Are you having fun with Maschine?

With maschine +

Yes, a lot, as a hobby, but I would be afraid to use it in a live performance.

Same for me.

With a battery pack, I can take it everywhere and enjoy coming up with ideas.

I am a bass player and guitarist... what I enjoy most ;-)

But: If you talk of playing I really love Maschine. I needed some time to dig into it, but now it is a good tool to create ideas.

Comparing it to Ableton Push Maschine is much more a musical instrument to me. I really have better results playing Maschine compared to Ableton Push.

I wait (and wait) for the upcoming update to make Maschine capable of being a Midi-Out to Ableton again, because I miss the arpeggiator, chords mode and more that makes Maschine such a good tool.

AND: The drumsounds of Maschine are so much better to my ears compared to all Ableton presents...

I am forced to use Ableton, because you cannot play and record with two musicians using Maschine (because als tracks are sort of "armed" all the time... )... this is not a complaint ;-) ... but it made me/us buy Ableton and Push for live-performances with one computer. We still use Maschine though...

Can't wait for the update and using Maschine again on Mac M1...

I've been using Maschine for a few years now and to me it's the #1 "Komplete controller" so to speak. I bought into Komplete 12 and Maschine roughly at the same time and when I learned how easy it was to use most of Komplete within Maschine I immediately got myself an upgrade at the first discount period; eventually I even went UC (but that was pure luck, but man..).

I'm not just having fun, I can honestly still get excited about firing up my home studio and .. well, getting to work.

My setup fully focusses around Live & Push together with Maschine & Komplete and to me this is a killer combo because once I've powered up my "studio" I can do pretty much everything I need from behind my 2 controllers which gives me a huge boost for my productivity and motivation, but it also makes things a lot more fun as well. Simply because you truly get the feeling to be messing around with somewhat futuristic synths instead of just using your computer like every other day.

And while it may seem a bit silly (I suppose in a way it is) I still think it's somewhat special that after I fired up Live I can then use my Push to "activate" my Maschine (normally I use NI's remote script for some extra functionality). So once Live is running I can do everything from behind my controllers.

Ever heard the saying that "less is (sometimes) more"? To me that also applies to Maschine vs. Push where playing is concerned. 16 vs 64 pads may seem like an unfair comparison but more than often I can get more melodies out of my Maschine because of the "limited" space, which automatically requires or inspires you to, well, be more creative. At least that's how I'm faring so far.

@winihh

It can already do that, right now:

(errr, fair warning: I did gloss over the fact that you mentioned Mac, as far as I know this functionality should be the same, but... yah, as you can see I'm using Windows myself).

But here I have Maschine loaded into Live. In the software I set it up so that sound 1 sends its MIDI out into the host (which is Live). I then enabled keyboard mode and set up the arpeggiator using the controller. Then I set monitoring for track 2 to 'In' and set it up to grab its MIDI data from Maschine. Well.. the result can be seen above: Maschine is now using its Arp effect to play Live's track 2.

All of this can be fully set up from behind the controllers by the way, but the routing can also be done using the software (as highlighted above).

If you check this forum you'll find one of my threads pinned... hmm, lemme find it for you:

This should give you some hints to make this work.

Which is actually another reason why I think Maschine is a ton of fun: it can really "fit" into the Live workflow together with Push. I can play Maschine from behind my Push (either as instrument or drumrack), but I can also do this the other way around: playing Live from behind Maschine.

The possibilities are nearly endless here.

Hope this can give both of you some ideas! 😎

@winihh

Look into Live templates as well as the (instrument) racks. See, the fun thing about Live is that it will store the state of a VST with its own saved presets. So if you add Maschine to an instrument rack, then set it up to use a specific routing scheme (like sending MIDI back into the host) then you can save the instrument rack preset after which it will always load Maschine with that very same setup again.

This can save you a lot of time.

With that battery pack do you need one of those special cables (I can't remember the name of the company but I used to have to use one with my MPC if I wanted to use a battery) or can you plug it directly into the AC adapter port on your M+ using one of the plugs that came with the battery pack?

I’m currently using a USB-C PD trigger cable fir 15V.

However, U originally bought a rather expensive battery pack because it offered programmable DC output voltage with sufficient power rating and also a 110/220V AC socket.

AFAIR either used one off my pedal biard power supply or bought one from Thomann, but don’t remember clearly. The connector on the M+ is a bit special.