Have you been thinking about upgrading to the Maschine Studio? Maybe you are new to beat making and thinking of purchasing the Studio as your first piece of equipment? Maybe thinking of converting to the Studio from a DAW or another piece of equipment?
This article is going to be ultimate resource to explain to you the exact reasons why Maschine Studio is right or wrong for you.
If you're new to making beats or struggling to figure out how to use Maschine to make great sample based beats, click here to download my free Maschine eBook. It'll give you insight into the right way to use Maschine thing to make great hip-hop and electronic music.
The Maschine Studio is an incredible piece of hardware. And when you combine this hardware with the upgraded Maschine 2.0 software, it's one of the best pieces of musical equipment that money can buy. If you make hip hop or electronic music, read this article and find out why the Maschine Studio is for you.
The Hardware is incredible
Visually speaking, the Maschine Studio is the sexiest piece of equipment I've seen. This thing is just so beautiful too look and well designed. I've said this for a long time, but NI is like the apple of music production. Compared to everything else out there, it's just so intuitive to create with. And when you're using it, time just flies because it's so fun and simple to work with.
If you come from the MK1 or MK2, you'll immediately be familiar with all of the controls and the interface of the Maschine Studio . The controls are pretty much the same as they were before. Minus a few new section of buttons and knobs: the master volume control and the jog wheel. But we'll talk about that a bit later. (If you're not familiar with Maschine and would like to learn the secrets that take most beat makers years to learn on their own, check out my free Maschine eBook.
The Maschine 2.0 software and the Studio hardware are designed perfectly for each other. One of the major benefits of the Maschine Studio is being able to do everything directly on the hardware screen. These two LCD screens make it very easy for you to navigate around and do everything that you would previously have to do on the software. Now you can do pretty much everything right on the Maschine Studio controller itself.
Because I find myself doing everything on the hardware now, it makes it easy to get into the flow of things. I find myself touching the mouse a lot less often. Because I'm able to focus completely on the hardware, it makes it easier to focus on how the music sounds, instead of getting caught up in the distractions of mouse clicking.
Another important improvement with the Maschine Studio and the 2.0 software is the dedicated mixing control section. This mixing control section gives you one location to visually see and control everything going on inside of your mix. You can set your volume faders, adjust stereo panning, see your FX - all from one location. It sounds simple, but you'd be surprised at how this feature makes it incredibly simple to mix your music right on the Maschine Studio hardware controller. This is something that you weren't able to do on the MK2 or the 1.8 software.
The Maschine Studio is so fun to use because of it's addictive qualities. It's hard to articulate, but by addictiveness I mean that this thing is incredibly fun to use and once you understand how it works. Creating music on it becomes really easy. It has shiny lights, pretty screens, cool things to touch and feel, knobs to twist and adjust. The hands on factor makes it really easy to work on this thing for extended periods of time. It's almost like playing some sort of super complicated video game. Hours will pass without you realizing it, and that's a good thing. Once you understand how it works, it really gets out of your way and makes it easy to do exactly what you want on it.
It's the simple details that make the Maschine Studio so much fun to use. It's really something that becomes obvious after you've been using it for a while. This thing is extremely intuitive to use. The best way to describe the ease of use of this things is kind of like an iPhone. When you pick first pick it up, it's obvious how this thing works because everything is spelled out plainly right there in front of you.
Another simple addition to the Studio hardware are the dedicated buttons for functions that you previously had to do using your shift controls. This doesn't sound significant. But when you really think about it, these are tasks that you perform dozens of times as you're going through the process of making a beat. You make these tasks two times as simple to perform by assigning a dedicated button to their functions. Average that out across the hundreds of tracks you'll make in a year and these new buttons will save you hours of time and frustration. They make creating on the Studio easier.
Dedicated Metronome Button: turn on and off the metronome by pressing simple one button. This sounds stupid, but if you have experience using the shift metronome on the MK1 (it's freaking annoying), you'll know exactly why this is so helpful.
Dedicated Undo and Redo Buttons: think of all the times you enter a pattern incorrectly, or want to undo an edit that you've made or something. There's a dedicated button to undo and redo all of the moves that you make. Definitely makes things easier.
