Maschine and S4 synced on one system

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
1

Maschine and S4 synced on one system

Hi,

I synced the S4 and Maschine on one system just like it is described on trektorbible.com but I have one issue. Im not able to kontroll the “play” function on maschine. When I press the play button on the midiclock in traktor machine automatically starts playing (runs trhrough the steps in step mode) and I am not able to stop it. Any suggestions? This might be a stupid question, but Im not all that experienced with midi clocks and tempo sync.

Another thing; Is it possible to turn the Midiclock back to automatic from master after I`ve made the initial sync?

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this is normal and cant be changed afaik.. you can use the “snyc” button under the master clock tab in traktor to sync the phase, but machine always is in play mode.. just mute and unmute sounds or groups you want to add..

3

Ok, but is there a way to skip to the start of the loop from Maschine while playing?

4

dunno if i understand you correctly..
you dont want machine to play anything when syncing to traktor? just mute every group..

5

My point is that when Im playing a song on the S4, lets say I then wanna start a loop from Maschine, If MAschine is playing constantly the count might be wrong. 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4…how do i skip to 1 on maschine? The start of the loop or scene or whatever you call it if its playing contantly? Do u get my point? Sorry for the extremely illiterate language:slight_smile:!

6

i think you have to hit snyc right before you get to the 1st beat but not 100% sure

7

Weltraumpapst, any thoughts on this?

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I’m kind of confused about what exactly it is that you want out of stopping and starting a pattern that is looping constantly in Maschine along with a track playing through Traktor, I guess.

I haven’t run both Maschine and Traktor together a lot, and when I have, its been mostly to provide temporary backbeats or trigger samples, or to mix in and out of for transitions.

I’d suggest that you try setting up scenes in Maschine, and check the “retrigger” button in the scene builder, and set your increment to whatever will be useful (it goes from Scene all the way down to 1/8). This way, by using an empty scene, or even just by starting the same scene over again, you can begin at bar 1/beat 1 at any time.

I should mention that an empty scene in Maschine actually does have to have notes in it, in order to play, but they can be a sound set to an extremely low velocity, or you can even use a wav file that is actually just silence, and then draw in a note that plays for a bar, drop that pattern into a scene, and you have a silent scene you can use to “mute” your Maschine project.

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Quote: by starting the same scene over again, you can begin at bar 1/beat 1 at any time.

How do I retrigger a scene/sample? That is exactly what I am wondering about:slight_smile:

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And can I switch back to auto on the master clock after performing initial synch?

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^^this.. in traktor hit sync before the one (needs some testing, before you have the timing) to “reset” machine to first bar, first beat..

i dont know how to retrigger a secne while being in external sync mode..

yes you can switch back to auto (or leave it on from the beginning).. i always have the master and auto on. cause of the occasionall tempo switch during sets..

12

Then I just need the to know how to retrigger scene sample?

When adjusting the synch in traktor with the Midi clock ofset I had to go for as high a number as 80, does that represent a problem? I also find it a bit inconsistant depending on when I press synch…hm…

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Just the same way you play anything in Maschine, hit the pad corresponding to the piece you want to play!

There is a button marked Scene on the controller. Hold down the Scene button, and then hit the pad that corresponds to the scene you want to retrigger (pad 1 is scene 1, if you have more than 16 scenes, you will see the upper right LCD window controls indicate that you can skip to the next set of 16 scenes by pressing the top buttons).

The settings controlling how a scene will retrigger are at the left side of the scene building window in the software, just above where it lists the Groups. You will see the increment on the left, and the box with RETRIGGER next to it on the right. By default the increment is set to SCENE, if you click on it, you’ll see the list of increments, so you could choose whole beats, the whole scene, or go all the way 1/8th notes (1 beat in a 4/4 pattern).

When the retrigger box isn’t checked, Maschine will change the scene to position the playhead in the exact same spot in the next triggered scene — so if you are at 1.2.1 in Scene 4, and you trigger Scene 2, it will play from 1.3.1, so it isn’t restarting the sequence, it is playing the next beat of the measure, but in the newly triggered scene.

