Colour coding Tips?

Baldadi

Hi there,

just bought Machine MK3 (I already own a S49-mk2 KK keyboard). Trying to learn to effectively use the pads. Colours should be helpful but a lot of expansions etc are not colour coded.

I get lost or have to check the pad-content constantly to see what I am doing...

Do you guys have any tips for most effective use of colour coding the pads?

• Colours per instrument type?
• Conventions a la Battery for kits?
• Colours for type of Group? (Instruments, Sample, Kit...)
• ...

Any suggestions and/or how you incorporate this in your workflow (I use Logic next to Maschine) are welcome!

Thx

D-One

Most effective will depend on your taste, the more you complicate the harder it is to burn into your memory and possibly takes longer to setup if you're not a template kind of guy. I use 3 main colors for production regardless of what software I am using, something easy to memorize like:

🟧 Drums

🟧 Samples

🟥 Bass

🟦 Instruments

The Group order also is roughly always the same. Then I reserve 2 other extra colors for lead vocals and hook Group/Bus, so effectively I use 5 colors ussually, i tried more then this like having colors for particular instruments but then it gets too complicated for me to tell what is what at a glance and a raimbow project that looks like an RBG gaming keyboard or a xmas tree is not for me.

For Drum Groups I use PAD # placement rather than colors, Pad1 is always kick, Pad2 snare etc... So in most projects i know what is what.

Hippstar

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/20627#Comment_20627

I'm using the same colours.

Purple for Aux/FX tracks.

Tony Jones

I use orange for drums, red for bass then it gets a bit random eg pads vs keys