Hello!

I would like to hear some feedback from Maschine users (or soon to be) if possible regarding this device.

In fact I'd like to know if it's any good for other music styles beside Techno/EDM? Any experience with for ex Score Music or Rock or anything else beside EDM?
Also, how do you fare your Maschine experience: Is it really some kind of revolution or just an evolution?

Thanks guys!
Mr Psanter

 

I don't know if it will be considered as a "Revolution" or an "Evolution", but the only thing I know is that's really something great if you're using a lot of plugins and sound banks (such Kontakt) for your music.
By using Maschine, you have the same user experience than hardware device. Which means: You can twist knobs, push buttons and have an immediate reading on the screens on "what's going on".
You can use Maschine without touching the mouse and keyboard of your computer, or even without looking at the computer display. Which means, you're making more music with your ears and your hands and less with your eyes.

The whole software integration is really well made (mainly with Komplete) and you can easily load a plugin, select a preset, sequence, add some fx, tweak, etc...
So, once you know Maschine, it's really fast to compose/produce (IMHO, way faster than using a mouse).

Also, I like the fact we can easily go from "MPC-ish Linear Sequencer" to "808-ish Step Sequencer" by just pressing a button. We can easily use the Step-Sequencer for some Kick, Snare, and then switch to Linear-Sequencer for some Melodies and then switch back at any time. That's very useful for all modern music (Urban, EDM, etc...) but not only modern music.

Maschine Studio looks to be even better with the larger color screens, jog wheel and buttons. It's more expensive, but it's a probably one of the only "controller" that really allows you to play with it as it was just an instrument and have a real physical interaction with your computer and your plugins. For anyone that use plugins and sample banks, it's really a "must have" (even if you don't make beat and electronic music, mainly today we can have a lot of acoustic sounds with plugins and sample banks).

I'm not working for NI (and to be honest, I don't like them much), but I have to admit I can't say any bad thing about Maschine because it's really a great product. Don't get me wrong, there's some "downside" and some features I'd love or even waiting for, but overall, it's one of the best product I use (I have Maschine mk1 and I can't wait to buy Maschine Studio). What makes Maschine so good is the fact it's a great sequencer with a great controller, we can use directly in the computer (or the DAW). It makes everything else way simpler and faster.

I really recommend anyone to test it and check all videos on youtube, tutorials, and such.

 

Thanks Morph for your comment, much informative.

The way you put it, it almost sounds like it can replace a USB keyboard hooked up to my laptop, am I right?

Can you use Maschine with libraries such as strings, brass or even piano? Is it that efficient?

 

Maschine really is great, it's my go to drum machine.

You can use plugins inside of it, and with the latest version/maschine studio, using NI stuff like Kontakt etc is even more fluent.

I couldn't recommend it more! For the style of music you want, I'm sure it's possible.. with the right plugins and such, But, as much as I love it, and it does what i want it too, it's quite far from being a solid DAW.

 

For scoring? No way.
Forget it. It could be used for mangling sounds for SFX maybe..
AFAK there is no video support. What do you want to score to?.
Its a solid piece of software/hardware but bot for this task IMHO.
Don't get me wrong, I envy people who use it, I watched some youtube videos and it is mind boggling what you can do with it.
But so you can with a more linear DAW.

 

What about using it without the hardware just as a computer interface? Are the factory sounds and add on libraries any good compared to Kontakt, Reaktor etc?

 

It's my go to for drum programming on some days and on other days I don't even touch it. To be honest, lately I have been using it as a controller for Battery 4. I grew up using this style of machine (first an MPC60, then an SP1200, MPC2000, MPC4000), and it has a similar feel to those. Great for writing beats but I have never used it for making an entire song. If I do use it, I tend to make the beats in Maschine, then drag and drop them into SonarX3 and do the rest from there. Oh I will tell what else it's very good at. Chopping up sampled loops. I can wack an old soul track in there and 5 minutes later I sound like J Dilla or 9th Wonder (if I choose to). Overall a good studio addition but I would never use it exclusively to make a full track.

Oh I have Maschine Mk1 by the way.

 

using it without the hardwsare is great, it's so nice to have that option. But I would imagine it's even better with the hardware, but you'd have to buy all the cracked software legit.

 

Is it possible to use Maschine with a Piano library? How is it?

 

Yes it's possible but Ableton Push is better for piano because you can play scales, and a whole lot of piano techniques that are almost impossible to do outside of a traditional keyboard.

 

Push looks good but you can only use it with Live which is kind of restrictive since I don't plan to use it anytime soon (happy with Studio One).

 

As a self proclaim Maschine and NI guru, i have to say Maschine is my go to drum machine program. I have the hardware but i dont use it very much. i prefer programming it instead. IT IS NOT A KEYBOARD REPLACEMENT, by any means. playing different notes on it like a piano is rather annoying for me. Id rather have a keyboard and maschine separate. I like the expansions they put out, they are usually really well geared towards the genre they were intended for (except Marble Rims, that just sounds cheap and floaty to me).

Maschine is extremely well integrated in the entire NI product line and allows you to use VST and AU in it as well as use any NI instrument in place of a drum sound (using a Kontakt Horn section instead of 'HiHat 1'). I like it very much. It serves its purpose and it does it well. I have little nit picks about it here and there but thats just from my preferences.

