Trnsfrmr

I love it!!!

First, a bit of my background with beat machines/workstations. I’ve owned Akai mpc 1000/2000xl,  Yamaha Rm1x/RS7000/Motif Classic/ES/XS, e-mu MP7, Roland MV-8000, Korg Triton/M3.

I liked the MV8000. Very easy to use, great elastic audio, greate effects but it was too big, preset management was a bit quirky as well and saving took too much time.

I could never really get into the MPC series except for the quick pitch, filter, level modes. The 1000 was slightly bearable but they aren’t deep as far as synthesis. I hated the fact that the pads weren’t laid out chromatically. Lame effects. I’ve never used a 3000 but I’ve been told its a different beast so no flaming please.

The korg work stations are great for programing but I hated the sequencer because there wasn’t a way to drop in and out of record on the fly. Sampling improved in the m3 but not enough to have me hold on.

RS7000 was great but I traded up to a motif so I could have it all in one.

Not long after i got the Maschine, I sold the Motif XS on eBay. I loved working on the motif but I never used it to sample because it was such a chore. Most of the music I did on it, stayed on it. I just don’t have enough hours in my life right now to solo a pair of tracks at a time and dump them to Logic. Now, If I start something on the Maschine and I decide to finish it, I just open up Logic, load up Maschine in there and just record my scene changes as MIDI notes in realtime. That ish is a truck load of fun.

Maschine is the easiest of the bunch to use. The hardware/software combo fits me like a glove. The Maschine was made for my workflow.

I was rather hesitant at first to check the beast out because I’ve owned Kore 2 for a while but I’ve never really gotten into it and i didn’t want to spend the money on another paper weight. Anyway, I decided to drop into my local guitar center on a slow day to give it a go. As usual, no one in the store had a clue about the unit nor knew where the manual was. I fire up the software, the unit lights up and in about 10 minutes, I cooked up some heat using sounds from thestock  5gb sound library. I must have spent less than 2 out of the 10 minutes with my eyes on the monitor. If I remember correctly, 10 minutes is less than the time it takes to located samples on you computer, transfer them to your MPC and load them up.

I have never been one to sample records as I’m in the middle of making a beat. I prefer to have sampling/programming sessions that can last for months at a time. I basically go thru records, cds, iTunes etc, sample stuff i find interesting and then build a library of programs in Kontakt, Battery & Logic. I then rely on these sample forever So Maschine’s tagging and browsing features are totally awesome for this way of working.

A Maschine project is laid out in the following hierachy

Pad – This is the most basic unit in the project. A pad is analogous to a track in most other sequencers. A pad can have a sample, multi sampled – instrument or midi output assigned to it. You can toggle a pad’s mode that allows you to either just trigger the root note of a sample or play the sample/instrument chromatically using all 16 pads in the grid. You can transpose the by either an octave or semitone at a time using one of the soft knobs on the right lcd screen. By holding down a pad, you can change its volume and root pitch using the volume and tempo knobs respectively. By using the left and right arrows located at the top left of the Maschine, you can step thru 8 attributes of the selected pad at a time. These attributes are laid out on the 2 lcd screens and they each have a corresponding soft know assigned to them. The attributes available include but are not limited to the following: Volume, tune, filter type(LP, LP2, HP, BP, BR), filter cutoff & resonance, LFO settings, Trigger mode(Oneshot, ADSR, AHD), Sample start & end, bit depth, fx1 & fx2. The Maschine does an amzing job of not overwhelming you with all these attributes. You just step thru with the arrow keys. You can also solo and mute individual pads on the fly

Group – Each of the 8 groups holds 16 pads and up to 64 patterns associated with those pads. You can actually save the entire group as a unit. Groups also have their own pair of insert effects and they can be routed to independent outs puts. Each project has 8 groups and you can think of them as kits. You can have drums in one groups, chopped up sample in another, vocal samples in yet another and synths in yet another. Just like the pads, groups can be muted and soloed on the fly. So not only can you mute you hi-hats, you can mute your entire drum kit with a touch. You select a group using one of the blue buttons labeled A-H above the transport controls. The button for the active group glows a little brighter so you always know where you are.

Scenes – Allow you to layer group patterns. eg You could pick pattern-1 from group-1, pattern-5 from group-2 and pattern-2 from group-3. The scene inherits the length of its longest pattern and plays in an endless loop until you select another scene. While a scene is looping, you can switch the pattern for the the active group just by hitting the “Pattern” button and then simply tapping the pad that corresponds to the pattern you want to insert into the scene. Scenes may be switched on the fly as well and the switching may be quantized to the 1/64, 1/32, 1/16, 1/8, 1/2, bar, beat and scene length. A very cool option that can be set for scene switching is scene sync. This is how it works: If you switch scenes on the 2rd beat of the 3rd bar for example; and you have quantize set to a quarter note, you end up on the 3rd beat of the 3rd bar on the destination scene. Pretty sweeeet!!!.

Project - A project saves the entire memory of the maschine include a chain of scenes that make up a “song”.

I’m a bit sleepy now so I’ll fast forward to a list of the good, the bad & the ugly.

The Good

1. Fun, fun, fun
2. Filtered browsing for samples and instruments within supplied library as well as user created library.
3. Simple well laid out controls.
4. Very legible screens.
5. Tiny footprint. This thing has a smaller footprint than a 12 inch record and is light as a feather.
6. Very simple and cohesive interface.
7. Ability to undo recordings one note at a time.
8. Ability to record automation even in playback mode.
9. Great feeling Pads, buttons and knobs.
10. Great collection of filters, effects and modulators per PAD!!!
11. Insanely easy song creation using scenes.
12. Pretty good bundled library.
13. Ability to drop in and out of record at anytime with a single button push.
14. Quantize/Undo Quantize on the fly.
15. Luminescent pads are extremely useful in a million different ways. Shows you which pads, patterns, steps are assigned or active.
16. Software can run in full screen mode on my OSX. Might do on windows as well.
17. Virtually mouse-less/screen-less  operation.
18. Very stable, no crash so far. Touch wood

The Bad

1. As of version 1.5, The sequencer does not record pitch bend nor midi CC from a midi controller but you can still automate pitch as well as other parameters using the Maschine’s knobs. This functionality is slated for an upcoming release I hear.

The Ugly

1. I haven’t figured out how to move slice points after I auto chop a loop. So I either stick with the choices that the Maschine makes(which haven’t been bad) or export each slice to a different track.

Good night. I’ll catch you in the morning.