Maschine Mikro

Dr.Pepper makes your dick bigger.

i'm not the biggest marketing-minded guy in the world, but a video like this is inspiring. does it matter that it's a product video presented by a manufacturer? i am constantly trying to convince NI that videos don't have to be a list of dry marketing bullet points. the idea from my perspective is to inspire people. sure, you can do what jeremy is doing on the maschine on an MPC. he actually prefers the feel of the maschine pads, and considers it the best controller for what he does that's out there. would you rather see a video where he talks about how good the pads feel, or watch him do something amazing?

there's a very factual, dry video about maschine mikro at the beginning of this thread. and i'm actually curious - do you find that more compelling? or do you find a company that's committed to and inspired by musicians and artists demonstrating that with performances and routines like what jeremy did?

it's not exactly difficult to find the specs, features, and requirements for any NI product. 3 clicks of a mouse will get you to the product page where you can learn anything you need to know. my goal is usually to show how people do inspiring things with these tools. but perhaps i'm wasting my time.

c

you could stuff a chipmunk full of adderall and maus's posts would still put it right to sleep.

thanks for the feedback.

you can do all this if you stick the retrigger button down on an MPC with some blu tack

  On 9/8/2011 at 7:54 PM, maus said:

thanks for the feedback.

thanks for making your point without writing an essay !

  On 9/8/2011 at 7:24 PM, maus said:

• there's a very factual, dry video about maschine mikro at the beginning of this thread. and i'm actually curious - do you find that more compelling? or do you find a company that's committed to and inspired by musicians and artists demonstrating that with performances and routines like what jeremy did?
  

1) There should nearly always be a combination of the two. I've never heard Jeremy Ellis talk about finger percussion. After a crazy performance people are interested to know what he thinks about shit, the new Maschine Mikro, the feel of the Maschine pads, let the kid who just slayed the pads sell the product to you with his honest opinion(edited for maximum impact of course). That's a fucking promotional combo now dawg.

The fucking irony is whenever you see a demonstration for a video game, music technology etc. it's always a developer that can't competently use their own product. It's not very compelling to listen to a boring personality who doesn't seem confident nor is he confident using their new technology talk about the products features, how you gonna give niggas confidence to spend their money with that? I find that mind fucking blowing when they use introverted developers without hand eye coordination for that shit.

Wow I guess I really did wake up from a nap and I'm realizing I just typed a lot of unnecessary 'fucking's amongst other things.

  On 9/8/2011 at 9:07 PM, hahathhat said:

  On 9/8/2011 at 7:54 PM, maus said:

thanks for the feedback.

thanks for making your point without writing an essay !

I believe most people are capable of reading a focused three paragraph post without getting bored. A well written, constructive, and thoughtful post at that.

Hat, please have some restraint and spare us from every last thought that instinctively comes to your mind, lest your mental diarrhea spill over into the internet for the 11,462nd time.

hahathhat is just a sometimes funny troll on tha Hatorade that seems to get insecure when people are serious about anything. Don't worry bout him.

why is it so hard to accept that maus's mini-essays put me into a coma?

it's not that the points he makes are wrong or anything, just that he could do it with far fewer words. more thoreau, less emerson.

  On 9/8/2011 at 7:24 PM, maus said:

i'm not the biggest marketing-minded guy in the world, but a video like this is inspiring. does it matter that it's a product video presented by a manufacturer? i am constantly trying to convince NI that videos don't have to be a list of dry marketing bullet points. the idea from my perspective is to inspire people. sure, you can do what jeremy is doing on the maschine on an MPC. he actually prefers the feel of the maschine pads, and considers it the best controller for what he does that's out there. would you rather see a video where he talks about how good the pads feel, or watch him do something amazing?

 

there's a very factual, dry video about maschine mikro at the beginning of this thread. and i'm actually curious - do you find that more compelling? or do you find a company that's committed to and inspired by musicians and artists demonstrating that with performances and routines like what jeremy did?

 

it's not exactly difficult to find the specs, features, and requirements for any NI product. 3 clicks of a mouse will get you to the product page where you can learn anything you need to know. my goal is usually to show how people do inspiring things with these tools. but perhaps i'm wasting my time.

 

c

summary: "This video isn't a demo, so much as it is NI-sponsored inspiration fuel."

fair enough.

yeah i get a bit verbose, but i like composing with language as well as music sometimes.

BFC, you make some good points. i think part of the reason i'm so focused on the inspiration side is that some of the videos NI has done of late come off as a little less authentic. but there's actually a rather great one we just did in this week that i'm pretty damn excited for you guys in particular to see, as it's an artist i'd consider to be the most exciting one we've ever filmed from a WATMM perspective.

i actually want to get in to doing more product vids for eurorack modular gear but some of the guys that make and deal in that stuff are freaking space aliens, i swear.

