How to disable "overdub" recording in Maschine Mk3

Tom Auger

This is so basic I'm flustered at how hard it is to find an answer. I'm looking to disable the "overdub" feature of recording Patterns so that when the pattern loops over, if it's still recording, I'm not hearing the old notes, but replacing them (ie: if I play nothing, then events are erased; if I play a pad, the event is recorded).

I know people will tell me I can stop the recording, select all the events and hit erase, but that's not what I'm looking to do.

Imagine a scenario where you are "live looping" but you make a mistake (like your beat is off or something). In the overdub scenario, you have to stop in the middle of your performance, select your pads and erase, then start up again.

I'd like to just keep recording the pattern and when I like a particular loop, then I turn off the Rec button and the last recorded version of that pattern is what sticks.

(The DAW analogue here at least in Logic Pro X is to have the "Delete" mode active when recording a cycled MIDI region - essentially the playhead erases everything as it plays, while recording new material over top).

D-One

There's only the default Overdub or "Replace Mode", press Rec+Erase to enter this mode while the project is playing, (both the rec and erase button will stay lit), in this mode any actively selected Pads will have their events erased while the Playhead passes thru them allowing you to re-record but It also turns itself off when the Pattern loops around 🤦‍♂️ IMHO this borderline makes this Rec Mode useless for many scenarios.

It does that to prevent users from accidentally deleting stuff when it loops around, it's somewhat understandable but I would prefer to just use good timing and press rec again to turn it off instead, this makes me fell like Maschine thinks I'm too stupid tbh... It should be an option.

For your Scenario I think the best approach is:

Recording with Pattern Grow (Auto Lenght) and then changing the start position in the Pattern Menu to only leave the last few bars active - The disadvantage is this requires the extra step of shortening the Pattern and in a live situation if it's a big length difference it might cause some unwanted 'Playhead jumping around' (Sorry I don't know how to explain this better in text but try it and you will hear it). Also, you can't "crop" the Pattern once done, the extra stuff stays there forever outside the boundaries of the active Pattern selection.

Maschine is filled with these little quirks that make live performance a bit challenging because it was never designed with that in mind, everything is really aimed at non-live production.

D-One

There's only the default Overdub or "Replace Mode", press Rec+Erase to enter this mode while the project is playing, (both the rec and erase button will stay lit), in this mode any actively selected Pads will have their events erased while the Playhead passes thru them allowing you to re-record but It also turns itself off when the Pattern loops around 🤦‍♂️ IMHO this borderline makes this Rec Mode useless for many scenarios.

It does that to prevent users from accidentally deleting stuff when it loops around, it's somewhat understandable but I would prefer to just use good timing and press rec again to turn it off instead, this makes me fell like Maschine thinks I'm too stupid tbh... It should be an option.

For your Scenario I think the best approach is:

Recording with Pattern Grow (Auto Lenght) and then changing the start position in the Pattern Menu to only leave the last few bars active - The disadvantage is this requires the extra step of shortening the Pattern and in a live situation if it's a big length difference it might cause some unwanted 'Playhead jumping around' (Sorry I don't know how to explain this better in text but try it and you will hear it). Also, you can't "crop" the Pattern once done, the extra stuff stays there forever outside the boundaries of the active Pattern selection.

Maschine is filled with these little quirks that make live performance a bit challenging because it was never designed with that in mind, everything is really aimed at non-live production.

Tom Auger

Hey @D-One thanks for the detailed explanation. I have to say I'm deeply disappointed to hear this (not your fault of course). It's amazing how much of a struggle it is for DAW developers to get this right. Logic, Ableton, Maschine all have quirks that make what should be so simple a real struggle.

I've been using sequencers since the 80's (I'm that old) and maybe it's just an older way of thinking about loop generation and live performance, but I find myself frustrated by this sort of thing all the time in modern software.

If only the Maschine firmware were open source I might try to mod it! haha, that will never happen.🤷‍♂️

D-One

In Live it's fairly easy because if overdub is off you just end up with a split clip inside the loop brace if you're in arrangement mode, however in Session View I think you would also have to do the cropping approach. This is not an easy problem to solve technically, I think in terms of performance you just need to practice a lot and get right the first time or accept some level of imperfection.

If only the Maschine firmware were open source I might try to mod it! haha, that will never happen.🤷‍♂️

Yep, never gonna happen in a million years.

On MacOS the scripts for HW control are actually non-compiled, it's all exposed code, I could probably modify "Replace Mode" to not stop when it loops around but people don't really care about Mod's here unfortunately. Here's an example of how 'easy' it is: https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/4928/i-hacked-my-way-into-a-shift-stop-combo-hopefully

I had a few mods shared on the old forum but due to low engagement, it's really not worth my trouble.

Tom Auger

Thanks for the additional thoughts @D-One ! I'm a coder myself so I might just take a peek at the HW control scripts.... That's pretty exciting actually - I'm also thinking about how this could impact my workflows in Logic and/or Live!