Yo what’s good MT fam!
Back with part 2 in the Maschine in Ableton Live series
The topic for this one is showing you how to setup midi and audio, and trying to get you comfortable with making the changes on the fly so you can have more flexability when using Maschine inside of Live
no need to have a pre made template if you don’t want
Once you understand the routing, the creativity and flexibility is only limited by your imagination pretty much
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Nice brotha !!!!
No doubt fam, glad to help! They work well together.
What up SJ Gotta a question. I downloaded Abelton Live 9 I’m following how to set up the routing and sequencing in this vid. Everything is working fine except when I try to set up a single sound on channel 3 like you did. I’m not getting any sound when i try to play the bass line across my key board. If I load an internal instrument like the piano from Abelton I have no problem hearing sound across my midi key board. Now here is whats confusing to me. When I press a key on my midi key board… Read more »
whatever pad you have the bass on in Maschine, right click on that pad and set “sound midi settings” to give it a midi channel, that way the pad will respond to the whole keyrange. Make sure you’ve get that midi track set to receive midi from your midi controller and you have it sending to Maschine on the proper channel.
Thanks will give that a try fam…
No problem bro
Hi SJ, I appreciate this Tutorial and the many others you have provided. Extremely helpful and I have completed most of this one with all the routing done right up to recording a loop. All the routing works and I see the levels increase in Abelton. My trouble is when I go to record. I select an empty slot – right click to insert midi clip and select the record button in Abelton (which doesn’t seem to work when I press the Record button on the MK2) and all the instruments I have set up start playing some random loop… Read more »
The record button will not work for ableton when using maschine as aplugin, it will turn record on or off for maschine only. As for midi, make sure you have the midi routed properly to record it, are you using 1.8 or 2.0?
Brilliant tutorial SJ, I’m pretty bad on computers on a good day so all this midi talk is pretty strange and confusing to me but when it’s explained in such a decent straight forward way it ain’t as scary as trying to tackle it yourself!… no recording in machine tonight, gotta practice learning that routing, can’t wait to get this down… I think with how maschine and ableton flow now, and no doubt in the future it can only get better, it’s definitely the combo for me.
Now only 4 more hours of work left to get through first!…
Yeah man, I know I did a video on this previously in the free tutorial section, but I had many still confused so I wanted to really break it down further and show when you would use what type of routing and why. It’s a very flexible combination bro, I’ll get into some arranging and midi manipulation next.
Sounds good man should have the routing down by then hopefully!..
No doubt fam!
Good tutorial! You’ve almost got me convinced I need Ableton. Now I gotta figure out how to get you on Cubase 6.
Thanks fam. I have the cubase trial, haven’t installed yet. As you can see for a production daw, ableton has me spoiled. They have a similar workflow. More coming.
hmmm… couldn’t even get the first bit done with the midi channels inside of ableton!!
“maschine 1” doesn’t show up, and other prestes you have… must be the fact its the lite version i think?…
my midi from is showing up with “maschine virtual output, maschine controller (midi input 0) and a a few v midi’s…
midi to, has the same problem…
Make sure you’re using the vst in ableton, AU plugins can’t send midi out. You’re on a mac right?.
Also, you won’t have the external instrument in the lite version, I don’t know what other limitations the lite version has.
can you explain using vst versus au plugins cause I m
having that same issue.
they are just two different formats, AU doesn’t do midi out that’s why it won’t work for this
yeah that was the problem from the start i wasn’t using the vst, i got it receiving the signal now..
yeah your spot on, just seen i don’t have the external instrument either i’ll see how far i can take it without it though… looks like the upgrade will be needed sooner than i thought lol
Yeah, with the lite version you have limited tracks, it depends on which manufacturer you got it from. You should have like 8 midi and 8 audio tracks, or 8 tracks total, not sure.
If you have 8 audio and 8 midi you can make it work. You will just need to setup each track separately, with a midi track and an audio track for each channel you want to use from Maschine.
just tried it there its only 8 total, plus no external instruments so just going to get my head around the routing and take it as far as i can so i get it boxed off for now.
morte than likely hold off on doing any work in it til i upgrade… don’t know what other limitations i could run into half way through working on something.
cool man, yeah, lite is really a teaser lol. But that’s how I got hooked on it, came with my midi controller.
yeah same here, i used a few other demos and couldn’t get the feel for them but just kind of clicked with ableton.. and because it doesn’t expire i thought it was the the same as the full version with just a lot less sounds… not the case but if it was, id be laughing!
Ableton Lite is how they penetrated the market, they packaged it with tons of midi controllers and other software like ProTools, very smart. People said “hey, lemme try this” BAM game on lol.
