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Written by Ableton Certified Trainer, Will Doggett
There are tons of MIDI controllers available to musicians and worship leaders. Foot controllers, iPad apps, keyboard controllers, drum controllers - It seems like there's a controller from every company for every type of musician. How often does a company attempt to create a new instrument? That's precisely what Ableton is attempting to do with "Push." Checkout our video from NAMM with Dennis Desantis from Ableton and check out this new instrument for music creation and performance from Ableton.
I was immediately drawn to Push when I heard Ableton announce it at their Keynote this past fall. I think what got me really interested and excited was the fact that from the beginning it was never a controller. It's always been an "instrument". I'll admit I'm a bit burned out from the over abundance of controllers available today. Now, I'll be the first to admit I like gear as much as the next gear obsessed guitar playing, computer musician-but I'm more of a "learn what you have" type then a "get the latest and greatest". So that being the case Push has had me interested for sometime now.
WHAT CAN PUSH DO?
Creating Drum Beats:
There are two main ways to create beats and loops with Push. You can record in your pattern in real time by playing the lower left hand side of the pads. If you're familiar with Live you'll notice these 16 pads represent the drum rack interface. You can record your beat live-all at once, or one piece at a time overdubbing each part.
Alternatively you can also enter beats in a traditional step sequencing fashion. This allows you to "pencil" in your beat, one piece at a time against a time based grid.
You can access both means of note input via the same page, so there's no need to switch views. It's also worth noting that all the pads are velocity and pressure sensitivity. Those two features plus the ability to quantize and adjust swing and loop length of your clip make programming beats in Live via Push the best and most natural way to program beats in Ableton.
Creating Harmony/Melody:
What really has me interested is, creating lead and pad sounds on Push. For melodic and harmonic input via Push Ableton
is attempting to invent a new way to record those parts in your song. As a pitched instrument Push can best be described as a pad based guitar with a very active capo. The nature of how pianos and guitars are laid out, typically require different approaches when transposing chord professions and melodic lines.
Because of the nature of guitar, it's very "pattern" based. To transpose up a Whole Step I simply move said pattern up two frets. I'm keeping the same shapes but getting new notes. On Piano transposition means learning new shapes for each key and adjusting your shapes depending on what key you're in. Add the ability to play with a capo on guitar and the transposition possibilities are endless. The work vs effort ratio for guitar is much lower.
Push works in a similar way as a guitar in that, once you learn one pattern you can move it around the instrument and create the same chords but in different keys. You can change from in-key mode that only allows you to play notes diatonic to the key you're working in( I'm still waiting for this on guitar!!) and chromatic mode, which functions very much like a piano.
You can change the key and scale that's laid out on the pads so you can virtually play any type of music you'd like on Push. Playing in In-Key seems to be a very quick and effective way to capture simple chord progressions.
What remains to be seen is how comfortable musicians will be with creating Harmony and Melody and melody via drum pads. It's very natural and expected to play and create drum pars via pads, but will we find it as effective for melodies and chords?
It's interesting to note how Dennis mentions in the video that it took him a while to learn the head to Giant Steps on Push. Unlike other Controllers there definitely is an element of "learning how to create" music on this one. We don't just have some knobs and faders it's a whole new way of inputting music into Live.
Controlling Ableton Live:
Not only do we have the ability to record sounds into Live In a unique way, but we also get the ability to tweak and customize our sounds as well as tweaking the layout of our song. Once you get your parts recorded you can tweak the encoders at the top of push that come Pre-mapped to parameters each instrument that allow you to create the perfect sound.
Want a new sound? Browse Lives Library (over 3,000 new sounds loaded into Live Suite 9) directly from Push. You can also trigger and stop clips in Session view via push. This is a very innovative and efficient way to create your song piece by piece in Session View clip by clip before laid ring into arrangement.
I haven't found any videos yet specifically mentioning this ability but based on info on the Ableton site you can also adjust volume and basic mix settings for your track via Push as well. This ability plus the ability to control instrument based parameters all from Push, make it a very powerful music creation machine.
The best part?
All our ideas are recorded and stored in an Ableton Live set where we can edit and perfect our song on our computer.
So, the real question becomes, how can worship leaders make use of Push and is it practical?
I think it can be an incredibly effective and useful tool for music creation and production. Add in the fact that Live 9 includes the ability to convert audio to MIDI and you may never use a "controller" ever again.
Creating beats on push is clearly a far superior experience to creating beats with your computer keyboard. As mentioned before the verdict is out on whether creating melodic and harmonic parts on Push will be effective.
With the ability to lay in beats and control Live's most commonly used features Ableton has me hooked.
Push is a new instrument I can't wait to learn.
[youtube_sc url="http://youtu.be/h05qzvjOX5M"]
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