I’m primarily an Ableton user, however since buying Maschine and using Maschine 2.0, I much prefer making beats with the hardware and the M2.0 software!
However… I do NOT like arranging the song in Maschine - although I’m new to arranging in Maschine, I feel that it is extremely clunky and non ergonomic to say the least, so I’d like to continue using the Maschine for beats, but merely incorporate it with Live - which I feel is much better (and I’m much better with!)
My question to you is: What method would you recommend for this approach?
Before, I’ve made beats in Maschine and dragged the individual audio files for every sound into Ableton which was a painless process and made arranging a world easier! HOWEVER, through this method you do lose the ability to use the Automation of Maschine, which would be perfect for build-ups and drops (and all movement throughout the track) due to the form of “flattening” of the midi files into audio strips.
In summary, I need the arrangement window of Ableton to lay out the beats made in Maschine, whilst retaining the ability to automate Maschine’s parameters? A bonus would also be to have every sound from Maschine in a seperate Ableton track for total control - although I guess I could get used to not having this ability (although preferable!).
Sorry for waffling, and I hope I can get my answer!
For getting sounds from Maschine into separate Ableton channels, you have to route each pads output externally to a separate Ableton channel. I have my default Ableton template set up to route 8 Maschine groups to 8 Ableton channels. Two for drums, two for bass, two for keys/pads, two for leads. It weeks great and allows me to apply all the fx racks and sends I’ve built in Ableton to my Maschine tracks.
My workflow ist similar to yours, i.e. I either drag and drop the audio files into Ableton, or I route every instruments to it’s own channel in Ableton and record it as audio.
What I don’t understand is why you would want to do the automation in Maschine and not in Ableton, since automation is much more powerful in Ableton, imho.
Anyways, if you want to keep working inside Maschine you can not only route individual audio tracks from Maschine into Ableton, you can also route midi from Ableton into Maschine. In this case you drag and drop the midi track from Maschine into Ableton and route the midi back to Maschine.
This way you can arrange the midi clips in Ableton and do all your mixing there, while you should still be able to manipulate the sounds inside Maschine as well (haven’t tried it yet).
This means, however, you will need to set up two channel for every sound/group in Ableton, one for the midi data and one audio channel.
There’s a couple of reasons why I don’t use this setup:
since I want to have every sound on its individual channel, even a rather ‘simple’ drum section with 10 instruments would mean having 20 channels (10 midi and 10 audio) and having to deal with both all the time for arranging, midi- and audio-effects
setting all the channels up can be quite annoying
I like the automation on Ableton much more than in Maschine
I tended to just export all my Maschine projects as individual audio tracks, which I’d then bring into Live for arranging. Works fine, no need to mess with sync or MIDI then.
You’re all right, I’m going to route my Maschine Groups through Ableton tracks and just record audio in as I make it.
The only real automation that I wanted the ability to tweak were things such as Filter Cutoff (if I were to make a bassline in Maschine), but obviously when converted to audio the ability to do this is lost. I guess I’ll just make basslines in Ableton anyway!
you won’t be avoiding anything other than getting some grest kit with powerful dedicated software..
The maschine is amazing, and with it I now have the ability to tweak automation in either maschine itself or with Ableton’s effects, best of both worlds, rather than just a hardware version of software you already own
my only gripe was a tiny one and not an issue worth losing sleep over - my advice is go Maschine!