  On 9/9/2011 at 8:58 AM, maus said:

i actually want to get in to doing more product vids for eurorack modular gear but some of the guys that make and deal in that stuff are freaking space aliens, i swear.

it's called aspergers.

  On 9/8/2011 at 7:24 PM, maus said:

i'm not the biggest marketing-minded guy in the world, but a video like this is inspiring. does it matter that it's a product video presented by a manufacturer? i am constantly trying to convince NI that videos don't have to be a list of dry marketing bullet points. the idea from my perspective is to inspire people. sure, you can do what jeremy is doing on the maschine on an MPC. he actually prefers the feel of the maschine pads, and considers it the best controller for what he does that's out there. would you rather see a video where he talks about how good the pads feel, or watch him do something amazing?

 

there's a very factual, dry video about maschine mikro at the beginning of this thread. and i'm actually curious - do you find that more compelling? or do you find a company that's committed to and inspired by musicians and artists demonstrating that with performances and routines like what jeremy did?

 

it's not exactly difficult to find the specs, features, and requirements for any NI product. 3 clicks of a mouse will get you to the product page where you can learn anything you need to know. my goal is usually to show how people do inspiring things with these tools. but perhaps i'm wasting my time.

 

c

Can see the dilemma with these kinda marketing videos. On the one hand you want to be able to make a promo that demos the great aspects of the product you're selling, but similarly you don't want it to bore the teeth out of anyone that watches is, as it just descends into facts figures, and statistics.

I guess what is paramount is finding a way highlighting the key aspects of that product, unique selling points if you like. The thing with that finger drum marathon posted earlier is that although its technically impressive, there's nothing in there thats exclusive to the Maschine. The same performance could've been done on any number of devices. In comparison, the more technical video highlights the unique functions of Maschine but like you said, is far from aspirational.

What would be ideal, at least imo, would be somewhere between the 2. A talented dude doing a spectacular demo, but with a little bit of tech talk to briefly outline why only that product allows them to perform such wonders. A little bit of both. After all, it's a safe assumption that most people interested in production have a modicum of geek about them.

The other thing, which is definitely a personal opinion. Musicians do not make good sales people. The minute you get a musician to demo some kit and start dissecting the whole thing, very easy to stray into Trade show booth territory. Can get pretty cringe worthy.

Just while we're on the subjekt of NI demo vids. Gotta say, this one is brilliant!

I take it you didn't read my post that said pretty much the same thing Tech Diff? Besides that I disagree that musicians are not good sales people. When they just blew your mind with comfort slaying a device and your given an interview at the end that is highly edited to 2 minutes from like a 25 minute talk or something about the device/software/their approach/their favorite new music etc. it's gonna come across a lot more sincere, confident and exciting than just a product developer when it's done right.

goddam i miss the early days of NI

  On 9/11/2011 at 2:00 AM, Blanket Fort Collapse said:

I take it you didn't read my post that said pretty much the same thing Tech Diff? Besides that I disagree that musicians are not good sales people. When they just blew your mind with comfort slaying a device and your given an interview at the end that is highly edited to 2 minutes from like a 25 minute talk or something about the device/software/their approach/their favorite new music etc. it's gonna come across a lot more sincere, confident and exciting than just a product developer when it's done right.

Oh whoops. Sorry I must've missed it indeed! apologies! Maybe Im generalising a bit too much. You're right sometimes an artist waxing on about what kit they like can be pretty interesting, but not always. Definitely a case of "when it's done right"

Im kinda with you as well Awepittance. A few years back, dicking about with a new NI application really felt like you're on the bleeding edge of whats possible in terms of new & innovative sound design possibilities. More recently it has felt like they're a little more content with catering for the current trends and not pushing for new ones. I guess that's business for you though.

yes, the innovation angle has suffered for sure. but the company began getting quite successful, and the direction had to be a more crowd-pleasing one to maintain that growth. but its because of that growth that NI was able to start getting into the hardware game, and maschine and the S4/S2 are both pretty cool.

of course, some kind of never-before-seen intuitive control surface of some kind for reaktor ensembles or some new kind of realtime manipulation software would be pretty cool. but how many of your average LMFAO fans are going to buy something super tweaky? the mass populace wants one-click hit sounds, not layers of reaktor-like complexity. so that's not where the R&D goes, unfortunately.

as you say, it's business.

i love my maschine <3

i got mine with an education license for about the same price as the mikro is selling for new ($399, i think?)... one of the most fun things to do on the maschine is, imo, to assign all sorts of fx parameters to the 8 knobs [with as many pages, and so, parameters] as you like on the full-size controller (or just let maschine auto-assign parameters of any VST you run through it to those knobs as well)... looks like mikro users might not get that experience! bummer, but i suppose for the price break, that's maybe not what people are looking for.

this reminds me that i still need to upgrade to 1.7! NI is really great about giving free, huge updates to their customers, and for that i am quite grateful.