Is there a way to get around the 8 Group limit with Maschine?

Tom Auger · 2023-03-10T21:23:22+00:00

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Hi there, Maschine MK3 noob here, and just getting through some tutorials and the manual, but an early question has me stumped.

The sequencing workflow within a group is lovely, but all your sounds within the group are sequenced all together when you record, unlike Ableton Live, where each sound has its own "track". This makes sense when each sound is a different drum sample in a drum kit, but given that Sounds can also be NKS instruments, you might want to record different parts / patterns per sound, not per group.

So, imagining that you're doing an electronic track with lots of different sounds, the only way (at my current level of understanding) that you can maintain track independence is to do one sound per group and sequence things that way. If that's true, then because there are only groups A-H, there are only 8 independent tracks.

Am I getting this wrong? I have to admit I'm coming in with an Ableton Live mental model where you build up all these "clips" (patterns) for your different tracks / instruments and then you can build up a song (arrangement) that way. I don't like the idea that I might be limited to 8 separate tracks – that would be akin to using the free version Ableton Live!

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ini4

@Tom Auger I get the point you are trying to make. There are 8 groups to a bank, but there can be multiple banks of groups. If you hold shift you'll notice the groups change color. Holding shift and clicking a new group letter (A-H) will load a new bank of groups, but only when the previous bank is full.

Try loading the "Like Water" project in the Maschine Library. When you press shift, you'll notice Groups A, B, and C light up. These are separate banks of groups that you can select.

I hope this helps.

D-One

I'll state what I want to do again, just so it's really clear:

Load a sound (like an NKS instrument) into Pad 1.

Load a second sound into Pad 2.

Record a clip / pattern just for Pad 1.

Keep that clip playing / looping but then record a second clip / pattern just for Pad 2

In this way, I have independent patterns for each sound. Then I should be able to use the Arrangement view to control which patterns (ie: which sounds) are playing at any given time.

@Tom Auger No, That's not how it works at all, here, take a look:

For each active Group, you can only have 1 Pattern per Scene/Section - There's no such thing as independent Patterns per Sound/Pad, a Pattern doesn't apply to just a Pad, it's for the whole Group.

In other words, on a Group, the MIDI data that triggers a Pad-1 is in the same container as the other 15 Pads; for this reason it's often better to separate Instruments per Group. The whole 4x4 Pad layout logic was originally designed for sampler's, one-shots, etc... Floppy disk era, where 20 instruments in a beat was a dream. So, for things like Drum's it works great, for Instruments not so much (in this context).

What you're asking is for something like this:

In my mind it's just wasteful to have 1 group per track when each group can theoretically hold 16 different instruments.

It can be wasteful but in most scenarios it's really not. I use instruments per Group simply because it's more practical to play around with Mutes and stuff + makes arranging simpler to do and visualize. If I need to go over 8 groups I start putting Instruments that are in the same 'category' together so I don't over that limit, almost like a Stem approach... Try to think about the most important things you need to turn on/off and give them their own Group, everything else can be bundled together.

If all Instruments are bundled in the same Group then you have to go inside each Group to mute/solo stuff, meaning you can't do or even see it all at the same time due to having to navigate around, kind of hard to explain in text tho..

clearly states that Groups are like Tracks in your DAW (e.g. Ableton) and he uses them that way.

This is sort of subjective, statements like that are made to simply the explanation, it's not literal.

I don't know the context but they're really not, A Group in Maschine is either the equivalent of an Ableton Group with several tracks or a Drum Rack with only 16 slots since drum racks can have instruments and individual channels too.

All comments

Kubrak

Yes. If one sound in group is 5 bars and second 3 bars and third 7 bars one has to make pattern of 105 bars to fit everything in. And copy and copy and copy.

Peter Harris

https://youtu.be/YofiWNwHhP8

Have you watched it yet?

kb420

The simple answer is, there is no 8 Group limit in Maschine. You can have as many Groups as you want. You are only limited by the specs of your computer.

Tom Auger

Thanks everyone for your comments.

I see that a lot of you are proposing "workarounds" to accomplish what I was asking - thanks for that, but they all seem really cumbersome and working "against" the design intent of the software/hardware, which is that Groups are your primary organizing structure (not Sounds). While I really appreciate the creative problem solving, the main intent of my original post was to confirm what I had suspected, which was that the "Ableton Live" model of recording and maintaining independent control over individual Clips has to happen above the Group level, and that it's pretty common to have a bunch of Groups with one Sound each.

I tried to use extremely precise language to convey what I was asking, but I probably wasn't precise enough. In retrospect, I might have saved us all time by recording a video. But I thank everyone who took the time to read my post and to suggest answers to their interpretation of my question!

Thanks to @D-One for the actual answer: "For each active Group, you can only have 1 Pattern per Scene/Section - There's no such thing as independent Patterns per Sound/Pad, a Pattern doesn't apply to just a Pad, it's for the whole Group."

There is is, in black-and-white.

Now, as @Peter Harris suggests, I need to spend more time with the literature and the tutorials to understand how to make the Group recording workflow the simplest and most ergonomic as possible.

See you all in the next one! Some day I hope to contribute back.

kb420

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/58294#Comment_58294

I read through most of this thread, and it seems like this was the answer you were looking for:

"There's no such thing as independent Patterns per Sound/Pad, a Pattern doesn't apply to just a Pad, it's for the whole Group."

I only responded to reassure you that there is NO "8 Group limitation". Groups are sorted in to "Banks". Each "Bank" consists of 8 Groups. You can have as many "Banks" as you want. It's unlimited. If you tap the "PAD MODE" button on the controller, you will see what "Bank" you are in, on the top of the left screen. Once you have used the first 8 Groups, you'll be able to access a new Bank on the controller. In the software, you can easily add a new Group by just hitting the "+" sign. So, if you choose to only put one sound/plugin in a Group, it's not like you will ever run out of Groups because there simply is NO "8 Group limitation".

Tom Auger

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/58350#Comment_58350

Yes, thanks @kb420 your comment about there being no (functional) limit to the number of Groups / Banks was absolutely clutch. If that weren't the case, I'd be seriously questioning the usefulness of the whole system! Thanks for that bit of critical info!

Justerini

RTFM - https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/maschine/production-systems/maschine/downloads/

RTFV

PK The DJ

Shouldn't that be WTFV? 😁

tetsuneko

unlimited groups is unlimited

each Maschine group is more or less equivalent to a "drum rack track" in ableton. You can have several sounds / instruments in a group, but only a single clip per group can play back at any one time. If you want to work Ableton-style in Maschine, use only one group per clip

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