Maschine Extender / Stream Deck + ShuttleXpress

Hi Guys,

On the old forum, I once suggested creating an extender for Maschine with only buttons for direct access to functions and perhaps a jog wheel. Think of it for the right side of the Maschine Studio. Unfortunately, such an extender never was released.

Since last Sunday I have a Stream Deck with 15 buttons and a ShuttleXpress is on its way. I hope to make this work as well as or even better than the Maschine Studio, even though the design of these controllers don't perfectly complement my Maschine mk2/Maschine Jam/KK S25 setup.

Does anyone here have experience with this? If so, what are your positive and negative experiences?

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D-One

Well… Maschine doesn't have that many keyboard shortcuts to assign to the Stream Deck buttons (read this and this.)

Theres a Stream Deck plugin to assign keys to MIDI, here but unfortunately Maschine's dedicated functions are not MIDI mappable, things such as Playhead position; also, Maschine has generally 4 zones: Browser, Ideias/Song, Control Area and Pattern Editor:

If any of those zones are active/in-focus some keyboard shortcuts change, for example the up/down arrows controls which Pad is selected if the Pattern Editor zone is in focus, but if the browser is focused then it's which preset/sound, if it's Ideas then it's which Pattern is active, etc, etc…

Problem is Maschine does not tell you visually which zone is in focus or gives you a way to change it other than clicking that zone with the mouse.

TL;DR - Many keyboard shortcuts change based on whatever zone is active, making it a pain to map and use the few shortcuts that exist as you will often have no Idea what will happen when pressing them.

Good luck, let us know how it goes.

Lotuz

Thanks D-One. Great information. Especially the part about the zones. I noticed that when I try to move a selected note using the Alt + arrow key combination, it often doesn't move until I click the mouse in the pattern editor. This kind of defeats the purpose of a device like the Stream Deck, as at that moment it makes more sense to continue using the mouse to move the selected note.

Lotuz

And there's a downside to having multiple control devices. Which device do I use for which function? For example it's nice that the Jam has a dedicated button for Swing, but the OSD only shows the swing percentages. I have to use the mk2 to change the other swing parameters. So I'm already going back and forth between mk2 and Jam. That might only get worse by adding more devices.

Therefore an extender by Native Instruments similar to Stream Deck with user assignable buttons (imagine a dropdown list of all Maschine functions for each button with auto zone focus) could be a great addition to each Maschine setup. And how about a jog wheel that can change any of the parameters including the ones from the Sample editor? I understand NI want to limit the functions you can control by non NI devices, but if there is enough demand they might as well make one themselves. Maybe also develope a Jam mk2 with buttons that display text similar to Stream Deck at the same time.

But for now let's test the Stream Deck and ShuttleXpress… 😎

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