MY BIGGEST BEEF is that it doesnt work OPENLY with Battery 4. Id like much much much better integration. Like Battery 4 kits working simply in Maschine 2. I think battery has some of the best drum sounds available, but its just not useful playing drums on a piano or grabbing individual sounds and placing them in maschine. completely simplified integration with battery 4 would blow my strawhat right off.

Hope it helps. But in the end its best to make your own judgement. Grab the expansions, grab the software, give it a try and see what you think. I have tried many drum programming software/plugins and this one wins (i own almost all NI products legit, thats how muck i like their stuff).

 

I've been playing around with the software interface, some of the expansion packs and must say that I find the interface clunky, dated and other than having access to some of the expansion packs, I find Kontakt and other products way more productive. Maybe it's strong suit is the hardware, but I think the software needs an substantial overhaul.

 

Hi Mr Psanter, sorry for the delay to reply, I don't check the forum everyday.

The Maschine hardware controller is a USB controller; therefor you can hook it up to your laptop and use it as any controller, pretty much like a USB keyboard.
However, you will have 4x4 pads to play note. Sometimes it could be enough for some bass line, or synth melody, but that's definitely not the same as having 49, 61 or even 88 keys in front of you to play piano with both hands.

But, playing with pads is really fun. You can definitely use some Piano, Brass, Strings, whatever_sound_you_want and play it with the pads. Unfortunately, due to the 4x4 (16) pads only, you will only be able to play 16 semi-tones at the time (a little bit more than an octave). You can use the buttons to octave/transpose up and down, but you will have only 16 notes at the time. That's where a system like Push might be interesting because of the 8x8 (64) pads, to have access to more notes at the times, as well as with the "scale" system to only be able to play the note of the choosing scale. Unfortunately, Push is mainly for Ableton Live and it might not integrate in other DAW as well as Maschine does. There's other 8x8 Pads Controller thought, but the whole purpose of Push, Maschine, MPC Renaissance and other "Hybrid Controller" is the perfect interaction between the hardware controller and the software.

Using the hardware all-alone is nothing more than a good controller. Using the software all-alone (or with another controller) is definitely not a good user experience. The whole benefit with a system like that is to be able to seamlessly control the software from the dedicated hardware controller. IMHO, that's the whole interest to a system like Maschine.

We can use any AU/VST plugin. So we can load any kind of sounds. You can use Kontakt with any sound library of your choice, Reaktor, Massive, FM8, etc...
As well as other 3rd party plugins such Spectrasonics Omnisphere, u-He Diva, Arturia, you name it.

A pad is considered as a "track". You can load a single Wav file (such a Kick, Snare, Hi-Hat, etc...), or even Multiple Wav files (layering, stacking, etc.), or you can load a VST/AU plugin instead. You can choose the note you want to play and at any time you can play the whole keyboard range note if you have a USB Keyboard connected to your computer or to the Midi In of Maschine. You can also play them from the pads directly by changing the "Pad Mode" in Keyboard (Shift+Pad Mode).

A Group contains 16 Pads you can play in realtime. And since each Pads could be whatever you want, you can have a Wav Kick files on PAD 1, Omnisphere on PAD 2, BFD3 snare or PAD 3 and so on...

The usage of Battery 4 with Maschine is possible (you can load Battery 4 on a Pad/Track like any other plugin), and then you can route more Pads to the same plugin (using the new routing from Maschine 2.0) and even save this layout as a Group Template or so... but it's kind of redundant because Maschine can load any Battery 4 files and can have pretty much the same exact feature of layering, stacking, sample editing, adding some FX, etc. So it's easier and faster to just use the internal Sampler of Maschine than using Battery 4 instead. Well, it's my recommendation. I was using Battery back in the days, but then I was using GURU and now I'm just using Maschine all the way.

Also, there's new feature in Maschine 2.0 that allow you to build a "Song" by using the timeline (just like some DAW), but Maschine is not (yet?) a DAW by itself and you can't really do some "scoring" or even load some Video to record music on video, etc. But you can easily load Maschine as a plugin in your DAW (Logic, Protools, Cubase, Live, Studio One, etc...) and use it that way if you want to do some "scoring".

I hope it helps ;)

 

The Controller Software is a masterpiece for itself. If you know well about MIDI or want to dig deeper into...
Making your music by creating specific templates for instance or assign it to any program accepting MIDI input.

 

Maschine is great! best drum machine out!

 

Maschine has seriously increased my songwriting potential in electronic music 10x because of its efficiency. I even use Ableton as my main DAW but start all my projects running Maschine.

But no, I wouldn't recommend this product for genres outside of electronic music (EDM, hip hop, etc.). Waste of your time...

If you're looking to be blown away by the potential of Maschine, google "Bass Kleph" (electronic producer) and "Maschine". You may spend days watching content of him showing off feature after feature, but it's completely changed the game for me.

 

I've been playing around with Maschine 2.2s Chord/Scale Functinality. It is very useful. But what really sucks major ass is that this feature is tied to the controller EXCLUSIVELY. This means: you cannot enable or use it from within the software or with an attached Keyboard.

Besides that, chopping in Maschine is great, programming drums is great, signal flow and routing possibilities are great. Writing automation is really bad. Been using it sind end of 09 now. Had an MPC 1k before that. And I don't think I'd want to go back.