Share your no. 1 Maschine tips

Kaiwan_NI · 2022-05-20T15:42:46+00:00

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Maschinerists, how do you use your gear?

We've been sharing our own Maschine tips and tricks lately, but we all have different workflows and we want to hear from you.

Whether it's the tried-and-true way to fatten up your drums or the best way to use modulation, share the hot tips for Maschine and Maschine+ you can't live without below. 👇

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Comments

Murat Kayi

Route Midi from outside Maschine into any pad with solutions like Loopmidi (on win)

Split your group between a midi instrument and samples or audio modules or whatever by routing several pad's midi onto a single pad with a VSTi on it.

Don't skip the multifx groups in the browser, they are a treasure trove of awesomeness

Psyearth5

i got a lot but Raum is making unbelivable sounds and i offten geting questions about how i made my sound. Raum is special plugin that is very profitable and concurent plugins just donesnt have Raum charather , it is super fast magic solution for me.

Seqsual

Mallets instead of fingers.

Jeremy_NI

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/18041#Comment_18041

Wow! I didn't know that one, even after so many years in support 😅 thanks so much for the tip, how did you find about it ?

PK The DJ

I've found references to this tip from as far back as 2013!

Uwe303

Using maschine stand alone, using (group) macros, create a starting template (set it in prefs) with some of your favorite reverb/delay FX on the lastbup group, then you just can send something to it quickly,

Tom Mosler

I always save Groups as full compositions together with all Patterns. The problem is when I want to work with polyrhythms inside one Group. Using Shift+Pattern length is only great for polyrhythms across different Groups. My solution for mixing 4/4 beats with polyrhythms inside one Group, is to extend Pattern length until polyrhythmic sequence loops/starts again at the next first beat.

Jeremy_NI

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/18346#Comment_18346

Cool idea! What kind of mallets have you tried already? Any recommendations?

Season

I tried to post this here the other day, but I posted on @creative dwill's YouTube page a while ago [I was probably half asleep though LOL!]:

"Add a sound, Set to legato under Voice/Settings Engine, Set to ADSR under Pitch/Envelope. Then under Sampler turn loop on and drag the loop points to an area you want to extend and zoom in and precisely put the loop points either on a zero crossing or if you can't do that look at the pattern of the waveform and place the beginning and end at a section that probably looks the same on both ends to avoid clicks and pops. Under the AMP Envelope, you might want a fast attack, short decay, a sustain around 3 o'clock, and a release around 2 o'clock. I used to do it on my MPC back in the day to sample one-shot instruments, a couple of seconds of record crackle before a song starts (it's even better if you recorded it with the needle being placed on the record too), I also used to use it for taking a heavy kick and turning it into a bass, or I would sample a bass and just loop it. LOL! I learned it back when I had an MPC 2000 back in the day but got better with it by using the old Sound Forge where I could store the loop points within the wav file and just drop it in any DAW or MPC and all I would have to do is set the ADSR and if I wanted to filter it or not. From what I understand, the newer versions of Sound Forge doesn't save the loop points in the wav file anymore, it just saves it in the sound forge project now."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku-mLZZY0Ps

Seqsual

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/19016#Comment_19016

I went DIY route using wine corks and sort of thick soft material (normally used as vacuum cleaner filter). After some adjustments it worked well with velocity sensitive patches (like Pianoteq). The pads were a little bit rattling but again - a piece of soft material placed over them solved it. I think the size of pads makes Maschine perfect for this and it really change the flow (compared to finger drumming).

Jeremy_NI

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/19377#Comment_19377

Thanks ! DIY all the way !

tribepop

I’m typing this from memory on my phone so I apologize if I missed anything.

If you have external synths and wanna try controlling them from Maschine, you should definitely try it! Not only do you get access to all of the note generation features of the Maschine controller, you can also use the new Auto-Sampler to quickly create a multi-sampled instrument of your external gear in a snap!

If you like controlling external synths from Maschine then do the following:

If your device supports MIDI-over-usb opt for using that instead of using the MIDI ports on your audio device. This allows you to point directly to the device in Maschine as opposed to some random MIDI channel that you need to remember. It also allows you to control multiple MIDI devices regardless of your audio interface. Just be sure to enable that device in your midi settings in the preferences.
You will need two sound slots/tracks per MIDI instrument in Maschine. The first track needs to have to MIDI output set to the external device. The second track needs to have the Audio input come from whatever input on your audio device the external synth’s output is connected to. One track for sending MIDI from Maschine to the external device and another track for capturing the audio being played back from your external device. You may also need to have a separate group for resampling each of the audio tracks so that you can bounce them to audio rather than only listening to the playback.
You can also have Maschine include program changes for your external gear so that you can change to different presets on your external device for different parts of the song. You can also do this if you want to save a project and be able to recall the exact preset on your device without having to manually do it on the device. You’ll need to find the MIDI reference table for your device so you can see the appropriate CC messages to use for selecting the bank and program number. In Maschine, you just create a pattern and add an automation (modulation?) lane with the correct CC and then draw in the correct value.
Once you have this basic setup you can then export the group and have that act as a template for your external device(s) that you can then import into any of your Maschine projects.

I can come back and add some screenshots if it helps. Good luck, have fun, and let me know if I missed anything!

Flexi

Use plugin doctor on 3rd party plugins to find latency values for plugins, Maschine has no PDC.

ShelLuser

It's not "just" a drumpad!

The Maschine is to Komplete what the Push is to Live...

Many people that I am aware of look at Maschine and when seeing the 4 x 4 pad grid they conclude: "drumpad", so obviously it's not for you if your goal isn't percussion, right?

Well, no, wrong!

Now, context is a thing here, there is no 'one size fits all' approach when it comes to Maschine, but just for contexts sake... I own both the awesome Symphony Series (fanboy modus goes into effect here; this is the prime of my home studio!!) and I also managed to pick up an amazing support product called:

Versilian chamber orchestra 2!

Powered by Kontakt, if you haven't guessed already; which is exactly my point here... 😎 Notice me saying Kontakt and not mentioning NKS?

So about that...

Here I loaded Kontakt in Maschine, then manually (using keyboard/mouse) loaded VCO2 into Kontact and.. see above.

Looks may be deceiving but if you look closely you'll notice that I can't really customize or affect anything using the Maschine controls.

And yet here I am... squeezing out some some really solid orchestral scores using nothing more than a 4 x 4 pad grid (and it's awesome pitch slider!).

So summing up: do not underestimate what you can do with a "mere" 4 x 4 grid to play notes.

olafmol

Not my own tips, but very inspiring:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn6SGJH543o

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9KeFAUOdPs

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