12.2 Managing ScenesSequencing music in MASCHINE is done in a multi-tiered manner, the tiers being Patterns,Scenes, and Timeline. The most basic building block in the MASCHINE sequencer is the Pat-tern. This is where you program notes (events) and control information that trigger the Sounds,Instruments, and Effects loaded into a Group. You can have multiple Groups in your MA-SCHINE project, and each Group has its own unique set of Patterns.Each Group will usually correspond to a musical element in your composition, such as Drums,Bassline, and Melody. You will then use the Patterns in these Groups to create motifs, riffs, orgrooves for each part. For example, in the case of the drums, you might have a Pattern for theintro groove, a Pattern for the verse groove, and a third Pattern for the chorus groove. You canthen make similar Patterns for the Bassline and Melody.Once you’ve created these various musical motifs, you’ll probably want to group them togetherto create “sections” in your composition. For example, the intro section of your song wouldprobably include the intro Drum Pattern, the intro Bassline Pattern, and the intro Melody Pat-tern all playing together. This is the purpose of a Scene, which is essentially just a “snapshot”of what Patterns should be playing on the Groups at any given time. You can have multipleScenes in your project which correspond to multiple sections in your song, though only oneScene can play at a time. For example, you can have a Scene for the intro (as was just descri-bed), another Scene for the verse (which contains all the verse Patterns) and a third Scene forthe chorus (which contains all the chorus Patterns). This now gives you the ability to play yourcomposition live by triggering these various Scenes as you wish. You could for example, beginplaying the intro Scene, let it play for 8 bars, then trigger the verse Scene and allow it to playfor 32 bars. When it feels like it’s time for the chorus, you trigger the chorus Scene and all theassigned chorus Patterns will play. If you want, after 16 bars, you could then trigger the verseScene again to perform the second verse of your song.The Timeline is where you arrange the Scenes so that MASCHINE will trigger them automati-cally instead of requiring you to trigger them by hand. Following our previous example, you canput the intro Scene at the start of the Timeline and set its length to 8 bars. You can then placethe verse Scene after it and give it a length of 32 bars. The chorus Scene would follow with alength of 16 bars. Now, when you play MASCHINE from the start of its Timeline, you’ll hearyour entire arrangement play back automatically. This is how you build a basic song structurein MASCHINE’s sequencer.Creating a Song Using ScenesManaging ScenesMASCHINE 2 - Manual - 567
