Music Tech Magazine

RISE OF THE MASCHINES

It’s one of the world’s most widely used music-technology workstations and, with the advent of the newly launched Maschine+, it’s now a completely self-sufficient way of making music, without the need for a computer. But when this great unifier of hardware and software was first manifested back in 2009, it appeared slightly out of step with a production landscape still very much in thrall to the magic of computer-based workflows. But this inaugural product was taking its cues from foundations set decades previously.

Concepts such as the MPC workflow, old-school sampling, finger-drumming and hardware workflow are now universal. But this wasn’t always the case. Although sample-based drum machines had arrived on the scene by the early 1980s, it wasn’t until later in the decade that the world would be introduced to the machine that would set the benchmark for many workstation designs that followed: the Akai MPC60.

With navigation display screens across the top, a 4x4 grid of drum pads and various inputting buttons, and a slider, it’s easy to see how the MPC layout became the forerunner for what’s still commonplace with percussion-based MIDI controllers and workstations today. But alongside the iconic tactile workflow of earlier

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