4x4 (Buttons or Pads??) Maschine vs MF

[MoeHawk]

As a first controller an S2 is pretty nice as well. Soundcard builtin as well,which was a big plus for me. I picked up one barely used with serials for 325 on CL. just gotta search and wait sometimes.

[LmnLm3]

Can't afford to search and wait when holiday doorbuster deals are around the corner...

[LmnLm3]

So I got a Mk2 coming my way, was going to order from here, but they tried to charge me California state sales tax, pretty sure that's not how it works.

Anyway, as far as the fixed velocity goes, I found the comments on this youtube video quite interesting (from Jeremy Ellis himself)



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Thoughts?

[botstein]

There isn't a hard-and-fast rule for this - the kind of performance that Jeremy Ellis specializes in is pretty fringe.

He mentions sampling more deeply (e.g. alternating samples, different samples for different velocity ranges) and this makes a big difference in practice. In terms of NI and Ableton stuff - which integrate well with Maschine - Battery and the Abbey Road range, as well as some (Ableton) Sampler sounds, have some very deeply sampled kits. and are capable of interesting things - Battery allows for many more samples on a pad than Maschine does, and in Ableton, it is possible to arrange 128 different sounds do be triggered for each MIDI velocity value (0-127). I find that the Abbey Road Kontakt libraries allow for the most realistic hi-hats, especially with the controller option, allowing for both volume and the amount of choke to be naturally controlled simultaneously.

I would suspect that the primary reason for Jeremy Ellis to play with a limited velocity range (including full velocity) would be related to endurance - he does relatively long sets (compared to his and other routines online) with little or no rest.

[LmnLm3]

I expect to eventually do that type of performance, that's why I brought it up. though I'm not sure if he plays with full dynamics in Mostly Robot... (as the "drummer"). And I wonder if there is a way to set a curve so there are only 3 velocity zones and they are close together to add some dynamics but keep it "feeling" like fixed velocity...

[botstein]

I expect to eventually do that type of performance, that's why I brought it up. though I'm not sure if he plays with full dynamics in Mostly Robot... (as the "drummer"). And I wonder if there is a way to set a curve so there are only 3 velocity zones and they are close together to add some dynamics but keep it "feeling" like fixed velocity...

Yes - this is very easy to do and/or fine tune with MIDI effects.