So.............

Right now I just jam on machine and create sequences that I then export (drag and drop) as audio into Live for further processing. It works OK but is not the most seamless workflow. In fact, it's just overflowing with fucking seams. lol. I also like the export contextual menu in MAschine. It provides some decent options.

I've also watched about 50 tutorials about how to route individual sounds from Maschine to Live and while this is exactly what I would love to do, none of them work quite right.

I'm not quite sure what I'm after here. I just would LOVE to know how YOU are integrating MAschine 2.0 with Live 9 now. What works for you and would you like to share your methods. I also have Push so the ability to use both softwares and both controllers together would be amazing.

Also, I realize this question has probably been asked a million times but trust me, I have searched high and low for a long time with no luck.]\\

Thanx in advance.

I'm pretty sure I was in the same camp as you (when I first moved from maschine to ableton) and a collection of free apps (mac), and a couple of configuration settings have allowed me to achieve a speedy workflow that I'm (finally) happy with, pretty reminiscent of how I used to work on maschine.

I also should note that I do pretty much everything in arrangement mode, and draw in all my automation with the mouse/trackpad.

I never really used maschine for the 'live performance' component, but liked how the scene/pad/view/select buttons, allowed me to do things really quickly and not be on my keyboard while I'm trying to write music.

What I do now, essentially, is trigger Live's keyboard shortcuts from my Maschine mikro to editing things more quickly.

Anyway, here's all the software I'm using together with live9 to make this happen (and links):

midiStroke: http://www.charlie-roberts.com/midiStroke/
Selected Track Control: http://stc.wiffbi.com/files/stc-1.2.9.zip
Kimidi: http://stc.wiffbi.com/files/Kimidi-1.2.7.zip

And for hardware:

Maschine Micro Mk2, (also Controller Edition)


Here's what these things do individually:

- midiStroke lets you turn CC#'s into keyboard shortcuts that get executed in the active window (live 9, in my case)

- Selected Track Control is a live midi remote script that allows you execute solo/arm/mute-style commands from a midi device on whatever track is actively selected

- Kimidi is a stand-alone app that plugs into STC (above) and turns those same commands into keyboard shortcuts

- Controller edition lets you make you own template for maschine, and determine which buttons fire program or control change messages when the device is in midi-mode. It also lets you change the colors of the pads, the type of event that happens for each button (gate, toggle, trigger) and text on the display.

Here's how I'm using them all together (maybe you can already see where I'm going):

I used controller edition to turn the 16 pads on Maschine to notes C1 and up. This lets you play your drum racks on Maschine. Nice.

I also use controller edition as a reference, to get the CC #'s for all the other buttons on my Mikro Mk2 (scene/pad/view etc...)

I run midiStroke while ableton is open, and (in midiStroke with the src set to my Mikro) map the buttons on the maschine to commonly used keyboard shortcuts in ableton. For instance: my grid controls are mapped to the arrows on maschine, the view button is mapped to 'tab' (to switch between session/arrange), select sends cmd+L (to loop selection), 'play' sends a spacebar, 'erase' sends a delete... etc... etc... you can do this for any of live shortcuts; essentially we are programming midiStroke to respond to midi CC events with a keyboard shortcut. This program is lightweight and wicked fast. Also simple.

That gets me most of the way there with 90% of the core live functions I use all the time. The last component is getting maschine's solo/mute/record buttons to be useful (i.e. to do those functions on the track that's selected)

For this I use Kimidi and make sure live is using the remote script for Selected Track Control, and then map my mute/solo/record buttons in midiStroke to ctrl+m (for mute) ctrl+a (for arm) and ctrl+s (for solo). Then when I hit mute/solo/record on my maschine controller, it activates those functions in live for the SELECTED track. Which is super cool and makes me happy everytime I do it. This also doesn't create the annoying 'red box' that we usually see when controlling tracks from a midi device.

Bottom line:

Because the mapping is happening between my Maschine and midiStroke and sending keyboard shortcuts to live, none of the controls are actually mapped to live's buttons (playhead, metronome, etc...) This is good because then these settings to not vary from project to project.

You could do this with any midi controller (if you put push in user/midi mode, you basically have the same setup except tons more buttons a knobs to play with), but I like the size and feel of maschine, so this has been working pretty well for me as of late.


Does that help? I'm not sure if any of this stuff is available on windows, but it gives you the flexibility to define your own workflow using the shortcuts you already know and love without being inundated by someone else's template.

My apologies for what I thought was going to be a short post.

^ really, no response?

I'm sorry of rthe late response. Thank you so much for the detailed workflow.

