2 patterns, 2 groups - how to make group 2 start at bar 1 while group 1 is playing

Firstly, massive thanks to @D-One, who really is the MVP of this forum - an incredibly detailed and informative answer - thank you!

The 2 Maschine VST instances is something I have experimented with, but - as far as I can see, you are still stuck with the same timeline problem. Plus its quite fiddly jumping between the 2 instances of VSTs

In the end, I think I have (after around 10 hours working on this) come up with a (working) solution that involves clips. I spent a long time trying to get the clips not to randomly truncate etc - as per this thread

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/1222/copying-pasting-moving-clips-around#latest -

My big problem was that clips seem to be very unstable, but hopefully the below works...

It may be an unnecessarily complicated way of doing it, but it does work, just about - altho like so many things in Maschine, its a botch job. So infuriating that we have to make these convoluted work arounds to try and do some pretty basic things on Maschine,...

If there is a simpler or better way than this overly complicated method, please let me know!

To explain further, what I am trying to do is to make a live set with 2 groups/songs active at the same time.

I want to mix between them in as you would 2 tunes on a CDJ, but also use Maschine's pads/mutes and be able to tweak filters, fx parameters etc etc

Once I have finished one song, I then load another group with the first song.

All groups / songs have been made as low cpu as possible by rendering etc

But even with these rendered, low CPU versions, I cannot have more than 4 projects loaded on my 11th gen i5 laptop before it reaches maximum CPU on Machine CPU window - altho only around 30% on real CPU - so it has to be done 2 projects at a time

However, as I said in my earlier post, it seems impossible to start off a pattern at bar 1, if the timeline is already at, say, 64 bars.

I could cut my songs, of course, into intro/drop/main etc patterns, but that's another thing to have to deal with in a hectic live situation, so I really wanted to avoid it, as I already have a load of other things to do to the tracks

So (this can be done in a DAW or Standalone - I run Maschine VST in Reaper to try and compensate for Maschines stupidly high CPU usage)

First I make a template

• I created an empty group on slot 3 with around 1.5 hours worth of empty patterns - it is very important to do this, otherwise when you import new groups the patterns - and especially the clips - tend to get messed up if they are initially placed near the start of the arrangement. I did 12 'empty patterns' of 256 bars each. These are loaded into 12 scenes as per below. You might do a different size if you want to make a marker track

• In song mode, I then load the first song onto group slot 1. This appears in at the end of my empty patterns. I then convert it to a clip. I then delete (in ideas mode) original pattern. Now all that is left is the clip
• I move the clip to the start of the arrangement

Template is now ready

During live set, I can then repeat step 2 and 3 to load new songs onto group slots 1 and 2.

CPU is fine with 2 groups playing and also does not stutter etc when loading

It does work, but a pretty stupid way to have to do things. I sometimes wonder why I keep on with Maschine and don't just use Ableton and push - but I have spent so much time and money on Maschine that I kind of want to stick with it.

Also, I really prize the features like macros, screens on the controller, fantastic encoders that are mapped instantly to vsts etc. These are really great things that makes the MK3 more like a musical instrument to me.

Its just the total inflexibility of the software sometimes that really lets Maschine down badly - a few things that, if NI could be bothered to do something about them, would make Maschine into an amazing product. Things like the terrible CPU usage, things like the buggy clips implementation, the useless automation etc etc

However, as we all know, these changes never seem to happen!