I've been using Maschine to write music for years, and I recently started using external synths. But, I'm having a problem using clips for that external audio. Clips themselves work fine - the problem is if I have an existing clip with some audio, and want to add a scene or change the scene length for other groups underneath an existing clip.
Here's the setup, starting from a new project:
YouTube of me describing this problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhOCYnGKy-s
1) Have a clip in one group with some long-playing audio. Note that it would probably span multiple scenes, though I haven't created any scenes yet.
2) Now add a scene (because we're gonna add some drum loops in Group B)
Note that when adding a new Scene, Maschine moves the existing clip over to make room for that Scene. Not really what I wanted, but not a big deal...
3) I move the Clip back to the start of the song to cover the newly add Scene
4) Now, add a second new Scene after the first Scene
Here's the problem. When adding the new Scene, Maschine split my Clip in two to make room for the new Scene. My audio now has a gap where the new Scene is. The audio in the clip stops when this new Scene is reached, then the audio starts playing back at the point where it stopped after the new Scene is finished.
It gets weirder, though.
5) Delete the new, second Clip 1 (1), and pull that first Clip to cover all the Scenes again. That "fixes" things: the Clip is now one long audio track again. I can add a drum loop in a new Pattern for Scene 2. But now, make Scene 2 twice as long.
The Clip gets split again, but only half of the Clip (the amount that fit into Scene 2's original size) stays in Scene 2. The second half of Scene 2 has a gap in the Clip audio track again.
To fix this, I might extend Clip 1 to cover the new length of Scene 2. "Clip 1" would then line up next to the new "Clip 1 (1)" Maschine created. But, a Clip is necessarily associated to a specific point in the audio file's playback. So while it looks like I've "fixed" that audio track, what happens on playback is that "Clip 1" plays the audio file all the way through those first two Scenes, but when the new "Clip 1 (1)" is reached, it starts playback in the audio file from the point where it was originally created, meaning it repeats the second half of the audio from Scene 2.
That's one variation of this problem. I've learned that when Maschine splits a Clip, I generally have to delete the newly created second Clip that and pull the original Clip back to its original length.
This also happens when the Scenes all exist with Clips, but then you add a new Scene or change an existing Scene's length, not just with a new project with no Scenes in my example.
Is there any way to "lock" a Clip's length? So adding Scenes or changing Scene length would leave the Clip in place, at that length? Effectively, I want my Clip to start at 1:30 in the song, regardless of where the Scenes are laid out "under" that Clip.
In my head, and I presume in others', Clips represent a long-running, one-off "audio track" (regardless whether the content is an audio file or midi notes) that spans multiple Scenes. I rarely, if ever, want to split up that long-running audio with a gap.