Does anyone here use Maschine?

[Plyphon]

I'm looking for more ways to "get out" of the computer, but without dedicating myself solely to hardware - I like the advantage digital comes with.

Maschine looks like a good way to get more organic with my drums and more hands on, drum machine type production workflow.

However, despite watching a few videos and reading the NI website, i'm still a tad confused as to its capabilities. Most of the videos are super slick, clicking kicks style "deep house" or that polished house crap. Not into that - is Maschine able to get loose and funky with more raw-er sounds?

And how does it fit into your workflow? Can you jam on a Maschine and add in elements on the fly adjusting etc or is more of a "stop start" process of selecting samples, treating each sample before sequencing...?

My main reasons for looking into it is:
1: Getting my drums out of the computer, instead of clicking a mouse bashing my fingers (giggidy)
2: The swing and groove associated with drum machines - applying a groove template to a piano roll sequence feels like such a cheat.
3: The sampler proving colouration of the sound via filters, ADSR & pitch adjustments
4: Ability to mix classic/overused x0x samples with any other sound source for percussion.
5: Ultimately better drum patterns as a result of all of the above.

Does that sound like Maschine is the tool for me?

[oddmyth]

Maschine is great, but not so great for working in Ableton, NI has really built up the Maschine DAW around the hardware and as such it's really not all that conducive to using with Live (if you use Live that is).

Again if you are using Live then buying Maschine is pretty much the equivalent of buying any other MIDI controller. If you aren't, and are comfortable with using the Maschine DAW (which can be rewired into Live IIRC), then Maschine is a capable sampler/shuttle interface.

Can you add on the fly - yup. If you have an idea of the instrument set you are using then it's quite easy to use, if you are adding on the fly and expect to treat things inline, maybe that can happen with Maschine Studio, but not so much with Maschine. Additionally and this was a big one for me, your piano roll is only a single octave on the interface itself, you can't play across octaves easily - this was the biggest reason I sold my Maschine.

As for your reasons, honestly you can do those things with any MIDI controller and Live. I'm really not sure what the difference between a groove template and a swing knob + accents are but in all honesty you are producing music, so using these tools to me is literally like saying 'hey drummer, play it like ...' - of course the drummer is me, well me and the computer, but I think you can see where this is headed.

[Plyphon]

Yeah I see, thanks for replying.

I should add i'm using FL Studio. Would this change things?

[oddmyth]

youtu.be/Da20dtGz8J0

Looks like you can rewire into FL and maybe even channel map, but you basically still need to learn two DAWs instead of one to use it.

[Plyphon]

oh reaaalllly, ill watch that later. I was under the impression it would sort of seamlessly slot into my daw. The NI site is particularly crap at explaining that.

I'll have to watch that and make an assessment, cheers.

[tdmusic]

I got rid of Maschine and got Push instead, because I was frustrated with the interaction (or lack thereof) between the Maschine software and Ableton.

It was really easy to get a great loop going but then to sequence it felt like a world of pain - basically there was no easy way to just hit record, jam on the Maschine muting/switching patterns/etc, then have it recorded in either Ableton or the Maschine plugin.

Instead you had to either a) sequence it in Maschine (which didn't let you do any realtime recording of pattern switches/mutes), b) do some weird hack triggering patterns in Maschine from Ableton with MIDI notes and then use Maschine as a normal MIDI controller, or c) export audio from Maschine and sequence that in Ableton, all of which seemed to miss the point of it being so immediate and fun to work with, and I felt like it was trapping me even further in to loop land.

Push is much better in that regard, but it does lack the immediacy of Maschine, especially for browsing and quickly tweaking sounds (browsing samples sucks on Push in comparison), and I am sort of tempted to pick up a Maschine again if I see one going cheap, just for creating loops, as I did come up with some really interesting stuff when I had it...

So if you are happy using it to just create loops and then sequence them normally, I'd give it a go as it is pretty great for that. It's just the sequencing that sucks. You can get the v1 ones for around £200, and they still work fine if you don't care about coloured pads, so a good cheap way to get into it.

[Plyphon]

Yeah I see - my plan was to get it to help me bring my drums out of the mouse/computer and more physical, in order to ultimately create better grooves and loops.

I wouldn't mind recording a bunch of loops then sticking in, but youre right it's a shame it doesn't integrate more. It does seem a shame to either have to reduce it to a simple controller or have your work stuck in recorded loops - which could get very restrictive when it comes to mixing, changing sounds out if you change your mind, etc.

I'm not entirely sure what i"m looking for really. Something that enables me to hit pads and apply swing etc - everything that perhaps a MPC would come with, but also integrates into my PC so I can change samples when I please, route different sounds to different mixer channels, etc.

[wouterdewitte]

I have machine as well and use a variation of this routing..
Works great for me!
https://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=144164

[remykruyer]

i'm using the Maschine for about 2 years now in combination with Ableton. Upgraded it to the lates 2.0 software few weeks ago. I use it to create hihat and percussion loops. You can easily drag those created loops into a channel in Ableton. I also use the Maschine to layer kicks. The sampler function is very powerfull in my opinion. Last year i bought the Push, so i am using best of both worlds now..

The 2.0 maschine software is a real addition comparing to the 1.8, lot of new features and you get the Komplete selections with it...

[Plyphon]

just coming back to this... it seems Maschine is what I am after. The ability to channel map is a priority which you can do, then I can load in my samples and jam away, processing them in FL's mixer as I please.

Although I'm still a tad confused as to how I sequence a pattern in my "song" once I have made it, and made variations of it.

Does the maschine send midi notes to the piano roll, so I can sequence those like any other synth? (does that make sense... it's late..)

[remykruyer]

You can either choose to export your created drums to wave, or midi:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSEHZUBzVZk

[Plyphon]

oh sick, thanks.

now i just need to find a decent 2nd hand one!