Hey everyone,
After several months of negotiating some shrewd sales on eBay, I managed to save enough for a Native Instruments Maschine. It is fantastic by the way - the most fun I’ve had for a long time making music!
I was wondering if anyone who might have one could help. Obviously, you can use the Maschine software as a plugin instrument in Ableton, but I was wondering if there is a way that you can have the pattern change in Maschine when you change clips in Ableton? I’ve managed to get everything else sorted so far, and this would clinch it for me! I realise, of course, I could just record the audio coming from Maschine onto another track in Ableton, but I’d like to have the freedom to tinker about in Maschine during playback.
Any ideas?
The last I heard about this was that NI have made it extremely difficult for sequencing Maschine from within ableton. A friend was looking into buying one of these who informed me of this news. I think it can be done but through a very non-user friendly workaround. Apparently NI are on the case about this and will probably release an update in the near future to resolve the problem. These are the words of my friend anyway! Im surprised NI would have made something so impractical. Thought they would have learned there lesson after KoreV1.
Looks a great little box of tricks though!
Hmmm…that’s not so good. I’ve heard version 1.1 of the software is coming out soon. I wonder if this will address it. I’ve managed to get it triggering clips and controlling Ableton instruments like the drum rack (lots of fun!), but this is really what I’m looking for. It seems like such a basic requirement for what is, after all, a plug-in instrument! Still, never mind. I’ve got plenty to keep me going in the meantime.
Out of interest, is anyone else using Maschine with Ableton? Any nifty tricks you could divulge to a starry-eyed newcomer? :hehe:
Well - I have to say that Maschine is just getting better and better. I’ve worked out how to sync the clip changes - its very easy! In the MIDI clip information window, you can see three drop down menus headed ‘Bank’, ‘Sub-Bank’ and ‘Program’. If you arrange your different patterns in the Maschine plug-in across different scenes, you simply change the ‘Program’ number to correspond to the pattern you want it to play. So Program 1 triggers Pattern 1 in Maschine, Program 2 does Pattern 2 and so on. Just label your MIDI clips in Ableton appropriately to keep track of each clip and hey presto!
I would definitely recommend Maschine - since the last update it can be used as a direct controller for Ableton to fire off individual scenes and clips etc, Play, Record, Stop Playback, mute tracks, arm tracks and so on. You can also use it as a straightforward drum rack controller or simple keyboard controller. And now I’ve discovered this little trick, its the works! The next update (version 1.1) will have MIDI export included, so anything written in the plug-in can be exported directly to Live. The main thing is, though, that it is a hell of a lot of fun! I can’t wait to try it live… :w00t:
Do you mean you associate patterns to midi notes? i.e pattern 1 is associated to C1 (for example), pattern 2 is associated to D1 and so on? This is how it works in Guru so would assume so.
Midi export will be huge! One of ultrabeats great features. I may consider the Maschine after its had afew more updates rolled out.
No - I don’t think so (but I’m new to all this, so it could be!).
When you create a MIDI clip in Live and double-click on it, the information window at the bottom of the screen for that clip contains a small section to the left that is headed ‘Notes’, and contains the Loop data, original BPM and so on. At the bottom left of this are three drop down menus headed ‘Bank’, ‘Sub-Bank’ and ‘Program’. If you change the numbers under ‘Program’ to match the scene changes in Maschine, this synchronizes the changes between both. Brilliant!
Hope this helps! What is Guru? Is that a similar idea?