Hi [name removed],
I know it’s a bit of a challenge to play groups via custom pad mappings in Maschine. I’ve worked out a few workarounds. The one you mentioned is the one that I use most often when I want to play drum kit groups in Maschine and it truly is annoying that Maschine doesn’t let you create your custom mapping and then use it all the time (or when needed).
In the above-described case you may re-assemble a group (drum kit) in the way I describe in the referenced video (duplicating pads so that you get the mirrored layout) and then save it as a user preset.
Because of this limitation in Maschine, I seldom use the Maschine pads for finger drumming. I’d rather connect two MPD218 and make Maschine recognize them as generic midi controllers. Then I’d once go through kit pieces that are most often used per pad slot in the default maschine drum kit groups, and then make this a standard of its own. I’ve done exactly what I just described with Maschine Jam (set to MIDI mode). It works, but unfortunately only for electronic music (since there’s no velocity sensitivity on the Maschine Jam pads).
One other obstacle I observed is that the “drum kit piece to pad assignment” is only “directionally consistent”. Often, but not always, you have two kick drums, two snare drums, and a few different hihat samples mapped to the lower two pad rows, but if you go to the upper two pad rows you cannot predict what you’ll find there in Maschine’s drum kit group presets.
Most often I use a virtual drum module like Addictive Drums 2, ezDrummer 2, or Abbey Road Drummer, even when finger drumming on Maschine, but so far I haven’t really found a quick and dirty way to use the default drum kits in Maschine efficiently. I always need some time to set it up in a way that I want.
Don’t know if this really helps you… but you’re not alone. ?
Best regards
Andreas
