Appendix: Tips for Playing Live

In a live situation, it is not very comfortable or intuitive to look back and forth from your laptop screen running the Maschine software to the Maschine hardware controller.

Take your time to set up the pad sensitivity and velocity scaling to your taste, and you will have even more fun playing Maschine. For more information, refer to Preferences – Plug-ins Page.

Some things can be embarrassing if, for example, you are on stage and your computer starts to have problems because it cannot handle the number of effects you are using. Although the Maschine software is programmed very efficiently, this might happen if your computer is quite old. So before you get on stage, give your live set a thorough performance check by first playing it at home. While doing so, take a look at the CPU meter in the Maschine software’s Header to ensure it never turns red. If necessary, increase the Latency value. For more information, refer to Preferences – General Page).

This sounds rather conservative, but if you want to avoid digital distortion caused by an overload of your audio interface , this is a useful safety measure. However, you might experience a somewhat squashed and dull sound if you overuse the Limiter by feeding a lot of loud signals to it. Try it out and see what works best for you! For more information, refer to Limiter.

It is nice if a live set is working out exactly the way you planned it, but sometimes, this can get boring for you and the audience. Something unexpected or even simple mistakes can be the key for inspiring tracks and performances as well as just jamming around with your Sounds and Samples!

Mute and Solo are excellent ways to build up a live set, especially on the Maschine controller, as you can mute and solo Groups and Sounds simultaneously.

Since soloing a Sound mutes all Sounds except one, the MUTE button can then be used to “release” Sounds that have been muted. You can use this technique to create a breakdown: Solo a given Sound such as a kick drum, then build the track up again by bringing the muted Sounds back in one at a time with the MUTE button. For more information, refer to Use Note Repeat.

Scene mode is useful to trigger different parts of an arrangement by switching Scenes while changing the Loop Range adds another layer of improvisation. By using a short value for the Perform Grid, you can quickly combine Scenes and create new variations.

You can easily create exciting drum patterns by adding or removing steps in the step sequencer. Breaks and build-ups like snare rolls or a double-tempo hi-hat can be created on the fly.

For more information, refer to Recording Patterns with the Step Sequencer.

Note Repeat is a helpful tool for playing live: use it to add some additional drums, drop in some effect sounds, play a bassline or a melody. Note Repeat is also interesting to use with tonal Sounds, and you can access it from Keyboard mode to create synthesizer-like arpeggios.

You can set up multi-effect Groups containing all the effects you want to use in a live set. You can find several multi-effect Groups in the LIBRARY pane of the Browser to give you an idea of what works for you. To quickly change and modulate the effect settings, you can set modulation for the multi-effect as Patterns from within the Maschine software. By using Patterns for the multi-effect Group, you could, for example, trigger a filter sweep or a wild modulated Beat Delay. For more information, refer to Creating Multi-Effects.

Try a short Pattern Grid resolution like a quarter or eighth note and change the Pattern Length (refer to Adjusting the Arrange Grid and the Pattern Length) to create variations of a Pattern. If you select an even smaller value like 1/64th you can create stuttering breaks and rolls.

You can use loops to cycle through Samples, creating glitches and stuttering breaks or interesting soundscapes. Just enter the ZONE page in Sampling mode on your controller, switch on the ACTIVE parameter on the Loop page and play with the parameters for the start and endpoint of the loop. Use the SHIFT button to change the values in smaller increments. For more information, refer to Page 1: Voice Settings / Engine. Note: this technique requires that you choose either AHD or ADSR as the Amplitude Envelope in the Sampler’s Parameter pages. For more information, refer to Selecting and Editing Zones in the Map View.

You can adjust the start point of a Sample in the Sampler’s Parameter pages (refer to Page 1: Voice Settings / Engine). If you load a long audio file, you can create interesting variations by tweaking (or modulating) the start point.