Today is day 9 of The Month of Maschine 2013. In today’s video we’ll be looking at Multi-FX. Multi-FX are presets that contain multiple effect. If you’re have used Ableton Live before, they are similar to effect racks.

You might think that the stock Multi-FX would be under the FX section of the browser. However, they are actually saved in the groups section. When you add a Multi-FX preset to a group, you’ll notice that the group will not contain any sounds. Instead it has effects loaded into 1 or more sound slots. These are essentially send effects.

Before you can use a Multi-FX, you have to send the audio from a sound to it. To do so, select the sound that you want to effect, then open the sound’s output settings. Change the output from group to the sound slot from the Multi-FX group labeled “IN”. If you’re using one of the stock Multi-FX presets, it should be the first sound slot of the group. If you more control over how the sound is being affected, use the aux output instead of the master output and use the level as a dry/wet knob.

To create a Multi-FX preset, select an empty group. Then select sound slot 1. On module 1, add an input and leave the source as internal. Next, add effects to modules 2-4. To create more complex effect chains, add an input to the second sound slot and change the output settings of sound slot 1 to the input on sound slot 2. Now go back to the sound you want to affect and change the output settings to the input of sound slot 1 in the new group. To save the new Multi-FX preset, right click on the group. Then choose Save As.