Joe you have opened a new door for me. I have had a gold mine for 7 months but didnt know it. Thats why Im here, your a great teacher. Live was the boooomb already, but sense I got maschine, I kind of put it on the back burner. Not now though!! Just call me PB the combo Man. This is dual boxing for music. MT Fam. Its home. Theres no place like home toto.
Ahahahaha, yes, it’s a great combo man, I really like how they work together.
SJ……why can I only receive midi from one pad when I use the external instrument? I can hear the audio from all the pads but I’m not capturing the midi?
Check your midi settings, it all depends on how you’ve set the midi. If you set it at group level or sound level. You need to set it at group level for a whole group to send midi.
do you have a ready made template for us ? It would be cool if you did a Maschine template Bank A-H & Maschine 1-16 midi n Audio outs for us. Im not good with this it will take me forever..
The link to the Ableton file I made in this video is up above.
I just downloaded thanks,but would you be able to make a clean Template 1-16 single pads ? sorry if I sound dumb but its to much for me,too many numbers and etc… lol
That’s why I made the video, so you can learn 🙂
A template for 16 pads will only be one group. You won’t be able to use any other groups.
I may do another video showing how to set that up as well.
Thanks
Please do bro im not a fast learner but Im great at making music tho..
Yeah, we want to change that! Want to help you understand how to do the stuff so you don’t have to rely on other people to create what you need 🙂
Yes ur right,thanks..
No problem, I still may do the video though 😉
I just want to be able to record my drums n sounds but be able to separate freeze and flatten,I noticed you can’t do that with the first track,you have to add a audio track to record the first A Bank ? also in logic I would do something almost the same,but would take an instruments with multi things going on like drums etc. and would be able to copy or duplicate the track and play a single instrument from the same bank. I tried it but all the sounds come out the copied track giving this flanging,I know why… Read more »
the way ableton works, you need midi/audio to freeze a track. You could freeze the external instruments but not that first channel. You could actually setup external instruments for every channel if you want, that way you have the audio/midi for each channel you are using and then you can freeze each channel as needed.
ok,im trying now but having a crazy time,lol this is a bit confusing,but I totally understand what you are saying tho,just setting it up is mind tangling
I’m gonna redo this one again and do it with all external instruments, I think the midi track is causing some confusion. So I’ll just setup Maschine on it’s own track and then use an external instrument for each track I want to record so that audio/midi is on the same track for anything coming from Maschine.
I’ll do that as part 4 and then part 5 will be using individual channels for midi/audio for a single drum sound.
great brotha thanks teacher !
No doubt, be on the lookout for it later today.
yes sir!
…..sorry SJ……I checked and I think I have setup the Ext.Inst. Correct in Maschine with sound and or group midi enabled! But whilst if I put it in keyboard mode in maschine software Live is recording the notes as midi in the track when I press the pads it’s only playing BACK the root note! And I think the same is true if I use my external keyboard?
Something isn’t setup properly, there’s a setting somewhere that got messed up. Try it again from the beginning. Make sure your midi is setup properly, especially in Maschine.
You are truly a Professor! This is a huge expansion in itself going beyond stand alone! Thank you so much bro! Separate a whole kit if ya want…or not. External instrument effect in Live is very cool! Man all the options are killing me 🙂
I know you been waiting for it bro, just wanted to make sure I did it right and explained every detail I use with these two. It’s truly a dope combination! more to come 🙂
SJ……..I’m finding that for some instruments and sounds the note high and low range settings and the root notes are not the same and that affects what live plays back!
Could you clarify if and when this is important?
and depending on how you quit live also affects what comes back in Maschines settings if you reload a set?
You root note will not be the same as your high/low note. The high/low notes are the range of the sound, the root note is the “natural’ note or the base of the sound. What you set in the midi settings will determine what it responds to.
As far as how you quit Live, I’m not sure what you mean. If you save your project everything should come up as it was when you left it.
This is real dope, I have had Abelton fro a while but have never used it like this, thank’s for showing me that. Can’t wait till I get off work tomorrow and come home and watch the next part. It’s a little confusing at first but I did it along with you and saved what I did so it should be much easier next time. Yo the timing kinda threw me off you know, im used to just using maschines record function and abelton’s is a lot more in depth I guess you would say. But right on this def.… Read more »
Ha yeah man, they have different sequencers but the concept is similar, Ableton just has a bit more features for sure! Hope you can find use for it, they can be powerful together.
YESSSS!
Awesome. Thank you Joe – cause I know I was one of the guys asking about this stuff.
