Today is day 12 of The Month of Maschine 2013. In this video we’ll be enabling host transport controls on the Maschine hardware controller.
When using Maschine as a VST in a DAW like Ableton Live, the transport controls on the Maschine controller become inactive. This is due to the fact that the Maschine controller is only sending information to the Maschine VST and not to the application that is hosting it. To remedy this problem, Native Instruments implemented the host transport controls feature. By using this feature, the Maschine controller will send MIDI to your DAW when you use the transport controls while all of the other buttons and knobs will continue to affect the Maschine VST.
To enable host transport controls, open the Controller Editor application. In the template section choose Mackie Control. If you don’t see the Mackie Control template, press the Edit button. Then select Mackie Control from the Append menu. With the Mackie Control template selected, turn on Host Transport Controls in the box below. You can now close the Controller Editor and launch your preferred DAW. I’ll be using Ableton Live.
In Ableton Live open go into the Preferences and go to the MIDI Sync tab. On an empty Control Surface slot, choose Mackie Control. Under Input, choose Maschine Controller. Close the Preferences and load Maschine into an empty track. With the Host Transport Controls enabled, the play, erase, restart, and step left/right buttons will affect the DAW instead of Maschine. In some cases, they may work slightly differently. For example in Ableton Live, Play works as both a play and restart button. Restart turns looping on and off and Erase acts as a stop button.
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Maschine comes in three flavors – Maschine MK2, Maschine Mikro MK2, and iMaschine – and is a combination of hardware and software. When used together, the hardware gives you unparallelled control over the software. You can use Maschine whether you’re a DJ or producer, in the studio or the club, with the software or as a MIDI controller.
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