Maschine Jam - Setting Up of MIDI CC

I have asked John to comment here, but I want to mention a couple of things myself.

The main thing you need is to right-click the "bullet" icon (two concentric circles) at the right-hand side of the Macro knobs view, choose "Load CC Assignments preset..." and try the different preset files that are there. The two you'll find most useful are NI KK M32 Four Pages.xml which maps all the knobs on your Komplete Kontrol keyboard to Unify's 32 macro knobs, and Skippy 8 knobs.xml, which maps the first 8 macro knobs to MIDI CC's 1, 21, 4, 67, 84, 85, 86, 87, which is the sequence of CC's John recommends for assinging to your Maschine Jam's sliders.

(If you don't see either of those .xml files, you might not have installed the Unify 1.9 Content Update.guru file that came with Unify 1.9.)

Unify does have some more advanced MIDI mapping capabilities, but these are still experimental, and are honestly not novice-friendly.

@getdunne Greets and many, many thanks for the info.

I am happy and eager to make Jam part of my music production workflow, alongside my Launchpad Pro, KK keyboard, and Logic Remote. I saw the power of Jam when I first used it with Logic years ago, and it's been great in concept, but I otherwise have not used it much because I was not making music. Now, my aim is to get back into it, and I was really impressed with Unify and its potential. Just like Omnisphere, another synth I intend to use more, I still need to learn more about Unify as a beginner, but the videos that Skippy has done on them make the software truly unique and creative. Now that I have an M1 Max MacBook Pro, it'll be interesting to try and push that creativity.

But back to Maschine Jam. The info you provided looks useful. I have done some peering through the Controller Editor manual, but for now it's a steep learning curve, especially when it comes to setting up templates and configurations. Once I can at least get through the basics of having the MIDI CC parameters working, and then having them work into my workflow, then I will be more open to not only advanced MIDI features, but also try and do additional CE work such as adding colored buttons, including some that toggle between colors (on/off), getting the Group button I select to light up fully so that I can tell it's selected without guessing, and so on. 

I will work through your suggestions later on, maybe today or tomorrow, when I have some more time. Of course, anything that Skippy wants to add, or any other Jam user, would be welcome.

Thanks much!

@velanche

I'm glad you found my response useful, and not a complete turn-off! MIDI control is often where a program or plug-in's user-friendly GUI kind of breaks down, and I freely admit that's the case with Unify.

If you want to use your Maschine Jam and other  hardware controllers at the same time, you should spend a bit of time thinking about how to assign MIDI CC numbers to the various knobs and sliders (using Controller Editor or whatever else the vendor provides). Usually, you won't want them to overlap, but there might be cases where you want to have two or more physical controls send out the same MIDI CC number, so you can use whichever one is closest to hand.

For live performance, the Unify stand-alone app also supports MIDI Controller Files, which allow you to link MIDI controls directly to Unify parameters in a very flexible way, but I'll warn you this is (a) very advanced, and (b) only for live play, i.e., it doesn't work in your DAW.

@getdunne I am not afraid of being willing to learn moe about using MIDI CC with hardware/software, even multiples, so long as I can get the basic concepts down. Really, it's been about finding info and then essentially either copying/pasting or at least editing/modifying something that already exists (ie, templates, configuration files, etc.). If you know of resources that can get me up to speed on doing things like using MIDI CC for multiple hardware controllers, as well as the basics of just using it for one, that woudl be great. The most I've done as far as MIDI mapping is the MIDI learn that's in tools such as Logic Pro's controller preferences and Komple Kontrol's MIDI editor, or fudging with an existing template such as the MCU configuration for Logic Pro for Jam via the Controller Editor, but that's the extent of my knowledge.

Sounds like the MIDI config files for Unify could become part of my future, as I do intend eventually do do live performances. Though I intend to work with hardware and learn to use them for performances, I also would like to learn to use software such as Unify and Ominsphere for such purposes too.

That rabbit hole is where I'll go down through, but for now it's all about getting the basic setup in place, and make sure that they work.

As ever, many thanks!

@getdunne Do you know if it's possible to set up Aux and sends for Logic via the CE in Maschine Jam? I know it's a step above just mixer and parameter settings, so not sure how possible it is or how complex it is. 

@velanche I'm not enough of a Logic Pro expert to answer your question. Other users here may be able to help.