When the retrigger box is checked, it starts the sequence over at 1.1.1 no matter where you were previously. I use this when composing beats in Maschine sometimes, for effect, and a lot of golden age hip hop uses this technique of retriggering the same sequence so it starts playing again, which when done right, can kind of take on the sound of a dj quickly cutting back to a spot in track, and letting it play again (basically the functionality of this is like the cue point in Traktor).

I am surprised that your offset is so high, but if it works, it works. I assume the inconsistency you are talking about is that the beat in Maschine and the song playing in Traktor drift apart, and become out of time with each other?

Depending on the song, the tempo may drift (live musicians don’t keep perfect time, but a drum machine definitely will), or the song may purposefully change tempo (Blondie’s Call Me changes at several points but only by a few BPM, for instance).

Also, another cool trick, when you hold down the Scene button the Maschine controller, if you look at the left LCD display, you’ll see that the far left top button above the display lets you lock the controller on the Scene tab, so you can retrigger scenes without having to keep holding down the scene button. Any time you want to switch back to any other function (pattern mode, mute mode, etc,) just tap that top button, and it will switch the controller back to where it was before.

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That is probably the best respons to any question I have ever recieved in any forum. I am grateful!

My point about the drifting is that my initial tuning of the ofset needs to be retuned depending on which beat (1, 2, 3 or4) i press sync on… In other words: I have to retune the ofset (for perfect sync) if i press sync additional times. I dont really think I completely understand the sending of the midi clock and the syncing process fully. I understand that Traktor(master) sort of sends the tempo to Maschine(slave) but I dont really understand what happens when I press sync in the clock after having pressed play on the clock.

Does your explaination of the triggering mean that I will get sort of a quant effect when I choose the right setting? I mean a setting that will allow my pressing of the pads to be slightly off but sounding spot on, just like hitting que points in Traktor with quant activated?

You are the boss Ben!

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Okay, so MIDI clock is a specific tempo format, and like I said, live musicians don’t necessarily stay exactly on time, some tracks change their tempo throughout a track, or during a breakdown, or a chorus, etc. Traktor doesn’t reflect this kind of fluctuation in how it treats a track, because for nearly all electronic music, much of hip hop, and even a lot of modern studio “mixed” rock and pop, the beats per minute tempo will not change throughout a track, because its either been composed electronically or altered in production to stay at exact tempo.

You shouldn’t need to turn sync on and off while playing a track, personally, I leave it on, unless I am mixing into something that specifically necessitates there being no automatic beat-matching between tracks (mixing a 160bpm drum n bass track into the textural intro of a trip hop track that’s around 90bpm or something like that).

MIDI clock from Traktor is in effect sending a message to Maschine that says “I am at X BPM” and when you allow the MIDI clock from Traktor to control Maschine, it will play at the that tempo. It doesn’t just sort of send the tempo, it iron-fisted controls the tempo.

However, if your beat grid is off, if your song playing shifts tempo, if the samples you are using in Maschine are not correctly chopped for changing tempo (for instance, if you have a 1 bar long sample, its only ever a bar long at the tempo it was recorded at, so if the master tempo from traktor is 98, and your 1 bar sample in maschine is 92bpm, nothing can make it 98, but it will trigger on the measure its been recorded to. This isn’t an issue if your Maschine project is built up of kick drum hits, horn stabs, percussion hits, and so on, because those just continue to be played on the measure, and the length doesn’t matter as much, most of the time).

The scene retriggering works nearly exactly the same as cue points in Traktor, in that it waits for the next closest exact beat to start playing, although in Maschine you can choose if you want it to start on an 1/8th, 1/4, or just start again at the end of the scene. Traktor’s cue points (with quantize and sync both turned on) will start at the next beat grid division in the phrase (it tries to match the downbeat, rather than just hit the next note, whereas Maschine will hit the next note, quarter note, eighth note, etc), this also means that as the tempo of the track goes up Traktor seems to trigger cue points more quickly, but this is only because a faster track has a “smaller” beatgrid, you just get to the next downbeat in less time.