I just had a quick view, but I’m going to come back and try it all out.
Massive thanks – this info is a big help to my workflow.
No problem fam, glad to help as always!
where it says midi to and midi from etc. maschine is not showing up in those menus. I really wanna get this to work but i’m completely lost haha
First you have to make sure you’re using the Maschine VST and not the AU, AU plugins can’t send midi out. Second make sure you have Maschine loaded on a track first.
okay so I got that fixed but when I try to trigger specific groups other groups get triggered as well even though i changed the outs/channels its weird
You have to make sure you’re triggering on different midi channels, not just the audio channels
so i got everything routed properly was doing it as i watched the video got the sounds but my midi keyboard that is connected inside maschine isn’t playing any notes and pad mode doesn’t work either other than the root note.
midi keyboard should work with no problem, you want to have it setup in Live not in maschine. Pad mode will not work when you are sequencing it from Live
hey saint have you’ve noticed in this mode,when you set an individual sound out of mashine to record audio into ableton it doesn’t record the first down beat ? Ive tried different things but it keeps doing it.
Hey what’s up Michael, no I can’t say that I have run into that issue at all. Could it be when the record is enabled, is it enabled from the down beat?
Most of the time I enable my audio recording manually when I want to capture something and just edit it to use the part I need.
man just sat down a hour ago, watched this video bit by bit and pretty sure i’ve got this down… gonna go back over it tommorow without the video hopefully it sticks but when you go through the video slow it just flows… plus the feeling of messing with maschine but seeing it sequence in ableton is really something else! still no real clue of what i can do in ableton but this is invaluable as im just starting off having this much flexibility!… just a couple of questions though, when i don’t disarm tracks they trigger together, is that… Read more »
No doubt fam.
Tracks that are armed will respond if they see input on an input they are listening for, this is normal.
I have to check and see if there is a way to set a preset clip length, never tried it before lol.
Yeah cool i was bit thrown off but then figured out to disarm it and it worked grand…
Yeah its just something thats bugging me a bit, i usually always work with 4 bars, so seem to be constantly changing it when starting a new clip but couldn’t find anything in the preferences…
do you do much sampling in ableton using warping or do you find maschine as good or better?
i got simpler but not sampler cause i didn’t go for suite, dont really know is there advantages?
I’m usually 2 or 4 bars myself so I’m always changing it too lol. But most of the time I compose inside Maschine so it’s all good.
I don’t do much with sampling/warping in ableton, simpler is a basic sampler where sampler is more like Kontakt in that it can do a bit more.
But I say just sample into Maschine 🙂
maschine makes it too easy to adjust the length with the knobs, only doing this barely a few months and its already got me complaining about using a mouse!..
good to know thought i’d miss out on something not having that sampler but for now i’m gonna stick to what i know on the sampling, tried a bit of warping last night though, made a balls of the sample, was just a load noise after 10 minutes of trying to chop it lol… maschine does what i’ve been trying to do so far!
Yeah lol…Maschine is that joint, there’s a reason I moved to it from Ableton. So now I just use Ableton for the stuff Maschine doesn’t do, or that Ableton does better, like the arranging pretty much lol.
If I want to sample or chop…maschine, sequencing, mostly maschine, etc.
Ableton is like a sidekick for Maschine for me, it’s dope…so I use it’s strengths.
yeah the arranging is pretty fluid, are there any other major benefits you can think of off hand i should look out for, because as far as i can tell maschine does most, if not everything i’ve tried to do!
Outside of the arranging ……
maybe the groove quantizing and midi based fx
That’s the stuff I like about it, and it’s flexible routing.
not a lot maschine can’t do really it looks like!…
thanks for the tips fam, gonna get back to it!
OH there is plenty ableton can do that Maschine can’t, just not stuff that I use lol.
well im gonna be doing as much as i can to figure out the basics over the next few days so i’m sure ill stumble on some stuff but all i’ve seen what i plan to use anyway, is the arranging and for putting vocals down on it with the audio tracks!…
Yep, which is good enough reason to use it already 🙂
for sure, plus its like at the moment its advantages are well above my scope i reckon but as i need new things as i progress, hopefully they’ll be there ready to be figured rather than bein stuck!…
Indeed man, have fun with it brotha.
will do!
Hey SJ Maschine in Ableton live tutoiral, video 2: I can’t get this to work. Ableton 8,2,6, maschine 1,7,1. Ableton midi ‘from’ only shows “maschine controller input (maschine controller(midi input port 0) and when I arm the track, i get no input in Live when I hit maschine pads. I got the maschine connected to my NI audio 8 DJ with a midi cable => maschine midi out to audio 8 midi in. If I download your file “Maschine in Ableton Live project – pt 2” Live has the audio from and midi to like you show in the tutorial.… Read more »
Everything you need to setup is in this series, starting with video 1.
If you’re on a mac, please make sure that you are using the vst and not the au, au plugins can’t send midi out.
Video 2 didn’t tell me maschine is used as a vst at the start. So as a beginner, you got me there… So I’m still after hours not able to do what you show. I make a midi track, choose vst maschine as plugin but I get no sound out maschine now at all. I don’t know why, it did work earlier today in the vst. I have a few beachballs spinning to, force quit, life is hard
You’re correct I didn’t state that, the midi limitation is with AU plugins in general, they can’t send midi out. I do not use AU plugins as I’m on a pc .
Make sure your audio is routed properly so that you can hear it, also make sure that your track in ableton is either record enabled or set to monitor the input so you can hear it.
Seems like the audio interface needed a usb out and usb plug in before I got sound… Life is getting easier :-S
Nice one 🙂
One more question: my maschine VST window is gone each time I click on another row than row “1 Maschine” . It seems like on your video, you don’t have that problem, I need to click 1 Maschine to get the screen back.
In ableton preferences you can set it to “not automatically close plugin windows” if you want it to stay open until you close it.
OK I now switched to ableton from Logic, due to that the workflow in Ableton is so much better for me doing electronic music. I got a question here though, I don’t understand the difference between doing a MIDI instrument and adding an Exernal instrument track. I want to do the step recording through my Maschine and get it into logic, but I don’t want Maschine to play all the time, so when there’s a break, Maschine should not play, basically I don’t want the beat to go over what I’ve set up in the arrangement window. Where the POST… Read more »
External instrument lets you have midi/audio on the same track instead of having to make a separate audio and midi track. You don’t need to do it that way if you don’t want all your audio on separate tracks. If you don’t see maschine in the drop down, make sure you are using the vst version of maschine and not the au. AU plugins can’t send midi out so it will not show up. In Ableton preferences you can set it to use vst plugins as well as au. Maschine will always play when it is a plugin if your… Read more »
awsome! so fast reply man. I love this site, seriously!! I just bought the whole Ableton Suite 8, love it!
OK; but then you kinda have to remove all the midi data in Maschine, right? I still want to use the pads to record the patterns in Ableton live without removing the midi inside of Maschine, are you with me? is this possible through this way?
Thanks!
Do you want to record into Maschine at the same time as ableton? Or are you just wanted to record some stuff in Maschine, then do some other stuff in Ableton?
You can put Maschine on a blank scene so the internal data you record isn’t effected.
If you just want to use the pads like a control surface for data in ableotn put it into midi control mode by pressing shift+control
I want to record stuff into Maschine through the step sequencer hehe, and then place the midi into Ableton’s Arrangement View.
Oh yeah, you can do that 🙂
Once you’re done just drag the midi over into ableton and put Maschine on a blank scene/pattern so it doesn’t playback internal and ableton midi data
awsome! thanks! do I need to delete the info inside of maschine as well? so it doesn’t play over it? or can I leave it as it is?
No, when you put maschine’s arranger on a blank scene there will be nothing for it to play
hmm weird because I have to delete the notes inside of Maschine, otherwise it keeps playing.. I don’t understand. Sorry for being so slow, but I really can’t figure this out, been strugglin’ with this even in Logic. As soon as I hit “play” in Ableton it keeps playing the beat, eventhough I did put it out in the arrangement view as it should only play for lets say 5 seconds, it keeps playing until I hit stop. The only thing for me is to delete the notes in the sequencer inside of maschine so it only triggers what’s in… Read more »
Inside of the maschine arranger, at the top, highlight a different scene, one that doesn’t have anything in it, do not put any patterns in that scene, and it will work.
or alternatively, you can put your group on one of the empty patterns, so if you’re on pattern 1 for the group, just go to pattern 2 which should be empty and you won’t have to delete anything 🙂
Weird, it really doesn’t work for me 🙁 it keeps playing, I tried both change group and change scene, when I change scene, it doesn’t play anything at all, when I change group it just keeps playing.. :/
OK I noticed what was the problem.. when I add third party audio units such as 112db Redline Reverb, it changes automatically the last “Audio To” to Master, why is this?