Precise Pattern editing using the Jog wheel: the jog wheel let's you do a lot of different stuff, but the coolest function for me is for subtly shutting midi notes. Using the jog wheel, you can really get your midi pattern timing down tight by making subtle shifts in the notes in one direction or another. I know I sound like a huge nerd right now but doing this in 1.8 was incredibly frustrating.
All of the dedicated buttons make it a lot more simple to create using the Maschine Studio.
What don't I like about the Maschine Studio?
There are definitely a lot of positives about the Maschine Studio, but this would be a real review if I didn't point out the negatives of the thing. And there certainly are a few negatives to purchasing the Studio (we'll talk about those in a little bit).
In order to power these new beautiful LCD screens, the Maschine Studio requires a power cord that has to be plugged into the wall. So instead of just having a USB cord to plugin into your computer (like the MK2), the Maschine Studio requires a usb plugged to your computer plus an additional power supply that plugs to the wall.
The fact that you have to plug this thing up to the wall and to your computer is annoying as hell. But there's really no other way around it. That means that there's an extra step in the process to set up every time you want to start making beats (#firstworldproblems). I still get frustrated every time I have to break out that extra power cable and set things up.
Native Instruments compounded this inconvenience even further by making the power cord that's included with this thing ridiculously short (it's literally like 3 feet long). Because this power cord is so short, I've been plugging my power adapter into a long extension cord so that I can have some freedom as far as where I use this thing in my room.
As you can imagine, the fact that this thing is pretty large, and has to be plugged into a power outlet and a computer definitely makes the Maschine Studio a lot less portable. You wouldn't be able to fit the Maschine Studio in any normal sized backpack, so it's unlikely that you'll be taking the Maschine Studio on the road to your next live performance gig.
But my guess is that this wasn't NI's intention. Probably why they called it the "Maschine Studio". This thing is meant to sit inside of your home studio and never leave.
Who should buy this thing?
Let's get down to it. You want to know if you should purchase the Maschine Studio. And my answer is dependent on where you're trying to go musically.
If you want to make digital music: electronic, hip hop, etc -this thing is the shit. If you like to sample from vinyl or even the internet, in my opinion there is no better tool out there for sample-based beats than the Maschine platform. The combination of this software and the hardware cannot be touched if you make sample-based beats.
Maschine Studio is for you if Maschine is the centerpiece of your music creation process. By that I mean that if you do most of your creation, building drum looks, chopping samples, arrangement, mixing all inside of Maschine already, then the Studio is going to be a really valuable upgrade for you. It's going to make it more fun and easy for you to create. On top of that, if you already have experience working in the Maschine environment, you'll already know how this thing works and it'll be easy for you to get up and running with it.
(download my free Maschine eBook if you want to learn the secrets that take most Maschine beat makers years to learn on their own. If you're thinking of purchasing the Maschine Studio, it's really a must have if you want to get up and running with this thing quickly.)
If you're a beginner to making beats, spending $1000 on a new hobby might not seem like the best idea. But consider this: if you purchase Ableton Live 9 (Logic) and an MPD 24 or something, that combination might cost you around the same amount as the Maschine Studio, it might be worth it. If you've got it like that, this would be a really cool tool to learn on. And if you have a slightly lower budget, NI has a few other alternatives that offer many of the same features for a lot less money (MK2 and Mikro).
Don't ge me wrong, I know it's obvious that I'm in love with the Maschine Studio. But, I still do recognize that this is not for everyone.
Well, who shouldn't purchase the Maschine Studio?
The Maschine Studio definitely is not for you if you do most of your work in some other DAW/software environment. For example, if you have the most experience with Ableton, Pro Tools, or Logic and you plan on using the Maschine basically as a controller, don't buy the Maschine Studio, because you'll only be using a fraction of it's functionality. You'll be much better off buying a Mikro or a used MK1 or something for $300.
If you don't plan on using Maschine exclusively within the Maschine software environment, you'll be better off purchasing something else. This tool is too powerful and too costly to only use a fraction of its functionality. It might not be for you if you have more experience in another environment. In my opinion, you really need to use the Maschine Studio hardware and 2.0 software together in order to get the most out of the Studio.
If you have any specific questions about the Maschine Studio, go ahead and ask them in the comments section below. I try my best to respond to every question.
Hope this gave you some clarity,
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