So, leave sync on. Use Scenes in Maschine. Don’t trigger long samples in Maschine and expect them to match different tempos from Traktor, and don’t expect old soul and disco tracks to stay on the same tempo thru the whole track, and set smart beat grids when you’re going to be using those tracks alongside anything that you’re going to be using in a set where you send out master clock to other devices.

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Aha. I play minimal, and will mostly use ambient samples, kicks, snares and high hats. But its nicer and more fun to actually hit the pads, than just triggering a given pattern. Although my sense of rythm is ok, automation/quant is preferable when playing in a club:slight_smile: Which parameter should I choose in maschine to get the most similar setup as with cue points in Traktor?

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If you want to trigger samples, and not actually play out sequences of samples, then you are only going to get what you want by pounding out the hits as you want them, and not having Traktor send MIDI clock to Maschine at all. Your other option would be to create patterns with your Maschine sample material, say you want a hi-hat pattern to play the entire time you’re mixing both Traktor and Maschine, but then have a variety of tempo-less ambient textural samples you want to trigger at different times in the mix, I would create a new scene for each of those, then have it retrigger scenes on 1/8th, which if your timing is good, will work out the way you want, I think.

Now, the other option you have is to do on-the-fly recording in Maschine as your tracks are playing out in Traktor, and the on-the-fly recording of patterns that you create will keep tempo with your master clock tempo being sent from Traktor to control Maschine.

You can mix this technique along with the scene retriggering technique, and really create some intricate stuff. The same way you can record and erase notes in a pattern, you can add or remove patterns from scenes, so you could have a hi-hat pattern in every scene, and then, if you wanted, turn that pattern off in the scene you are currently playing, or in the scene you are going to switch to, and vice versa, and have this all happen on-beat with what’s playing in Traktor. If you’re recording on-the-fly in Maschine, you will probably want to use short patterns (2 bars, 4 bars probably) and make sure that you have quantize on record and play turned on in Maschine. If that isn’t set, Maschine will not force the notes to the grid, instead it will put them exactly where you hit the note at. When you quantize on play, Maschine will actually wait to play the pad you hit until it reaches to the grid increment it quantizes to as well as record it to that grid increment. By default Maschine starts a new project with the grid set to 1/16th notes, depending on the sounds you are working with, you may want it to be on 1/4 notes or maybe 1/32nd notes, or 1/8th T (that’s a triplet, very common in soul and hip hop tracks).

I believe that with the quantize mode in Maschine set to Play and Record, it will play samples you trigger on time with the master tempo, and the grid increment in Maschine even when you aren’t recording a pattern, so you could be letting a single scene play, and trigger kicks or percussive sounds as you wish while Traktor plays its track, and it should stay on beat, although I am not 100% sure of that, as I haven’t tested it. When doing this, its really cool to make use of the Multi FX presets in Maschine, which do all kinds of cool delays, beat mashing, panning, bit crushing, etc. Some of the Multi FX have their own patterns, and of course, by using scenes, you can run through those patterns in time with Traktor as well.

Hope that isn’t too confusing, I know I just covered a ton of ground there.

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You are a god Ben! I will use scenes, step and one shots. The thing is that dont know if I selected the quantize options because when I try to manually hit a snare while a 4/4 hihat is running it does not sound tight:slight_smile: I know that its my own timing that is off, but that is exactly why I need some quant help:slight_smile:

I truly am grateful Ben. Most people would not bother with such newbie questions. Kharma coming your way.

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You’re very welcome.

As for the karma, I think I’m finally getting close to evening up the karmic debt I owe from the years of me being a snotty 20-something know-it-all, haha.

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You and me both brother! :stuck_out_tongue: