How to add visuals to Maschine

Maschine is built for making beats, and its screens show your patterns, sounds, and mix. For visuals, you load a visualizer plugin in one of its Plug-in slots and record the result. Maschine hosts VST3 and Audio Unit effects on a Mac and VST3 effects on Windows, at the Sound, Group, and Master level. Put the visualizer on the Master and it moves with the whole beat. Record a take from the plugin window and you have a clip ready for Reels, TikTok, or YouTube.

The plugin route: a VST3 visualizer on the Master

A visualizer plugin loads into a Plug-in slot like any effect, with every look already built. You pick a scene and a palette, and it reacts to the beat from the first kick.

This is the route Photism takes. It is a VST3 and Audio Unit effect that passes your audio through untouched, and the plugin window is the visualizer. Twenty-four scenes, from marbled ink to architectural geometry to a live reaction-diffusion figure, each react to kicks, bass weight, and energy in real time.

Install and scan

1. Install the plugin. On a Mac, run the Photism installer. It puts the VST3 and the Audio Unit in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins. On Windows, extract the zip and copy the whole Photism.vst3 folder into C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3, with the Contents folder still inside it.
2. Scan it in Maschine. Maschine scans its plug-in folders each time it starts. If it was already open, choose Preferences from the Maschine menu on a Mac or the File menu on Windows, click Plug-ins, then Manager, and click Rescan.
3. Check the box next to Photism in the Manager list. Maschine only offers plug-ins that are switched on there.

Load it on the Master

1. Click the MASTER tab in the top left corner of the Control area, then click the small plug icon at its far left to show the Plug-in List.
2. Click the + slot, open External, and pick Photism. On a Mac it can appear twice, marked (VST) and (AU), and either one works.
3. Double-click Photism in the Plug-in List to open its window. The small diagonal arrow beside the Parameter page tabs does the same. Press play and the picture moves with the beat.

On the Master, Photism hears every Group at once. Put it in a Group’s Plug-in slot instead and it follows that Group alone, your drums for example. When Maschine runs as a plugin inside Ableton Live, FL Studio, or another DAW, load Photism on the host track that holds Maschine. The FL Studio guide covers that setup.

Pick a look

Every control has a button in the row along the corner of the window, so you can drive the whole thing with the mouse:

• tab · scenes opens the scene grid. Click any scene to jump to it.
• p · opens the palette card. Every color set is on one card.
• x · shuffle picks a fresh scene and palette in one click.
• g · tune opens the tuning panel, with the macros, the lens, and your saved presets.

In the plugin the keyboard shortcuts take shift: shift+g for the panel, shift+r to record, shift+o for the output. If a shortcut goes to Maschine instead, the buttons do the same job. Drop an album cover onto the window and Photism builds a five-color palette from it, so the visuals match the release.

Record the video

1. Choose the frame with the a · button: 16:9 for YouTube, 9:16 for Reels and TikTok, 1:1 for a square post.
2. Switch to Song view and put the playhead at the start of your arrangement.
3. Click r · rec in the window, or press shift+r, then press play in Maschine.
4. When the beat ends, click the record button again. The button steps through finishing, adding sound, and saving, then names the folder.

The MP4 saves to your Downloads folder with the beat already in it, taken from the channel Photism sits on. You skip Export Audio and the step of lining the beat up in an editor. Clips record at each platform’s upload size, and the recording settings in the tuning panel go up to 4K.

Keep the plugin window open until the button says saved. Covering it with other windows is fine, and closing it ends the take. Maschine hides plugin windows when you click another Sound or Group, so stay on the MASTER tab until the take has saved.

Change scenes on the drop

Photism’s scene, palette, mode, preset slot, and main controls are ordinary plugin parameters. Maschine maps them onto its Parameter pages, so you can also turn them from the controller. It records parameter moves as modulation inside a Pattern, and it modulates plugins on Sounds and Groups. For scene changes, load Photism on a Group, your drum Group for example:

1. Select the Group, click the GROUP tab, and select the Pattern that plays at the drop.
2. Show the Control Lane with the arrow at the bottom left of the Pattern Editor and click the bar icon for the Modulation pane. Click + at the end of the Modulator List, right-click the new Modulator, and choose Photism, its Parameter page, then Scene.
3. Double-click at the start of the Pattern to set a point, then drag it until the value reads the scene you want. The scene changes every time that Pattern plays.

Modulation lasts until the end of its Pattern, so the look returns to the knob’s own setting when the next Pattern starts. The same works for Palette at the bridge, Spin or Mirror as a slow build inside a long Pattern, or Preset Slot to swap the entire look on a section.

Getting it on a second screen

Click o · output, or press shift+o, to open a separate output window. Drag it to your second display or projector and make it fullscreen. It shows the visuals alone, with no buttons. To stream it, turn on Syphon (Mac) or Spout (Windows, beta) in that window’s top bar and pick the Photism source in OBS, Resolume, or TouchDesigner. On a Mac, the first Syphon use asks for Screen Recording access. Allow Maschine, since the plugin runs inside it. The Syphon and Spout guide covers the receiving side.

Where to put it

Photism runs inside your project, so trying it costs nothing but a Plug-in slot. You can feel Photism’s engine before installing anything at photism.app/online, which runs three scenes free in your browser from a dropped track or your mic.