Using Maschine with Pro Tools to Make Beats

Learn how to use Native Instrument Maschine with Pro Tools to create drum parts and grooves.

In this Avid video, Avid Application Specialist Greg “Stryke” Chin show you how easy it is to incorporate Native Instrument Maschine with Pro Tools to create drum parts and grooves.

Along with the video, be sure to download the included Pro Tools Session Template that Greg created for this tutorial.

As noted in Greg Chin's video:

The focus of this video is to start showing how easy it is to create music inside Pro Tools. We all know how incredibly powerful Pro Tools is for audio recording and mixing, but it is also a great tool for music songwriting, creating, and of course audio recording and mixing.

This video also demonstrates the power of the AAX plug-in platform and how some of the best 3rd party developers bring their best and amazing creative plug-ins to the Pro Tools platform. In this video's case, Native Instrument's powerful Maschine software is on display in all of its AAX glory!

MIDI Channel Assignment Workflow

This video also demonstrates MIDI channel assignment workflow. After setting up the first time, a user can save a template and call it back up whenever you have need for it, without ever having to reassign channels again. In that case, you’d probably want to do the entire 16 MIDI channels, using the shortcut ALT+CMD (Mac) in Pro Tools

Drag and Drop Patterns and Audio from Maschine into Pro Tools 11

There are several different ways to drag and drop patterns and audio from Maschine into Pro Tools. Here’s an alternate workflow from our friends at Native Intstruments:

• Activate “Sounds to MIDI notes” for the Group to export
• Drag and Drop the MIDI pattern to an individual MIDI track in Pro Tools
• In MASCHINE go to the “MIDI Input Channel” settings of the corresponding Group, activate it and set it to e.g. MIDI Channel 2 (see picture right)
• Set the MIDI Output of your Pro Tools track to Channel 2, too
• Boom!

   

Please note that it’s highly recommended to avoid using Channel 1 as an Input Channel because it’s the default Input Channel for selected Sounds in Maschine, so your Drumpattern will also start triggering any selected sample/instruments in MASCHINE. If your keeping to CH 2-16 that won’t become an issue.

All in all, it’s really easy once you get everything setup and going. Make sure you grab a copy of the demo session below and practice up!

NOTE: This video was shared from Avid Pro Tools Blog: "Master the Art of Music Creation," with Greg Chin.

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Download the Session File

It does not contain audio, this episode is MIDI only. It requires the Maschine 2.0 AAX plug-in.

Download the Pro Tools Session file>