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NAMM NI Maschine
If you could have an ideal drum machine and sample-slicing workstation, taking the physical control of hardware but the flexibility of software, what would it look like? We talk a lot about hardware control of software, but hardware usually comes second – software gets designed first, and then either you have to figure out how to map hardware to it, or someone else comes along and designs gear. That means there’s usually a disconnect in the design and workflow of the two, and most of the time, you have to reach for the mouse to make up the difference.
Maschine (pronounced as the German, mah-SCHEE-neh) was developed at Native Instruments with the goal to design the hardware and software simultaneously, not separately. That’s not an easy goal, and I don’t expect Maschine to be perfect or please everyone. But I got to visit the prototype at NI while I was in Berlin in October and see it in action, and I can say at the very least, the folks who created feel the way many of us do – they love software, they love hardware drum machines like the Elektron, and this is an attempt to be a real hybrid.
So, while contrary to rumors, NI does not have a box that does any audio generation in the hardware, this is a real attempt to fuse the controller and software in terms of design and workflow. The idea is to use the screen for visual feedback (you do have this big, pretty monitor on your desk or notebook), but to be able to work without a mouse.
Maschine can also work as a plug-in as well as a standalone app, depending on how you like to work (or how you want to play live). That means if you’re already in love with something like Ableton Live, you ought to theoretically be able to put the two together. Unfortunately, you can’t yet use it as a sequencer to drive other software, which would be an ideal next step; sequencing is as big a part of what Maschine does as sampling and sample manipulation. (No official statement on MIDI output has been made yet.)
Maschine’s hardware also works as a controller. So, for those keeping score, you could put Maschine next to the just-announced Akai APC40 and use them both to control Live – or Maschine could compete with the APC for your Live-controlling dollar – even before you touch the Maschine drum machine software.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYVQR-YdVJI
looks pretty cool really
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. clearly, to target a hip hop crowd they've eschewed their usual slick advertising with elegant computer generated visuals and gone for a grainy video of a black guy hunched over a computer with his desk in a complete mess, surrounded by take away pizza boxes and cans of beer. Am I the only person who feels its a bit inappropriate?