I really like some of these ideas. The keystrokes/keyboard shortcuts is particularly interesting to me. I had not previously even thought of mapping any of these to a controller. Basically, if I'm reading this right, you can control EVERYTHING from a controller.
That's a truly beautiful thing.
That's part of why I love MAschine so much. The ,ouse-less workflow is just so intuitive and conducive to creativity.

I have a bunch of controllers I could implement this with too. I have PUSH, MAschine MK2, Kontrol x1, F1, S2, Axiom 25.

Tahnks for the detailed setup though. I am going to try some of this out and I will definitely be using that Keystroke/Shortcut to Controller method.

its all good dude. I started this stuff 2 years ago and I JUST figured out something that makes sense.

the whole idea for me is actually to get the controllers out of the way, and also spend as little time with the mouse as possible. (since then, my push is quickly collecting dust)

midistroke is a truly incredible application, since most DAWs are integrated with keyboard shortcuts. now I'm trying to figure out how to run multiple instances of midistroke at the same time... because I love this software so damn much.

ControllerEdition is a pretty simple app by NI that taught me a ton about midi messages.

let me know if you run into any problems with your setup.

@ Theo check out this script for Push (especially vids) ... on the face of it seems to do a lot Maschine/Komplete/LIVE integration
http://audiomodder.myshopify.com/produc ... vst-bridge

Live 9 shortcuts

https://www.ableton.com/en/manual/live- ... shortcuts/

and

midiStroke: http://www.charlie-roberts.com/midiStroke/


such an awesome combo!

I'm doing pretty similar things, but my tools of choice are User remote scripts, Clyphx and Bomes MT.

To compare it to aporias set up, I would say that clyphx takes STCs place in my set-up and Bomes MT, MidiStrokes.

The User Remote scripts are easy to handle (no programming necessary like for Midi remote scripts) and give me control over the selected devices as well as the drum rack pads.

Clyphx is also easy to use and more versatile than STC, as it contains way more functionality. For instance via clyphx I can give my Maschine (MK1) control over Lives NoteRepeat and Swing. But could do basicly almost anything in Live. (Clyphx is such, that I now always assume that whatever I want to do in Live is possible, and then get irritated when a case arises where that is for once not the case )
(Also people seem for some reason way to hesitant to use it, it's really not difficult and no, one does not need extra clips or tracks in the Live set, everything can be done from a controller directly)

Bomes MT finally: It's not free (59 bucks) but it's IMMENSELY powerfull. It does the key stroke thing, but the Midi translation can do sooo much more. You can make shift buttons (basically doubling/trippling/... the number of buttons/encoders you have), timed reactions, conditional functions, translate encoder movements to several button presses (which in turn can each trigger complex (or simple ) functions in clyphx), make button presses trigger fades and this is just scratching the surface.

Regarding the Maschine Controller Editor: Look Ableton this is how you treat your customers! Where is the Controller Editor for Push?!

^ Great tips up here. I'm definitely checking out Clyphx.

aporia wrote:^ Great tips up here. I'm definitely checking out Clyphx.

Everyone should!

Just download it (free!) and browse through the (good) manual. Just seeing the list of functions should show you its immense power. Basically everything that the API gives access to can be easily and cleverly accessed.

It's not quite M4L (you couldn't do stuff like build instruments and such), but for the Live control aspect of M4L, it's just as good and easier to handle IMO.

But clyphx doesn't do encoders (a few exceptions exist with Macrobat (included)). So while it gives you access to Swing for example (just enter: "swing <" or "swing 50"), you can only access this with Midi CCs via buttons. So this is where something like Bomes MT comes in. You just translate each of the 127 steps of an encoder into the same repeated button press that triggers "swing <" and boom your encoder turns up the swing.

The same way you would handle fades with the triggered timers in Bomes MT to make one button press (which triggers the timer start) to turn down some parameter by repeatedly have it trigger in a timed manner either some Midi assigned parameter or some function in clyphx, like for instance "8/vol >"
(The 8/ indicates the track you want to work on, if you leave it off it will affect the selected track)

And it goes on and on....

Speaking of mapping keyboard shortcuts to MIDI, on OS X, there's also Keyboard Maestro. It's got built-in support for both keyboard shortcuts and MIDI, and much more.

Wow. This is some great stuff. I have been looking into that Audiomodder Bridge. Wasn't sure if it was still being updated.
I I'll definitely be checking out clyphx also!!!

You guys have taken it way deeper than I have but it sounds like your quite satisfied with the results.
I'm gonna check all this stuff out and I'm sure I'll find my workflow.

BTW as a Push user looking for a vastly enhanced workflow with it, you are aware of PXT Live, right?!