Maschine 2 confusion about presets in Mikro 3

ProfessorChaos

I posted about this a couple of days ago and got no replies, but I think maybe I asked the question in a way that wasn't entirely clear, so I'm going to try to simplify it and make it more generic.

Say you have an instrument that you see in Maschine under the instruments section. And said instrument either says so in the preset name, or you know some way that it's been mapped for Maschine.

Now, if you want to use Maschine in Pad Mode, then each of the 16 sounds has to have a preset mapped to it, and all of them different presets with different instruments mapped to the same MIDI note, otherwise you end up with 16 instances of the same instrument and note.

Now, if you load one preset from one instrument that's been mapped for Maschine, you can play the different notes, but all the pads are going to be the same color because that's the way it works. It inherits the color that you set for that particular sound.

But, it seems to me, that there has to be a way, to grab a preset that's been mapped for Maschine specifically, with different colors and all, which show on the Native Instruments MIDI keyboard, with those same colors in Maschine, so they show like that in the Mikro 3 pads.

That's the part I'm missing, because the only way I found to open those presets is to load them into one sound, and switch to keyboard mode, which plays them all, but all with the same color, because it's just one sound in the world of Maschine.

Is there a way to load a preset as a group instead of a sound?

D-One

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/63385#Comment_63385

That could work too, but is more unlikely to happen I think.

Regarding your question, the answer is in the very text you quoted from me and what I said earlier... So no, there's no way because only cares about the color you set the Pad/Sound as not the NKS key color scheme.

Doing everything manually and saving the group for later is the only way.

Uwe303

Hello,

If i understand you correctly you would have to make your own group presets one by one. Load the same sound on every pad and shift the notes, otherwise you end up with the same notes, as you already pointed out. But you'll have only 16 notes, you can set the pad colour as you like. There is unfortunately no way to use the light guide with maschine, even if the pads have RGB LEDs in them and can receive signals to control the RGB LEDs in midi mode. Light guide function for maschine would be awesome.

ProfessorChaos

If i understand you correctly you would have to make your own group presets one by one. Load the same sound on every pad and shift the notes, otherwise you end up with the same notes, as you already pointed out.

So, when I load one of the those presets into each of the 16 sounds (one at a time because there doesn't seem to be a way to do it all at once), and I leave it in pad mode, they all play the same drum.

How do I shift the notes? Do I have to do it in the plugin itself, or does Maschine provide a way to do this?

Uwe303

ok sorry for the confusion, you don´t have to load the instrument 16 times, you load it on the first pad. Then you go into channel edit mode and set ever following pads midi out to the groups first pad and use midi transpose as you need it. lets say you leave the first pads transpose at 0, next pad then +1, next +2 and so on for a chromatic layout. You then can right click on every slot/pad and select the colour you want. If you are finished you save it as group preset by right click on the group/group name and so on. I just used your example with the instruments loaded on every pad cause i thought you maybe have another reason like different fx - but if you have a reason to load the instrument on every pad you just use transpose.

ProfessorChaos

ok sorry for the confusion, you don´t have to load the instrument 16 times, you load it on the first pad. Then you go into channel edit mode and set ever following pads midi out to the groups first pad and use midi transpose as you need it. lets say you leave the first pads transpose at 0, next pad then +1, next +2 and so on for a chromatic layout. You then can right click on every slot/pad and select the colour you want. If you are finished you save it as group preset by right click on the group/group name and so on. I just used your example with the instruments loaded on every pad cause i thought you maybe have another reason like different fx - but if you have a reason to load the instrument on every pad you just use transpose.

No, it's the Hans Zimmer Percussion that I asked about in another thread and you replied there as well, but I thought maybe nobody here knows that particular product, so I thought I would ask the question in a more generic way.

I tried what you suggested, and it works to a certain degree, but it's not easier than loading the preset to each sound one by one. And when you press the bottom left pad, the S88 MK2 shows the instrument loaded with the right color assignments. When you touch any other pad, that goes away, along with the colors.

So loading the instrument on each sound at least keeps it in the keyboard screens, but the transpose knob does nothing at all. Even if you set Sound 2 to transpose 1, sound 3 to 2, and so on, it still plays the same thing.

What did work somehow was to manually type in the note each pad is supposed to send, but when it started changing the colors according to the pattern in the keyboard, then each pad I press changes the colors somehow.

Leave it to Native Instruments to make something easy more complicated than it has to be. Why not just load the preset in the same way it loads it in the keyboard? Automatically assign all 16 pads starting with C3, all pads triggering the same preset. Why is that so hard to achieve with this machine? I mean, it's such a fantastic pad, why do they make it so unnecessarily complicated? Or is there an easy way and I'm missing it?

D-One

The first thing to understand is Maschine and KK-S colors do not work the same way, KK-S colors the keys based on Kontakts colors, but Maschine does not, it only cares about the Pad/Sound color. Very different behavior.

And when you press the bottom left pad, the S88 MK2 shows the instrument loaded with the right color assignments. When you touch any other pad, that goes away, along with the colors.

This is due to what I said above, the KK-S recognizes Kontakt loaded in the Pad and displays it's colors but if there's no Instrument on the Pad and it's just sending MIDI to the Pad that actually has the instrument then the Color will the Pad color.

I tried what you suggested, and it works to a certain degree, but it's not easier than loading the preset to each sound one by one.

Loading the instrument 16x might be easier, but you will have 16x more CPU usage and will potentially need to perform edits in all 16 instances. If everything is mapped correctly you can save the Group as a preset to use later, so manually setting things up only has to be done once... But you will never get the same color behavior that KK-S has. :S

Leave it to Native Instruments to make something easy more complicated than it has to be. Why not just load the preset in the same way it loads it in the keyboard? Automatically assign all 16 pads starting with C3, all pads triggering the same preset. Why is that so hard to achieve with this machine? I mean, it's such a fantastic pad, why do they make it so unnecessarily complicated? Or is there an easy way and I'm missing it?

People asked many times for the Pads to reflect Kontakt/KK Colors over the years, it would be great but even if it did, you would still be stuck with Keyboard Mode instead of Pad Mode.

ProfessorChaos

People asked many times for the Pads to reflect Kontakt/KK Colors over the years, it would be great but even if it did, you would still be stuck with Keyboard Mode instead of Pad Mode.

No, I meant if the only way to have the different colors is to work in pad mode, at least they could make it easier, like a simple way to load a preset from an instrument and the pads are already mapped to the start note and then the 15 sequential after that, so you don't have to load the preset in the first pad, then go pad by pad moving the little transpose knob to the next number in the sequence.

Or why not just allow colors in keyboard mode? There's no way to do colors in keyboard mode, right?

D-One

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/63385#Comment_63385

That could work too, but is more unlikely to happen I think.

Regarding your question, the answer is in the very text you quoted from me and what I said earlier... So no, there's no way because only cares about the color you set the Pad/Sound as not the NKS key color scheme.

Doing everything manually and saving the group for later is the only way.