Thursday , March 28 2024
Do you want to add ELECTRIC VICE to your MASCHINE music creation?

Software Review: MASCHINE Expansion – ELECTRIC VICE From Native Instruments

If you have any version of MASCHINE, Native Instruments also creates add-on expansion packs that you can use to bring more life to your music creation. The latest one of these is ELECTRIC VICE that allows you to bring the sound of gritty drums, punchy basses, and acidic leads to your MASCHINE.

ELECTRIC VICE works with MASCHINE, MASCHINE MK2, MASCHINE MIKRO, and there is even a version for iMASCHINE. This expansion kit explores the best of modern elector house. It comes with heavy basses, acidic leads, and pulsating drums as well as percussive sounds and a fresh set of patterns and MASSIVE presets.

 

Included with ELECTRIC VICE, are 34 kits that include 146 patterns that are all designed to give you a lot of flexibility. Also there are 7 Special kits, 13 instruments, 50 MASSIVE presets, and 8 projects. It comes as a 321 MB download.

ELECTRIC VICE includes custom MASSIVE presets. These were especially designed for this kit and are integrated into the songs, kits, and patterns. They add powerful synthesis to MASSIVE’S groove production suite. One thing to keep in mind is that if you have MASCHINE, you have MASSIVE. As of the latest version of the MASCHINE software, you can download the latest version of MASSIVE.

The MASSIVE presets are separated out into items like bass, organ, piano, pluck, strings, sound effects, synth lead, synth misc., and synth pad. These can all be controlled from the MASCHINE’s eight top row knobs which integrate perfectly with MASSIVE’s eight macro controls keeping everything at your fingertips.

With ELECTRIC VICE you get a pro style workflow that automatically places many of these sounds into a choke-group style workflow that ensures that your tracks load with sound and pulse of complextro. Each sample is cut off by the next sound you trigger giving you a lot of flexibility to create in real time.

ELECTRIC VICE is aimed at electronic dance music producers, but I have found that it can be also used for creating music in other genres as well for effects and sounds. What I like is that, as with other MASCHINE kits you get the drums, loops, and other pieces, but the presets are what really set this apart. If you want, you can take a listen to some of the audio demo’s that NI has on their site for a better feel of what this add-on can do.

 

 

ELECTRIC VICE was created in association with Loopmasters and was created to bring out club-pumping sounds to your MASCHINE. It was meant to be the definitive sound pack for creating aggressive electro house music styles. Many of the sounds are triggered in a choke-group workflow design with an eye to provide the ability to create exciting production and performance styles of many of this genres today’s top artists.

With ELECTRIC VICE, you get really solid sounding drum kits that have hard-hitting kicks, snares, and percussion that just cut through the sound. With the preset patterns, it makes it super easy to just be able to drop them into a mix and run with it. When you tie it to the other MASCHINE instruments that come with it, everything just blends together nicely.

What ELECTRIC VICE really provides is a set of club-ready sounds that can be used right out of the box. What is really cool is that the way the sounds were sampled and produced, it almost sounds as you get that pulsating side-chaining sound – MASCHINE as a stand-alone is not capable of side-chaining, and that is another thing that makes this package really work.

 

Overall, ELECTRIC VICE is a lot of fun to play with, very easy to use, and really gives you a lot of flexibility when creating your music. Everything is all ready for club use. There are a number of sample sequences set up and they are really so well done so if you want to see how things can be put together and in high quality form than you can easily study these tracks. If you are looking for something to add to your MASCHINE set up I very highly recommend ELECTRIC VICE.

About T. Michael Testi

Photographer, writer, software engineer, educator, and maker of fine images.

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One comment

  1. Electronic Education Podcast

    I’m enjoying the Electric Vice expansion for Maschine.

    Do you know of a quick way to find just the sounds and kits added with Electric Vice within Maschine? It seems as If they all get lumped in with the existing kits and sounds without a way to see what all new stuff was added via EV.