Are you routing the midi back into Maschine from ableton properly? You drag the midi into ableton, then the track with the midi in ableton should be pointing to the maschine vst on the same channel as the group you want to trigger. If nothing plays when going to a blank scene then you do not have anything in ableton routed to trigger maschine. Once you make your sequence in maschine, and drag the midi/sequence data over, you need to set that track in ableton to point back to maschine to trigger it. This is where sounds to midi notes… Read more »
yeah, I did do that, it’s all correct, but when I add third party audio units such as 112db Redline Reverb, it changes automatically the last “Audio To” to Master, and it removes the actual routing to Maschine, there’s where the problem lies for me
and I also want to send out stuff from Maschine to Ableton in MIDI so I can put third party stuff on it like my own Reverb and delay etc.
Midi isn’t audio, so you need to route the audio to put your fx on it.
@Jonatan, you can’t add an audo fx to a midi track, this is where you are getting confused I think and probably where your problem lies.
If you want to use audio fx you need to route the audio to it’s own channel, the audio fx do not mess up midi routing. This is also why I like to use an external instrument device because you can have the midi and audio on the same track, so you can use your audio fx without it messing up the midi routing.
yeah probably 😛 thanks for baring with me! last question though, where do I put the effects if I want it to trigger the midi? on the Original Maschine MIDI track or on the External Instrument track? Thanks.
what I intended to do: put on a 3rd party plugin such as 112db Redline Reverb, freeze the track and bounce it out so I get the reverb tail, reverse the reverb tail, and then reverse it again so I get the Reversed Reverb effect, and the sound that is triggering the reverb is from Maschine. How do I do this using Maschine in Ableton Live? I’ve got the right setup now, using External Instrument instead of MIDI instrument, but I just cannot get it to work :/ sorry for wasting time with these stupid questions!
Once you freeze and bounce, it will no longer be midi you’re dealing with. You would freeze/bounce on the external instrument clip that has the midi you need 🙂
aarghhhh, it doesn’t work when I freeze and bounce it from External Instrument clip, since it’s Maschine! I’m getting really crazy about this now..
It works, I do it, even have a video on it. Checkout the rest of the ableton series, I’m sure you will find what you are looking for. Make sure everything is routed properly, do you have the audio from Maschine routed to the external instrument device? If you do not, it will not work.
Strange , I have everything correctly set up, but the freezing track and then just dropping it on a new Audio track does not work, it works on every other midi track, but not on the external instruments or maschine track :/
I show exacty how to freeze audio in this video
https://maschinetutorials.com/maschine-in-ableton-live-workflow-part-6-bounce-midi-to-audio-and-audio-export
something is messed up and I don’t know where… because that’s exactly how I do it, I tried both flatten and just alt dragging it into a new audio track ,but nothing happens :s
Double check your audio routing.
hey, another question regarding the midi-routing.. I’ve set up everything so far with my Ableton/Maschine-integration. My audio comes in via my external instruments and most of the midi inputs in Maschine are triggered by right midi-channels from Ableton.. but the other way around – all the midi of all sounds in Maschine comes in on my external instrument nr. 1 in Ableton and I don’t really get how to set up the channels for midi-out in Maschine.. since NI changed this quite often thru the versions I’m a little confused and find it difficult to get information out of the… Read more »
The midi out routing hasn’t changed, to setup midi channel for a specific sound you have in Maschine, you want to use the sound midi settings, not the midi out module (this is for triggering external midi channels from maschine)
So right click on the sound you want to use, and choose sound midi settings, then you can set it to the proper channel. If it’s a whole group you want on the same channel, use the group midi batch settings.
St Joe,
A few questions
1) Why did you set up an external instrument for track 3, and not just midi?
2) Where did yo get those awesome samples (the genetic?)
Thanks!
1. so I could have audio/midi on the same track
2. patchbanks.com
To be clear, track 2 you made a midi track. Track 3 you made external instrument … Not clear on the difference?
when loading a plugin in ableton, the first audio output is always taken by the track the plugin is loaded in, so that’s why I only made a midi track for track 2 (channel 1) everything else I use external instrument for, so I can have midi/audio on 1 track for each channel.
I’m sorry for being a bit slow … Not sure what you mean by having midi and audio BOTH on one channel? Thanks man
When you load a vst in ableton, the midi is recorded on that track and the audio plays through the same track. So, if I didn’t use an external instrument channel, I’d have two tracks for each midi channel I wanted to use in Maschine. One for the midi data and one for the audio routing (in case I want to add fx or anything) But using an external instrument I just have one track per channel, I can record the midi and process the audio on the same track.
Boom – got it.
Goodies 🙂
Hey what key controller do you use alesis?
I’m currently using an evolution mk249c, I have a novation ultranova on the way though to replace it