Tutorial : How to record MIDI from Maschine to Session View

Some people might prefer recording audio from maschine to ableton. Some other – including me – prefers to record the MIDI, then calls it again from the session view. Nothing is wrong, though, it is your workflow anyway.

Today, we’re going to talk about how to record Maschine to session view in ableton live.

This tutorial were adapted from video above, but many has changed since Maschine 2.2. Also, these videos might be too difficult, this tutorial is much simpler (but still difficult )

What you need :

1. Laptop, Soundcard, Maschine 2 software, Ableton Live (come on)
2. Enough snacks
3. Knowledge to record in ableton

Note : This trick is possible to do in Ableton Live Lite, but keep in mind that Lite only has 8 channel maximum, you might run out of channel!

Langkah pertama :
Create 2 MIDI channels (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + T). One for Maschine VST, one let it empty. Do NOT use AudioUnits, because it can’t output MIDI!

Then, select your group. I just want it to be fast, so I choosed Studio D. It is up to you though.

Then after that, right click on the group, select the Group MIDI batch setup, then click Sounds to MIDI notes.

Now look at second mixer channel. Select MIDI From to”1-Maschine 2″
Then the next one, change from “Pre-FX” to “Maschine 2”
Then MIDI To, change to “1-Maschine 2”, Change track in to “1-Maschine 2”.

Penjelasan :

This is MIDI input and output.

Blue box :
MIDI itself actually has a maximum of 16 channels, but Maschine 2 plugin only has one channel output. That’s the explanation why in the box below, there are only a selection of “Maschine 2” without number.

Green box:
“1-Maschine 2” on top means selecting channel 1 mixer that is running Maschine 2 as the target of MIDI output.  Means, every MIDI from session view or arrangement view, will come back to Maschine.
“Track In” will be replaced with “1-Maschine 2”. You can see, there is “1-Maschine 2” up to “16-Maschine 2” disini. As I have told before, MIDI channel has 16 channel maximum, and separated between Input and Output.
To make it easy, just assign Midi Channel 1 for group 1 in maschine later.

After that, try to hit the maschine. Congrats, nothing happened

Back to channel 1, enter the Maschine Plugin.
Click the sound, then Ctrl+A to select it all. (Mac : Command + A if I’m right, I don’t have mac anyway. Windows ftw)

After everything is selected, click channel.
Look at arrow below.

Enter output menu, then change Destination (Dest.) to Host, Channel to 1.

Then enter input menu, enter MIDI menu, change Source to “Default”, Channel to 1, then turn off Thru.

Thru is turned off to make sure that there isn’t loopback. So, when you play Maschine, it will get into the Maschine Software, get outside to Ableton mixer, and not coming back because monitor is set to Auto. And when you’re playing from session or arrangement view, the output from ableton will go to the Maschine software, but will not get sent by Maschine software again to mixer.

Then, enter group, enter menu Input, then turn it active, change channel to 1, change root note to C3, then turn thru off.

Try to arm session recording. When you play the maschine pad, it should reacted.

Now, you can record in arrangement view!

Example, now I have MIDI clip here. If I play it, it will play in Maschine software, on group 1.

Ok, cool. But how if I wanted to have more than one group?

You can!

Create another MIDI channel.

MIDI from : same as before
MIDI to : “1-Maschine 2”, channel “2-Maschine 2”
We’re going to return mixer channel 3 MIDI to Maschine software, but using channel 2 instead of channel 1 (because channel 1 is already used for group A1)

Do the same thing as before, but change MIDI channel 1 to 2.

Now see, mixer channel 2 plays Group A1

… and mixer channel 3 plays group B1.

This way, you can have 8 group in maschine, each with its own channel in ableton.

But about Live Lite, this means you can only use 7 group and EVERYTHING will be for Maschine 

The problem is, when you’re playing your pad, it will record to ALL OF YOUR MIDI CHANNEL! Remember that we only have one MIDI output from Maschine software, and that’s used for all the channel. That means, you need to arm recording manually after changing group in maschine.

Thanks for reading!