Tips For Playing Live; Focus On The Hardware; Check Your Cpu Power Before Playing; Name Your Groups And Sounds - Native Instruments Maschine Getting Started Manual

10

Tips for playing live

Since MASCHINE is a very hands-on tool for producing music as well as for performing
live, we figured we would gather some tips for you to get you started playing live. If you are
used to playing live, you may not need them, but maybe you will find some new ideas to
integrate in your set.
10.1

Focus on the Hardware

In a live situation it is not very comfortable or intuitive to look back and forth from your
laptop screen running the MASCHINE Software to the MASCHINE Hardware.
10.2

Check your CPU power before playing

It could be very embarrassing, for example if you are on stage and your computer starts to
have hiccups because it cannot handle the amount of effects or plug-ins you are using.
Although the MASCHINE Software is programmed very efficiently, this might happen if
your computer is old. So before you get on stage, give your live set a thorough performance
check by first playing it at home. If necessary, keep an eye on the CPU meter in the Head-
er of the MASCHINE software to see if there any peaks in during playback.
10.3

Name your Groups and Sounds

Naming your Scenes, Clips, Groups and Sounds gives you a better overview of exactly what
you are doing, especially if you focus on playing with the MASCHINE Hardware. It might
not be something that is very interesting, but it certainly pays off in a sometimes rather
hectic live situation.
10.4 Use Mute & Solo and Scenes and Patterns with the Lock function
Mute and Solo is a good way to build up a live set especially on MASCHINE as you can
mute and solo Groups and Sounds at the same time. By locking the Mute and Solo func-
tion, you have both hands free to mute or solo Sounds and Groups. The same goes for Pat-
tern and Scene modes: Locking modes is done by pressing Button 1 at the same time as
the mode button, and unlocking by pressing Button 1 again.
Tips for playing live
Focus on the Hardware
MASCHINE - Getting Started - 101