Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Making music on the Surface Go Ep3 with Maschine Mikro Mk3”.
Hello, my name is Robin Vinson and welcome to surface sessions. Today, we’re looking at the surface, go and the native instruments maschine mikro mark three, as we continue our journey into working out. What the surface go is good, for I mean we’ve established so far. If you’ve not seen any of my previous videos that the surface go is completely capable of running a half-decent, audio interface and some software and absolutely has the potential to be a little mini recording studio. But the question is always gon na, be how much can it do? What about my software? What about what I’m doing? How much of that can I do, and so I am endeavoring to get around as many pieces of software as I can over time and this time it’s the turn of machine or machine ax or, however, you want to pronounce it and what I want to look At is how good a combination it is to have this, which is the micro machine er, which is an awesome little control trigger eating routine and the surface go. How well do they run together and could this become a neat little music production studio? Well, the simple answer is yes, and no, it depends. It depends exactly on how much of everything you need to do because, as it is, the machine software runs fine, installs, fine, the machine, installs, fine, no problems or any of that with a proper audio interface. You get low, latency, stuff, [ Applause, ], no problem with all of that hello, because surface go is relatively underpowered when compared to most of the laptops and services, there is a limit to what it can do and so what I hope to achieve in this little Video is just to demonstrate kind of the level that it’s at and hopefully that’ll, give you an indication of where the surface go is up to the task for what you want to do so one of the quickest ways to do that is to load up some Of the demo projects – and it will give you an idea of what’s possible so this one, which i think is a relatively old machine project, runs completely fine. Let’S try something else: yep they’re from there. There are this particular project. The LCQ meter is getting quite high, but it’s still sorting that out. You’Ve got multiple drums and stuff going on. You’Ve got sampled, vocals all sorts of missing pieces, so randomly winding ourselves through the demo projects that come with machine.
It doesn’t seem to be much of a problem at all, which is good news. Let’S see if I can deliberately find something which is not going to be as accommodating Oh gee-whiz, they all just work. Okay, here we go.
Okay, this one has a bit more a trouble. The old CPU meter in machine is up to the top and you can hear in the audio the crack or the icon, yeah yeah, it’s pretty nursing and those aren’t deliberate they’re, not in the track. It’S the the CPU not quite having enough power to resolve all of our audio stream going into and out of this system, and so we get glitches. So this is a good example of a project which is pushed it back a little bit too far. Why well, if we look into the project a little bit, we should be able to see it has some sample as loaded.
Those are usually fine. I mean sample based instruments tend to be the least CPU intensive, you load a sample into memory and then it fires. It’S really simple stuff for a computer to do, but it’s these synthesizers, that’s a problem. It’S the emulation! It’S the virtual analog! It’S all of that stuff that goes on within a virtual synthesizer.
That’S the most CPU intensive stuff your computer will probably ever have to do, and in this particular project we’ve got massive loaded up with a bunch of effects. Fact, multiple copies of massive, but largely what’s loading that particular project down is effects and lots and lots of effects again they can be CPU intensive and eat into your processing power. Let’S try another project see this one is right on the edge of the processing power. The CPU meter is almost at the tops, it’s just sort of hanging in there, but what really needs is a few more things to trigger right then, and it’s gon na glitch, and so it has so. You can see in the CPU meter over here, but it’s just peaking. It’S just getting to be too much, but in here, for instance, under strings we’ve got B, choirs loaded and the since we’ve got one two three four massive since loaded and stuff like that.
There’S a lot of things going on, and so with that quick sort of random look through projects, you should be able to see that the surface car is completely capable of running the majority of projects again, depending on how big your projects are. So how big are they gon na be? What actually can it let you do well, let’s see if I can work that out for you a little bit. This isn’t gon na be a big review of the Maschine Mikro 3 and we will leave that for another video, I’m just using it as an example of what the surface go could do so I’ll. Do I’ll, bring you in and we’ll put together a little project. I’M only using the stuff, that’s come with Maschine, I’m not using any additional plugins. Now a machine comes with massive, the ni synth and it comes with prism and monarch, which are reactor based synths and all three of them are really good, but neither of them are particularly light on the CPU, but let’s throw a project together and see what happens? Let’S load a drum kit create a pattern: let’s make it four bars long just for fun.
