Ableton Push 3 - standalone MPE controller

[elxsound]

Do we have a thread for Push 3 compatible devices?

Not yet… Do you want to start one?

Not yet, you?
I mean, I don’t know any compatible devices…

I’m in the same boat… I don’t know of any yet. I’ll start checking connecting various things and devices now that I’m back from a short trip.

Here’s a link to the thread machinesworking mentioned: https://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?t=247492

[SLiC]

[SLiC]

Love Ned Rush!

[DrGonzo]

Probably too early to even ask, but any updates to it yet?

[elxsound]

Probably too early to even ask, but any updates to it yet?

Public Beta is open.

There’s some key fixes with the packs memory issue and an important addition with global quantization/global launch.

It’s possible to switch back out of the beta as needed too.

https://ableton.centercode.com/key/push ... ce=youtube

[drez]

I've had my Push 3 standalone for a couple weeks now and am loving it. I haven't even hooked it up to my computer, I've just been having fun taking it everywhere, learning how to use it, and creating a bunch of "happy hours", which I call my starter ideas that I usually write after work for an hour. Then, if any of those become interesting, I start working on them in arrangement view and then, if they become even MORE interesting, I continue to completion. The Push 3 has been so good for the happy hour stage because I just boot it up and start slapping down an idea. I don't care if it's just in session view because that's how I start all my ideas. I only move to arrangement view if the song isn't terrible

I know that people are like "there's no arrangement view" blah blah, but honestly, I would never work on that phase of a production "solely on a push". I've been using Push1/2 from the very beginning just like this. Once I get to arrangement view, the push is the "secondary" controller to the mouse and keyboard, and I wouldn't change that with push 3. The spawning of ideas, for me personally, is where I like the standalone because I just grab it, boot it up for an hour and save the idea and move on. The other aspects of the Push 3, MPE/IO/Amazing Pads are the bonus things that are totally worth it, even if you don't get the standalone version. It is an insanely cool controller with being able to map expression on individual pads in a drum rack. Like Ned Rush shows above, you can make each pad into a mini Kaoss controller. Like, you could have a single drum rack where you mapped each pad to control various parameters on various plugin across various tracks. For a live show, or just because it's fun, it is a killer way to make variations on things live while recording in arrangement view, then go in and clean up automation.

Anyway, I'm totally pleased, I haven't had any hardware issues at all, and it's been a great experience. Would buy again, no question.

[elxsound]

I agree about not needing arrangement view on Push. The biggest workflow changes I think would make it easier, and I’d like to see implemented are easy options to swap the track order and easy options to swap the scene order. Preferably it’d work similar to how device order can be changed.

I still would love a way to export the audio of set, directly from Standalone. Not resampling, but exporting.

[machinesworking]

I don't agree at all. Some sort of ability to tie Scenes into a song is needed. Push 2 gets used all the time here to mix and master, I rarely use my other options for control surfaces to mix in Live. I cancelled my order and gave Ableton my feedback.

I bought an MPC Live II, it has a song mode, multiple time signatures in the same song, better MIDI editing, multiple tempos and a longer life battery. I'm certain in a couple years Ableton will finally put some basic song creation tools into Push 3 Stand Alone, and it will be an absolute beast, but frankly it's always a slow process.

Personally I do not think the general community needs another hardware tool that is only good for creating starts of songs or loops. I don't think anyone is expecting to get the full Arrangement view in Push 3, but a way to tie Scenes together is IMO a no brainer. Maschine and the MPC can both do this. Right now in terms of using it to write an entire song, Push 3 stand alone is the worst option, Maschine at least can do this, and there's an entire workflow in the MPC that remains better in many ways on the hardware.

I'll state this again, Live has always been fantastic at creating the start of a song, basically making loops. Most people have dozens of loops for every finished piece, a device that only does loops from Ableton is sugar on ice cream. For me and many others this is the deal breaker. On their forums there were a bunch of people who never used Live because they prefer hardware, they certainly will be disappointed that P3 stand alone is not capable of being used to write whole songs without using the computer or massive compromises in the process that it's competition simply doesn't have.

[elxsound]

Mileage obviously varies from user to user. On the Elektron boards I’m seeing some say they like Push 3 over Machine+ and others pointing out the lack of arranger that both MPC and Machine already have.

I also disagree about the loops only thing, but I’m not interested convincing anyone otherwise… Can’t stress that enough. But, especially since you can record for as long needed into Session view it can have different use cases.

I’m definitely a fan of the process of starting on Standalone and finishing in Live. That’s exactly what I wanted.

Not a replacement for a non-feature, but if anyone can’t wait, someone made a pay for M4L scene chainer ($15) for Push 3 https://eclipxe.gumroad.com/l/scenechainer

[machinesworking]

Mileage obviously varies from user to user. On the Elektron boards I’m seeing some say they like Push 3 over Machine+ and others pointing out the lack of arranger that both MPC and Machine already have.

I can't account for Maschine+, Maschine in general is a huge disappointment to me and the hardware has the same global time signature limitation that P3 stand alone has so it never interested me, but I would have to say I don't get why anyone would argue that there's no song features in the MPC? that's just not true. There's no Live like Arrangement page, but I certainly do not expect that from P3 Stand Alone, something like the sequence chaining in the MPC would do, and not some M4L hack. No offense to the guy who created it, that's great, but I would rather see Ableton at least get something as robust as the MPC sequence chaining, in all practicality most of the code is already there with Follow Actions, which again would be nice to see in stand alone.

I fully expect Ableton to address these things, there's no way in hell they want to have all this modularity with Push 3 stand alone go only to people who want to mostly arrange songs on the computer, there's a huge market for essentially a near full featured stand alone DAW, and they're so close to that finish line, I'm certain they will cross it. I'm glad it's great for some of you, but IMO for a lot of us, it's going to be a year or two before it really shines.

