Yes yes yes, another Expansion Pack to get my ears around and put through the paces and this one for me is a no-brainer, and full disclosure – Yours truly was invited to contribute with a Maschine project – More on that later. HIGHER PLACE is an expansion for all the house heads looking for the underground, jacking 90’s house flavour from Chicago, NYC and the UK. This genre has never really died and has remained a staple favourite amongst DJs and club fiends the world over for its tight swing and groovy basslines. This expansion is jacked to the eyeballs with drums one-shots, top loops, and bass sounds as well as a metric tonne of presets for Massive and Monark and Battery. Plus if you’re a Maschine user there are loads of patterns, MIDI clips, sampled instruments and complete projects to get you started.
Side note: If you don’t own these synths then it’s no drama because NI is running 50% off Komplete 14 Bundles (until July 2023) which is a complete bargain (pun intended) Also – if you don’t own Maschine, don’t stress as these Expansions work perfectly in any DAW. More info here:
The thing I like about NI’s expansions is not only how fat and punchy these samples sound, but the inspiration they provide to create your own track – relative to this genre. The arrangements in Maschine have been finessed by some fantastic producers including acclaimed NI sound designer Alex Kid who has created numerous other Expansions. I was fortunate to be asked to create a Maschine project for this as well which was a total honour.
If you’re a Maschine+ user then these will be a dream come true for you too because as soon as you activate the Expansion licence within Native Access, you’ll see the library become available. All you need to do is make sure Maschine+ is connected to Wi-Fi and logged into your NI account
Suss a few Jam examples of Maschine patterns below.