Create another group add a pattern: let’s find a baseline to go along with it. My life is good. Another group, another pattern: let’s add something more paddy Gruden for patent instrument tourism, another group now the pattern: that’s have some massive in there new group new pattern. Let’S keep on keepin on one more track, I think so there we go eight tracks and I’ve just started hitting into clipping and audio artifacts and dropouts and glitching, and all that stuff and the CPU meter here is now bouncing around.
You know three-quarters, full and then perhaps up into a hundred percent, and that’s it that’s all you get. So let’s have a look at what we actually have loaded in here. So we’ve got a sample based drum kit, then a monarch, another monarch, a prism, a massive massive, a massive and a massive that’s for massives, two monarchs and a prism. That’S quite a lot I mean it’s.
An 8-track song relate different, sounds going on there, largely monophonic, but other stuff overlapping, each other simple, if any in there and some sample base stuff. So that is probably a good example of what the surface go is capable of. Now I haven’t added any effects yet and in fact I’ve done projects similar to this, where I haven’t peaked and was able to add different effects, and so it’s always going to be dependent on which instruments. You are loading and what presets you’ve loaded.
Because there are so many factors involved that it’s impossible to give an absolute definitive answer as to what the system will do, but I think there what we got was a decent representation of what this is all about. And, of course, if I used less intense synthesizers other virtual instruments and bits and pieces, it doesn’t have to run out of space at 8tracks, it could keep on going if I’m using much smaller synthesizers or if I keep it all sample, based if it’s all rhythm And percussion based, I can probably go on forever, but as it goes in this example, the surface go has become a little. You know eight voice, synthesizer an eight voice, synthesizer beat workstation groove machine, and is that enough, for you? Is that enough to make this the ideal little home studio production system for you? So they are machine micro. Mark 3, with the machine to software running on the surface, go the 8 gig model, and out of that I got 8 tracks, seven of which were synthesizers good synthesizer. It’S not crappy little pathetic little throwaway, Frehley, synthesizer, there’s no monarch, prism and massive, all of which are chunky, high-quality virtual synthesizers that take a lot of juice to run well and I’ve got loops going on like automation, going on and mixing going on, and all that Potential just in this little Center and if I wanted to do a lot more tracks. Well then I’ll just have to use different since or different bits and pieces and other instruments, I think, which is has a less of an impact on the CPU. But overall I hope I’ve been able to show that the surface go, isn’t a bad little thing I mean it’s only the surface. Go it’s not a surface Pro.
If you had the pro you’d, be able to do a ton more that this. If the little surface go, it’s a weenie thing has only got a tiny little processor in there, and yet it runs desktop software like machine with proper controllers like machine to you, know a level where you could actually sit down and get some ideas down and mess Around on this, without feeling too restricted yeah, so I reckon that’s that’s alright. That is what do you think so coming up next, in the surface go journey I’m going to be taking this outside and seeing how well it runs without an audio interface and without power. Can it be that mobile? Can you use the onboard sound without it sounding either really crap or the latency being just far too high? We don’t know, but we’re going to find out.
So my next article coming up soon we’ll be running over to live bit week and machine on the surface, go completely naked well, by which I mean no audio interface and no power and in the meantime, the surface pro six is just about to arrive. On my doorstep, and so I’ll also be looking into doing videos about the audio performance of all of that, as well so loads more to come. Remember, there’s something in particular, you’d like to see on the surface go or the surface pro six. Then.
Let me know in the comments and share and like and push us bout all over. The place like you normally would and if you want to be known, fiber and release more videos then hit this subscribe button at the bottom. You know how this works by now. So there we go and until next time go make some shoes .