Complete Guide to Maschine MKII

These lessons teach you how to build custom mastering weapons racks, including an Aphex-style Exciter, a Bass Maximiser and various Stereo Enhancement tools. The Course is brought to you by professional mastering engineer and owner of Zeitgeist Mastering, Nick D'Ombrain.

In addition to the streamed lessons, all 8 rack presets created on the course come as a downloadable pack, which can be opened up in Live to unleash the power of this devastating mastering arsenal!

These tutorials are part of the complete course - Mastering in the Box with Ableton Live.

 This course takes you through every part of the Maschine v2 software and hardware, slowly explaining how each one works and the ways they can be used to create a variety of different styles of music.

The lessons begin by showing how a pattern is constructed, by playing the pads, or drawing in events. Then, there are lessons covering the various pad modes, including step mode, keyboard mode and various velocity modes, explaining how to use them and when they are most suitable. There are then lessons on Scenes and building arrangements within Maschine, the Sampling facility and how to record and edit your own samples, and finally 2 lessons on effects, that teach the full range of effects in the library and how they can be used as inserts or sends for processing sounds, groups and the master bus.

The course comes with written notes, as well as the Maschine projects created in the movies. Plus, there are 240MB of royalty-free samples from Loopmasters included in the course pack. Before signing up, check out the free sample lesson embedded below, which provides an introduction to Maschine and the course.

Module Details

Module 1: Introduction to Maschine - FREE SAMPLE

This movie provides an overview of Maschine, explaining how the software and hardware work and demonstrating all of the main features. This is done in the context of a completed project, from the final module on the course, as well as showing how a project can get up and running with the hardware in no time at all. The lesson is intended as a quick guide to everything, whilst the remainder of the course then goes through each of these things and much more, slowly and in greater detail.

Module 2: Pattern Creation I

This module starts to teach you how different patterns can be created, predominantly by playing in events with the hardware pads. Then, there is a guide to some important editing operations, including examples of automatic and manual quantizing and adjusting velocity values.

Module 3: Sound Slots

This module looks at the individual parts that make up each group, which are the 16 sound slots that can be played using Maschine's pads. These are often single samples, as you find in Maschine's factory kits, but can also be any instrument or plug-in you choose. However, this lesson focuses on adding and editing samples, so you can see how to create your own group from scratch.

Module 4: Pattern Creation II - Pad Modes

This module teaches the various pad modes available on Maschine, which allow them to be used in a variety of different ways to create patterns, including fixed velocity and 16-velocity modes, keyboard mode and step mode.

Module 5: Working with Scenes

This module gives you a thorough explanation of how scenes work, which are the vertical columns in the upper half of the software that contain different combinations of patterns, allowing you to switch from one part of a song to another for realtime jamming, or arrange and play an entire song from start to finish.

Module 6: Sampling

This module shows how Maschine's Sampling facility can be used to add your own sounds to songs, by recording and then editing them in a number of ways. There's also a guide to how to slice up larger samples and assign them to Maschine's pads for innovative ways of performing live or producing.

Module 7: Effects

This lesson runs you through how to apply effects processing to sounds within Maschine, be they individual sound slots in a group, whole groups or the master output, so all groups simultaneously. As well as providing a guide to the range of effects on offer and how to use them, this should also help to further develop your understanding of the Modules section of the software.

Module 8: Advanced Effects and Routing

This module looks at some more advanced effects processing techniques, including how to automate parameters, how to create send effects and then also how to route sounds in and out of Maschine, allowing them to be mixed and processed using other software or hardware.

Module 9: Bonus Module I - The Controller Editor

This lesson shows how the Controller Editor can be used to turn Maschine into a comprehensive control surface for Ableton Live.

Module 10: Bonus Module II - Using Maschine in a DAW

This bonus tutorial gives a thorough guide to using Maschine in plug-in mode within a DAW like Live or Logic, including how to automate parameters.