How to send MIDI from MK3's external port while in VST mode

tribepop · 2025-06-02T04:48:34+00:00

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I want to use the MK3 and the Maschine 2 software as a VST inside of Ableton Live 12 to act essentially as a generic midi keyboard since the pad responsiveness in controller mode is garbage. I don't have any need to control Live with the MK3, I just want to use it to trigger midi notes for virtual and hardware synths I have plugged in.

I tried to use the virtual midi I/O but Live consolidates all of the midi channels from a VST so you can't have dedicated midi channels being triggered by the Maschine VST. So my workaround would be to use the Maschine VST and MK3 and use the EXT MIDI out on the MK3 to go into the MIDI IN on my interface.

I can't seem to get the MK3 MIDI out port to send any data when it's being used as a VST in another daw. Does anyone have any suggestions or wisdom to share?

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D-One

@tribepop said:
I want to use the MK3 and the Maschine 2 software as a VST inside of Ableton Live 12 to act essentially as a generic midi keyboard since the pad responsiveness in controller mode is garbage.
I tried to use the virtual midi I/O but Live consolidates all of the midi channels from a VST so you can't have dedicated midi channels being triggered by the Maschine VST.

Yes, Ableton Live merges all MIDI Channels from Plugins; it's infuriating!

But why this approach? Since MIDI Mode for Maschine is indeed absolute garbage in terms of 'sensitivity', I also often use MAS-Plug just to record MIDI to Ableton, often to use (Scales and such) but my approach is much simpler:

1 MAS Plug loaded with Pad-1 MIDI Out set to "Host".
Set your Ableton MIDI/Instruments track to receive MIDI from MAS-Plug
When I want to record, I enable "Monitor In" in Ableton and record, then disable "Monitor In" for that Instrument and move on to the next.
It basically works more or less like a Generic MIDI keyboard, but I use the Maschine Pads in Maschine Mode.

Other DAW's allow to have each Pad sending to a DAW-Track on separate channels but tbh, you would then have to keep track of it all, if the point is just to record, there's no need to complicate.

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/229230#Comment_229230

That guide is to be able to send MIDI from the MAS-PLUG to DAW Tracks, which in turn sends MIDI back to the MAS-Plugin, to be able to record MIDI directly to the DAW. Meaning, it's an approach where the
"instrument" is inside the MAS-Plug… It won't work for simply controlling a bunch of MIDI tracks that have instruments loaded on the DAW itself.

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Maciej Repetowski

I don’t think this is possible with Maschine controller, unfortunately - its either or. NI has implemented this functionality in Mk3 keyboards, but only recently and after a lot of nagging from users.

6xes

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/45659/how-to-send-midi-from-mk3s-external-port-while-in-vst-mode

normally you would setup a virtual midi port, in order that your midi-outs have a path to travel down

but as you are using it as a plugin inside the host DAW… use this fella's guide

edit: the guide is 6 years old LOL… but i figure it probably still works *shrugs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i54WFFPR6Q

D-One

@tribepop said:
I want to use the MK3 and the Maschine 2 software as a VST inside of Ableton Live 12 to act essentially as a generic midi keyboard since the pad responsiveness in controller mode is garbage.
I tried to use the virtual midi I/O but Live consolidates all of the midi channels from a VST so you can't have dedicated midi channels being triggered by the Maschine VST.

Yes, Ableton Live merges all MIDI Channels from Plugins; it's infuriating!

1 MAS Plug loaded with Pad-1 MIDI Out set to "Host".
Set your Ableton MIDI/Instruments track to receive MIDI from MAS-Plug
When I want to record, I enable "Monitor In" in Ableton and record, then disable "Monitor In" for that Instrument and move on to the next.
It basically works more or less like a Generic MIDI keyboard, but I use the Maschine Pads in Maschine Mode.

Other DAW's allow to have each Pad sending to a DAW-Track on separate channels but tbh, you would then have to keep track of it all, if the point is just to record, there's no need to complicate.

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/229230#Comment_229230

tribepop

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/229466#Comment_229466

Thanks for the suggestion! The setup I'm using may sound a little weird but it's because it's for a live synth jam rather than me just composing by myself. There are two other people playing simultaneously where we have a bunch of external gear hooked up and sequenced using my PC running Live 12. Originally I was using my M+ as the brain with an external sound interface for multiple I/O and all of the midi coming out of the M+ which worked pretty good. There's various reasons why I decided to move this setup to Live but the concept is still the same.

Here's how the workflow essentially works:

There are different hardware synths setup in my studio that can be played at any time. All of their audio routes into my external sound interface so that they can have their own dedicated audio channel in the DAW. The MIDI from the daw goes out into a midi hub that connects to the MIDI in of each synth to keep them synced and to allow external control/sequencing.
There is a master midi keyboard connected to live and the MK3 is also connected and acts like a master generic MIDI keyboard as well. Each person can play any synth at anytime but if they want to record midi to be sequenced, they need to input the midi into the daw using either my master MIDI keyboard and the Maschine MK3/+. They can play the synth themselves and record the audio in the daw if needed but they lose the ability to edit to quantize and edit notes if they don't enter the midi using one of the master controllers.
In Live, each synth has a dedicated midi channel with an External Instrument device setup to send midi on a specific channel and capture the return audio on it's corresponding channel in the audio interface.
Because of Live's midi merging limitation, I have to use a M4L device called "Multi-Midi Wrapper" that fixes this issue but it doesn't accept any midi CC messages so that kind of sucks, it also doesn't save the maschine preset so I have to reload the Maschine project each time I open the Live project. I was trying the M+ running in standalone and just using the midi out from it to control the synths via Live but there was some jitter with the bpm when using the M+ as a midi sync slave.

I might use your suggestion as that would still allow me to control each synth and be able to send pitch and mod CCs. The only limitation of this is that I wouldn't be able to sequence multiple synths from the MK3 since I effectively only have one midi channel to work with at a given time. It may not end up being a big deal, I'll find out tonight what works best and report back.

D-One

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/229475#Comment_229475

Ooohhhhh, I see. In that case, I think it's theres an even simpler way:

Use the Maschine standalone application, set each Pad to output MIDI through the Virtual MIDI Driver, each using their own Channel — Then in Live just select the Port and Channel. Works great here, now that I think about imma start doing this aswell..

I dont remember if on Windows Maschine auto-installs a "Maschine Virtual MIDI Port", if it doesn't just download a free one from the web.

tribepop

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/229493#Comment_229493

Oh damn I didn’t even think about using the software in standalone mode. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen any kind of Maschine Virtual MIDI port and I did try to reinstall the driver but don’t see it so I’ll have to try and download it from somewhere. Does it just show up in Maschine and Live as a virtual midi interface? I’ll report back and let you know how it goes!

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