Ive had my eye on Native instruments Maschine controllers for a while now, and it's been quite some time since I've treated myself to a new piece of hardware gear. The only thing that was stopping me from getting my hands on the Maschine before now was the fairly hefty price tag. When Native Instruments announced the updated Maschine MK2 I saw that various online retailers were selling off the original Maschine and Maschine Mikro at an unbeatable price.
The Machine Mikro was the one that I ended up buying, at only £150 it was a no brainier. It would have been nice to get the bigger Maschine controller but I was on a budget so I went for the cheaper option. Even though I went for the older Maschine hardware controller, it included a free upgrade to the 1.8 version of the software. This gave me access to all of the brand new features including; time-stretching, new effects and a free copy of their awesome Massive synthesiser (which I will probably talk more about in a future post).
The main reason that I brought the Maschine Mikro was because I've been thinking of putting together a live set. I wanted a small (ish) midi controller that would be robust enough to carry around in a laptop bag as well as fitting in nicely with my home studio set-up. And that's exactly what I've got, the Maschine controller is a solid piece of kit that looks like it can take a fair amount of punishment. The pads are tough but extremely playable and it's small enough to sit nicely by the side of my computer in my studio.
I've had the Mikro for a few weeks now and I can safely say it lives up to all the hype. It's quickly become a vital part of my main studio set-up as well injecting a little more creative flair into my production workflow. Using pads to program drums and percussion parts just feels a hell of a lot better than using a standard midi keyboard.
The Maschine software has also opened a lot more doors for me. Since I mostly use Propellerhead's Reason as my main DAW I've been missing out on using VST instruments and effects in my productions. Now that Maschine has provided me with a suitable VST host I can once again take advantage of the vast amount of VST instruments and effects that are available.
Of course this new addition to the studio has greatly influenced how I go about creating music. Before I introduced Maschine into my set-up I would work almost completely within the boundaries of Reason, with the exception of creating a few sounds and loops using hardware gear and iPad instruments. Now I find my self starting out in Maschine, creating a few loops and getting the general feel of the track down before I even load up Reason.
The Maschine Mikro controller has definitely been one of the best purchases I've made in a long while. I've not really had the chance to test it out in a live situation yet, but once I've built up a performance worthy set I'll be sure to put it though it's paces. But as a studio tool the Maschine really holds its own and it has very quickly become one of the most important aspects of my creative workflow.
