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MidiShaper and Native Instruments Maschine 2

Setting up a virtual MIDI port

To use MidiShaper with Maschine 2, you first need to set up a virtual MIDI port. This enables MIDI signals to be routed from MidiShaper to plugins and internal devices running in Maschine 2, as well mixer controls and anything else that can be accessed via Maschine 2's central Control Area.

macOS has the IAC virtual MIDI driver built in, configured via the Audio MIDI Setup application in the Applications/Utilities folder. Windows users will need to install any of the numerous virtual MIDI drivers available for free online, such as MIDI Yoke or LoopBe, and open at least one virtual MIDI port.


Setting up MidiShaper

Insert the software instrument or effect you want to control into a Pad, Group or the Master bus. In this example, we want to control the cutoff frequency of the Filter device. Insert MidiShaper as an effect on any Pad in your project.


Open Maschine's Audio and MIDI Settings Preferences page and make sure the input of the virtual MIDI port you want to use (ie, '0.1 internal MIDI', or 'IAC Driver (Bus 1)') is turned on.


Select the virtual MIDI port as the output in MidiShaper's MIDI Setup panel, and set MidiShaper's Teach menu to a MIDI CC of your choice (eg, CC 0). This prevents the MIDI learn process in the next step from getting confused if MidiShaper is outputting multiple CCs, by bypassing all other signals and outputting only the selected 'Teach' CC


To assign the Teach CC to any device or mixer parameter in Maschine 2, simply click the the 'Learn' button underneath it in the Control Area.


Finally, set MidiShaper's Teach menu to 'Off' and assign the MIDI CC (ie, CC 0 in our example) to a source via the modulation matrix.