Who has push?

[hibidy]

That sounds encouraging. What I'm looking for for lack of a better explanation is better "integration" with live. Live is easily 70% of what I do musically. I get on with it. What I'd like is to get on with it "better"

I can use (forget the guys name) impulse script (which is awesome) and I have launchpad, but the little details.

I'm trying to "learn" through youtube stuff, but so much of it is "I make a beat, yo" FFS, I can already do that. I'm looking for the "beef" to get more inside of live, to take advantage of it's powerful features.

[deastman]

I meant to comment on the drum rack vs. Battery. I don't have Maschine. The thing with Battery is that every drum kit is arranged differently... there isn't much of a standard, and some kits have a huge number of cells. I find myself being lured into working with the Ableton drum rack more and more because it "just works". I suppose there isn't any reason you couldn't define a similar template for Battery, but in practice its just so much easier to stick with the drum rack. I also have Geist, but never even touch it now, because Ableton offers a fairly straightforward and well integrated solution. And now with Push, that tight integration is extended into the hardware.

I also meant to really emphasize that point that when I'm using Push, I feel like I'm interacting with a musical instrument. I suppose that's particularly true when playing in melodic parts, but its more than that. Having the displays integrated, and all the most important functions just a button press away, I really forget about the computer and just focus on making music with this instrument.

Of course, you could probably say the same thing about Launchpad or any number of other controllers. The extent of my experience with non-keyboard controllers has mostly been limited to the Korg padKontrol (which I still love!). Still, Push is built like a tank, and its evident that a lot of thought has gone into it.

[hibidy]

Well, a) much appreciated viewpoints but b) launchpad is "severely" limited. I like it just fine, but it's not "integrated" as push seems by any stretch of the imagination. But, I'm not 4/4 standard "beat" guy. I play guitar and bass and use a shitload of vst (instruments) and am hoping that I can get more out of of velocity sensitive "all in one" program.

[hibidy]

More random as teh hibidy thinks of things.......

Alternate time signatures.........with push, is this a "good" deal or is it a tad complicated. 3/4. 6/8 7/4 and then go/

I have the impression that is will do this. But not sure yet.

[ezelkow1]

Also on the integration front, it all depends on just what vst parameters you have configured already. Valhalla for example works because by default it already exposes all of its parameters in that popout menu on vst's in ableton. So when selected by push it can already control all those. In this regard push is like any other midi controller, it can only work with what you've given it so if it a vst doesnt auto expose stuff your going to have to go through that step of doing the configure and then racking and saving

[rod_zero]

First, Push is more of a composition tool than a editing or live performance control surface.

Its power reliews on playing it as a instrument and sequencing (via drum racks or the melodic step sequencer). There it shines and it has really no rival in the market.

You can use VST both with drums racks and the melodic mode. For using drums you can place a vst on the track and using external instrument device to map other notes to other pads, so you could use Battery inside drum racks and make sequences from Push. This set up would take a very little time, here is a video:



Now for VST parameters, there are two ways to show them and controlling them in push: make a intrument rack and map more important controls to a rack macro controls. Second, edit the options.txt file to increase the number of parameters that can be shown, for example someone pointed out that valhalla plugs show their parameters, that's because they have few, the default setting is 32 (any plug with less than 32 parameters will show them) you can increase this to 128 I believe.

The really hard part about using vst's with push is changing presets, that really sucks since many vsts work different and so there is not a single solution. For NI there is the audiomoder stuff (but I find that having to load the vst each time you change prest is a bit slow). An alternative solution I made with VST that have a preset list and allow using arrow keys, is to use bomes midi translator to use some buttons Push user mode as keyboard arrows.

The display really makes it easy to control parameters, they show their name, value and thye knobs have instant control, no more jumps like with other midi controllers, you dont have to remeber what was mapped to what, you no longer have to look at the screen to know the value.

Overall I am very happy with push, it have reduced the use of VST's and i am learning to use more and mroe drum racks, simpler, sampler, operator and ableton audio and midi effects because of the integration.

Sometimes I start a song using ableton included instruments and then when the composing stage is quite advanced I exchange the sounds for VSt's.

[hibidy]

Interesting.

[KrisM]

the RGB LEDs are crap. Ableton officially stated they made a choice regarding price vs getting better LEDs (the color balance is random all over it), and decided it was good enough and doesn't change how usable Push is.

But if you email support with a pic they will give you a link to download their RGB Calibration Tool. My Push isn't perfect (like the ads/tutorial vids ) but it is a lot better after spending a little time adjusting red/green levels. Or you can do a custom "theme" for all the colors if you want, it's pretty sweet (just modding a text file, it's easy). White is the most offending color by far, the RGB LEDs they used don't have a dedicated white LED like pricier ones, and aren't well-matched like pricier ones.

I'm still learning how to use it, but it's already pretty quick for playing notes/sequencing.

And it looks sexy in front of my iMac.

[hibidy]

So it's something that can be worked out to some degree. I'll have to pay attention to the tuts I'm watching more but I haven't noticed anything in the viddys that seems particularly offensive.

[KrisM]

So it's something that can be worked out to some degree. I'll have to pay attention to the tuts I'm watching more but I haven't noticed anything in the viddys that seems particularly offensive.

It's like everyone at Ableton has some kind of hand-built LED-matched version of Push or something

[ezelkow1]

Yea I think they made sure that any official reps and tutors got the cream of the crop for any vids, because you never see them with LED issues. Mine only had a few that had a slight pinkish tinge to them, and the utility they posted on the beta forums and hand out got rid of those issues for me, so mine are pretty much uniform after using that tool

[hibidy]

Ok, my final thing that I'm not quite sure about is using push with audio. For those that don't know I play a lot of guitar and bass. Now I know that that is NOT what push was designed for, but is there any chance that you can select a new track and then record audio from this interface, or am I still going to need to mouse about and use the launchpad?

I'm guessing btw that launchpad runs fine side by side?

[Bathrobe]

Can anyone comment on how well Push works with the Bitwig beta?

[deastman]

Yes, you can add audio, MIDI, or bus tracks with Push. You can arm the audio tracks and record into them. The one thing I haven't figured out how to do, if possible at all, is to select the audio inputs to record from. It seems to go with the same defaults as if you had added an audio track the normal way. I often find myself recording the output of one track to the input of another, so it would be nice if there was a way to do that routing from Push. Of course, I never did RTFM, so it might be possible.

[Bathrobe]

Sorry, do you refer now to Live or Bitwig?