Maschine MK 2 and other suggestions

Maschine MK 2 and other suggestions

Hello all! This is my first post on djtechtools and I was wondering if I could get some helpful advice.

I’ve been looking at the Maschine MK 2 for a while now (I want to get into producing music as a hobby) and I found the free sound bundles very appealing alongside with the controller. But I’m not exactly sure if it would suit my needs:

  • A synthesizer/s
  • Something to make tracks with
  • Something not extremely daunting

I’m currently using Ableton Live 9 Intro alongside with a MIDI Fighter to play with samples and I kind of want to do something different now (I was looking at the Teenage Engineering OP1 and the price tag is daunting).

Thanks!

A Fellow Human

Tbh you can do full tracks just with maschine and the included sounds and synths and ableton. Just build the tune in maschine then bounce the tracks as audio and do the mixdown in ableton :slight_smile:

I own the Maschine Studio and honestly it kicks ass. You can make full songs, but you might find it’s automation features somewhat lacking (They absolutely suck). No doubt this is something they’ll add in a future update.

IF you buy the Maschine now, I belive you get Massive with it. You will not find a better workhorse synth in my opinion.

Thanks for replying! For what purposes do you think someone would want a Maschine MK2? I’m still looking at the OP1 and it’s humongous price tag, although Massive is extremely appealing…

What do you think the limitations of Maschine are?

The main limit of maschine is the automation. That’s why I bounce to audio and do a final mixdown and add detail and automation in a DAW… currently use ableton cause I’m collaborating with a mate who uses it but in all honesty I’d rather use Logic.

The sounds you get with maschine and massive are honestly amazing. And there are so many packs for massive to give you any sound you want pretty much.

If you can’t make a banging tune with maschine and any DAW… you can’t make a banging tune basically

get a push and a full ableton license imho. then you get full ableton integration,a full feature daw,a great intuitive piece of hardware and its super ez and fun to play.

if im going to be bouncing everything into a “real daw” for mixdown etc anyway, why not just start there to begin with?

I never tried a push so maybe you right… but the workflow of maschine and getting ideas down is super quick and the sounds in the library alone are amazing!

The process of bouncing audio from maschine to DAW takes 5 minutes… hardly a reason to avoid it imo

Thanks to everyone for replying so far it’s been really helpful!

I’m surprised no one has commented on the OP-1, is it really the over glorified Apple product of the music world? Too be honest after playing around with Ableton Live 09 Intro and a demo of FL studio I think I would go with FL Studio if I were to switch DAWs due to the 3rd party plugins available and the amount of stuff already there.

A lot of videos on the Maschine MK 2 just feature people making beats, is it a lot more dynamic than that in reality and is it possible to produce a very complex song (Think Savant :smiley: ) with just the Maschine + software included? And what do you mean when you speak of automation? Please bear with my I’m pretty new to the music scene >.<

I’ve heard that Maschine doesn’t support linear audio tracks and you have to use the sequencer? Might be a dealbreaker since I’m not really confident using live…

Guys, I’m actually thinking of getting the OP-1 to experiment with and get a extremely basic feel and forcing my creativity with music. After playing the piano for practically my whole life I think it’s time to step away from sheet music and create something, I’m contemplating purchasing the full FL Studio during Christmas due to the ease of use I found from the demo but I’ve heard some things about it’s unintuitive workflow?

You just starting out so… Pick a DAW and stick to it. FLS / Ableton / Logic / Reason and a cheap / reasonable priced midi controller keyboard. Honestly that is all you need to start and possibly all you ever need.

Forget about Maschine and the Teenage Engineering OP1 until you can make a reasonable tune with the DAW. Then add new things as you go. Maschine / Synths etc

I’m currently playing around with LSDJ and making cool stuff with that ahaha, but for a DAW would you recommend Reason or FL Studio? I’m kind of reluctant due to the lack of mac support of FL Studio but the simplicity is extremely appealing to me and the plugins…

And also what do you think of the OP-1?

Anybody have a good quick resource for learning to bounce the individual tracks of audio out of Macshine and into Ableton, as people are talking about here?

I can’t really speak for anyone since I don’t own a Maschine myself ahaha, but what I would do if I had one is isolate the audio, export it as mp3 and drag and drop it into Ableton.

(although it is highly likely there are better methods then this as I said)