Automation, Again

PortableDJs
PortableDJs Member Posts: 51 Member
edited October 22 in Maschine

Hi guys!

Been mixing a song with my Maschine Jam, managed to pull out and record the automation I wanted.

Now I am struggling to record more automations, the touch strips on my Jam do not apply any Filter now that the first automation has been recorded.

I also tried to set up a new Performance Filter instance, but still, the touch strip do not apply any filter movement.

What am I doing wrong? Is there any particular procedure to record multiple automations?

Thank you in advance

G.

Best Answer

  • ozon
    ozon Member Posts: 1,760 Expert
    Answer ✓

    Hm. Automation in Maschine is actually Modulation which means it is relative to the values recorded in the Pattern or before the Pattern started, and it has to be recorded into a Pattern. Which means you can not have different automation for the same Pattern depending on where it’s located in the arrangement.

Answers

  • ozon
    ozon Member Posts: 1,760 Expert

    Maybe a silly question, but… did you hold the AUTO button while trying to apply changes?

  • PortableDJs
    PortableDJs Member Posts: 51 Member
    edited July 9

    Hi, that's the situation:

    I recorded an automation, filtering several groups routed to a single one, no issue. Now if I try to automate again (later in the song) it is not possible, the touch strip do not apply any filter, even if I press Auto. I can though automate single groups, but cannot filter the ones I already routed and automated.

  • ozon
    ozon Member Posts: 1,760 Expert
    Answer ✓

    Hm. Automation in Maschine is actually Modulation which means it is relative to the values recorded in the Pattern or before the Pattern started, and it has to be recorded into a Pattern. Which means you can not have different automation for the same Pattern depending on where it’s located in the arrangement.

  • PortableDJs
    PortableDJs Member Posts: 51 Member
    edited July 9

    Thanks for dropping a reply, it was driving me crazy. Few optional questions:

    1. in the scenario I would like to filter the master signal several times, how would you do it? Routing the signal to another modulated group simply doesn't cut it since you are trying to modulate a signal that is already modulated (this was my case).
    2. At this point the best way (as you said) is to apply Performance Modulation (automation) on a group level or single sound level. At this point though, do you have any trick to swap Modulation or switch it on or off, so I don't have to have more groups of the same pattern with different Modulation?

    Thank you in advance

    G.

  • ozon
    ozon Member Posts: 1,760 Expert

    Unfortunately I have very limited experience with Maschine modulation and don’t have straight answers and just can offer ideas.

    I don’t know whether it is possible to record modulation in Clips, but if possible that may offer a workaround. Also if you’re talking about Master Modulation, maybe you could have a Group which only holds the Master Modulation Patterns/ Clips.

  • D-One
    D-One Moderator Posts: 3,484 mod
    edited July 12

    There are some ways to get around it.

    Recording modulation into a Clip as @ozon suggested works for example, since unlike Patterns Clips are unique you can tweak the filter differently throughout your project.

    Another alternative is to simply Duplicate the Section and Pattern, this makes a copy of the originals therefore you can have exclusive Modulation for it - If you need this often then you might want to go to Prefs>Default and set Duplicate to auto duplicate both things.

    Duplicating Scenes/Patterns for variations is the main way most people arrange songs.

    You can also combine both Modulation in the Patterns and via Clips, the latter will have priority and disable the one in the Pattern.

  • PortableDJs
    PortableDJs Member Posts: 51 Member

    On Win 11, when I route the master signal to a clip and record a modulation in it, then i am not able to perform another modulation afterwards. The touchstrip of my Jam simply do not respond if try to record another modulation if there is a modulation before it, even on Clips.

    So far working on a pattern level (so not using Maschine Perform Filters) seems more precise and makes me have many modulations per each pattern.

    Still what I was looking for was filtering, modulate and record the entire master signal, as many times as I wanted.

    Maybe is there anything I am getting wrong?

  • D-One
    D-One Moderator Posts: 3,484 mod
    edited July 12

    There's some confusion here…

    On Win 11, when I route the master signal to a clip and record a modulation in it, then i am not able to perform another modulation afterwards.

    I think you mean to route the Group signals to another Group that acts as a Master-Group. A Clip is just a Group container so you can't route the Master directly to it or anything else for that matter, Clips are basically a super-Pattern that has priority over normal Patterns, are always unique, and are free to be placed wherever on the timeline.

    The touchstrip of my Jam simply do not respond if try to record another modulation if there is a modulation before it, even on Clips.

    Hum… This is very odd, on an MK3/M+ modulation can always be overwritten on top of itself replacing what was there previously - I dont own a Jam to confirm if this is one of it's limitations but it wouldn't make sense as this would force people into getting modulation right the 1st time with no possibility of tweaking.

    Maybe it's related to "PERFORM", try it with the normal Maschine Filter module/plugin.

  • PortableDJs
    PortableDJs Member Posts: 51 Member

    Thanks for helping first of all.

    I think pictures will help a lot, it is easy:

    I send the signal of everything contained in A1 to D1 (named FILTER) which has PERFORM FX loaded on it.

    My problem is, It seems I can only have one modulation on D1, cos I am not able to record other modulations after Clip 1 (the purple one in D1). Clip 1 indeed contains the modulations I wanted.

    I can edit that one, delete it and record a new one, but it seems I cannot have different clips with different modulation on D1, just one "active" modulation.

    In short that is my problem.

    Hope I made it clear this time.

    G.

  • D-One
    D-One Moderator Posts: 3,484 mod
    edited July 12

    I think understand what you're going for, what I dont understand is why you cant record over the current modulation or create new ones…

    This is how it always worked for me:

    I record one pass and it creates a Clips, then I restart and overwrite the 1st Clip, I keep tweaking and new Clips are created. I would expect all controllers to behave like this. This is what you want to do, right?

  • PortableDJs
    PortableDJs Member Posts: 51 Member
    edited July 12

    Edit:

    Maybe a combination of Win 11 + Wasapi, but live recording Modulation/Automation on my PC it's a bit messy and dodgy. I found that when things get dirty the right thing to do is to first draw a clip and then record the Modulation inside. It is also worth mentioning that the last node has to be contained in the pre-drawn clip or else the Modulation will not close properly and/or will prevent the next modulation to be recorded. I also noticed that in my set up sometimes the Filter gets locked, in this case, again, drawing a clip in the spot where you want to try/audit the filter will make the thing working again. Hope it helps.

    So in my scenario, I would copy and paste Clip 1 on D1 and keeping rewriting/live recording it as many times as I need?

    I can create new clips, after Clip 1 on D1, but the problem is that the modulation is not applied nor recorded, as I wrote many times looks "locked". In my project I cannot basically do what you do later in your video, and create and record many clips. Dunno why

  • ozon
    ozon Member Posts: 1,760 Expert

    I did some test with my JAM and Maschine 2.17.5 (can't currently update to 2.18.1 because a bug when using the VST in Cubase) and found the following:

    Setup

    • Group A Sound 1 for Monark with a bass Pattern
    • Group A routed to Group B instead of Master
    • Auto Mapping of Monark filter cutoff/resonance/feedback on Group level
    • Auto Mapping of Monark filter cutoff/resonance/feedback on Master level
    • Group B with Performance Filter Effect

    Findings

    • I was able to record touch strip movements for the Performance Filter in Group B to Clip 1
    • I was able to record touch strip movements for the Performance Filter in Group B to additional Clips 2 and 3
    • I was able to overwrite the touch strip movements for the Performance filter in the already recorded Clips. But it was very difficult to get usable results because of the interaction between hitting the Auto button and activating the touch strip, which resulted more in deactivating the recorded filter modulation instead of changing it (see Performance Engage curves in screenshot by @D-One).
    • I found absolutely no way to record changes of the Monark sound settings into a different location than the current Pattern for that sound. Setting up Automation Mappings in Group or Master didn't help either.

    Bottom line: It's more difficult than it should be, and you most probably have to duplicate Patterns for alternative modulations.

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