[elxsound]

Mileage obviously varies from user to user. On the Elektron boards I’m seeing some say they like Push 3 over Machine+ and others pointing out the lack of arranger that both MPC and Machine already have.

I can't account for Maschine+, Maschine in general is a huge disappointment to me and the hardware has the same global time signature limitation that P3 stand alone has so it never interested me, but I would have to say I don't get why anyone would argue that there's no song features in the MPC? that's just not true. There's no Live like Arrangement page, but I certainly do not expect that from P3 Stand Alone, something like the sequence chaining in the MPC would do, and not some M4L hack. No offense to the guy who created it, that's great, but I would rather see Ableton at least get something as robust as the MPC sequence chaining, in all practicality most of the code is already there with Follow Actions, which again would be nice to see in stand alone.

I fully expect Ableton to address these things, there's no way in hell they want to have all this modularity with Push 3 stand alone go only to people who want to mostly arrange songs on the computer, there's a huge market for essentially a near full featured stand alone DAW, and they're so close to that finish line, I'm certain they will cross it. I'm glad it's great for some of you, but IMO for a lot of us, it's going to be a year or two before it really shines.

Just to clarify, nobody said the song feature wasn’t there on MPC… They said exactly as you’ve said that it is there. They’ve pointed out that it’s a shame MPC has it, but Push 3doesn’t. Especially on the Elektron boards where a lack of song mode was a long running joke, until hell froze over and they added it (Digitakt, Syntakt…) so to see P3 out, with no native option was definitely a disappointment (for me too).

I also agree that it’ll get addressed, and I would not be surprised if it takes that long too.

[drez]

I'm glad it's great for some of you, but IMO for a lot of us, it's going to be a year or two before it really shines.

Or, you could have said this instead?

I'm glad that is shines for most of you, but for some of us, its going to be a year or two before it really shines

My guess is if they sell out even after everybody now knows that it doesn't have sig changes and scene change automation, then they will be ok with their decision to implement it later and that people are still using it anyway. IMO the reason they released it in it's current incarnation is because they know that the majority of their customers don't need that functionality. It's about prioritization, and I'm guessing that, over 20+ years, they've done enough customer research to know what the primary needs are for the majority of their user base. WE can only assume, but it is literally their business to know. And they are very successful, so I believe they've done their market research.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be disappointed that is missing the items that you have listed and not want to buy it, but I don't think we know whether it was a good decision or not for Ableton to leave those out before releasing. If they sell out...they made the right call. If they have Push 3's sitting in a warehouse because nobody wants them, then they will have chosen poorly.

[machinesworking]

Just to clarify, nobody said the song feature wasn’t there on MPC… They said exactly as you’ve said that it is there. They’ve pointed out that it’s a shame MPC has it, but Push 3doesn’t. Especially on the Elektron boards where a lack of song mode was a long running joke, until hell froze over and they added it (Digitakt, Syntakt…) so to see P3 out, with no native option was definitely a disappointment (for me too).

I also agree that it’ll get addressed, and I would not be surprised if it takes that long too.

OK that makes sense, there is some gripping on the MPC forums about how the Akai Force has an actual arrangement in it's screen with some basic editing etc. That's what I thought was part of that. On that note the MPC line should get the Force's arranger. (the Force has all the issues that Maschine+ has IMO so it was never an option to me)

[machinesworking]

I'm glad it's great for some of you, but IMO for a lot of us, it's going to be a year or two before it really shines.

Or, you could have said this instead?

I'm glad that is shines for most of you, but for some of us, its going to be a year or two before it really shines

My guess is if they sell out even after everybody now knows that it doesn't have sig changes and scene change automation, then they will be ok with their decision to implement it later and that people are still using it anyway. IMO the reason they released it in it's current incarnation is because they know that the majority of their customers don't need that functionality. It's about prioritization, and I'm guessing that, over 20+ years, they've done enough customer research to know what the primary needs are for the majority of their user base. WE can only assume, but it is literally their business to know. And they are very successful, so I believe they've done their market research.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be disappointed that is missing the items that you have listed and not want to buy it, but I don't think we know whether it was a good decision or not for Ableton to leave those out before releasing. If they sell out...they made the right call. If they have Push 3's sitting in a warehouse because nobody wants them, then they will have chosen poorly.

Well to be flatly honest, I was being civil, you're looking for a debate here. Yes, in fact Ableton are a successful company. No, not every move they've made has been successful. We all know they will eventually sort this out, or at least those of us like myself that have been using Live for 20 years do. The question is not whether they know what they're doing, or even if they sell a lot of copies, it's what it does to their reputation.

I do not know what year or how long you've been using Live, but the introduction of Max 4 Live in version 8, which eventually did work out for them, was so badly done that they publicly apologized and spent more time than ever before between major releases making sure Live went back to being one of the most stable DAWs out there. It has to be noted that this was also the period that some key developers defected and started Bitwig. They do in fact like any company made up of humans fumble things occasionally.

I'm not here to root against them, I've converted plenty of people to using Live, attended dozens of meet ups with reps, and generally think of them as a great company. I'm just not averse to criticizing their moves. IMO though I think there will be a bit of a public drubbing, not unlike what happened around version 8.

[drez]

Well to be flatly honest, I was being civil, you're looking for a debate here.

Show me where I haven't been civil? Please quote it here so I know what you are referencing. I see no discourse here. We have differing opinions and we've been discussing our viewpoints.

[wash_hands]
But, I concede to you. My interaction on the subject with you will end here.
[/wash_hands]