Setting up drum covers using Addictive Drums

[Transferred from Drum Cover thread]

Hi There,

I’m trying to create a drum cover in Maschine 2. My approach is to remove the drums from the original track using other software and then import that track into Maschine 2 as a .wav file, then record the maschine mikro mk3 in MIDI as a I play along with it. I’m having a lot of trouble getting the .wav file into the software. It seems relatively straightforward based on the tutorials out there but I just can’t seem to get that .wav file onto the timeline.

Am I missing something obvious? Is it possible the song is too long? Is there a tutorial out there that shows how to record the mikro mk3 (using Addictive Drums) in Maschine 2 while playing over a .wav file?

Thanks! And apologies if that was confusing.

[RESPONSE]

Hey Scottr,

for the Maschine software I have to admit I think it’s confusing as well. If you want you can download Reaper DAW here >> https://www.reaper.fm. Free for 60 days and after that $60 for a full license.

Best piece of music making software I ever owned. It does look a bit crappy, but it works very very well.

I can probably help you out with getting your drum cover setup up and running if you use Reaper.
It’s basically:

  • Enable your audio interface inside reaper
  • Enable the plugged in maschine mikro as midi input device
  • Add 2 tracks
  • Drag the wav file onto 1 track
  • Open up addictive drums as an effect on the other track
  • Right click the record button on the addictive drums track and enable all midi devices (or just the maschine) as the input device.

Thats it, start recording and playing.

If you need screenshots I can help you out. We might need to move this conversation to a fresh topic by the way. Might be interesting for other people as well. “Finger drumming cover song recording setup in Reaper with Maschine mk3 and Addictive drums”

Thanks Robert!

I have been able to set this up via garageband in the way you described. But I thought doing it through Maschine 2 software would give me a little more control over the drum sounds, and I was hoping to be able to edit my tracks after they are recorded. I also noticed a very small amount of latency in my garageband setup that I don’t hear when I set up the Addictive Drums in Maschine 2. Not sure if that is just a weird quirk on my end or something else.

I guess my questions are:

  1. Would it be safe to say that if I can get this set up in Maschine 2 that I would have more control over the drum recordings than if I did it in Reaper or Garageband?

  2. I also would like to start chopping up samples to trigger on my Mikro Mk3 alongside my addictive drums sounds. That is something that is most optimized for Maschine 2, correct?

  3. Is AD latency in non maschine DAWs something you have encountered?

I think that If I can figure out how to import long .wav files into Maschine 2 for my drum covers, even if it’s complicated, that will help me in my efforts to start importing samples that I can chop up and trigger alongside my current Addictive Drums setup on the Mikro, presuming that’s possible.

Hope that’s not too confusing!

  1. In my case, since I know how reaper works, I actually have much more control in reaper than in Maschine. But it is about knowing how to use the software. I think over all, Maschine is a bit of a “half” DAW, which means you can do cool stuff with it, but other DAWs have more functionality and will give you more control over basically everything if you know how to use them. The difference is that Maschine will have this hardware workflow, with buttons and knobs that you DAW will not have (you can set it up but you have to configure it yourself and its less smooth).

  2. Yeah, I’m not an expert in this field but sampling and chopping seems to be something the Maschine was designed for so that’s definitely something it should do well.

  3. No, if you have an audio interface with low latency and that audio interface processes the sound, there should not be a difference between DAW’s in terms of latency. Maybe garageband uses the onboard audio of your mac? There are some other things that could be wrong. Check out this article >>
    5 ways latency will mess up your groove - The Quest for Groove

I understand your approach. You might want to ask around on some “Maschine” subreddit or something. Someone will be able to help you out. I’m just about the drumming and basically bypassing everything except the durm software :slight_smile:

Very helpful, thanks so much for this.

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