Transcription
Hi and welcome. I'm Ben from Ableton and I'm excited to be kicking off this very first deep dive into beatmaking with Push. In just a moment, uh we're going to be hearing from Jesse Terry who's Ableton's head of hardware with a little history and background on Push. After that, Datson has been cooking up some of his favorite techniques using Push and he's going to make some music and show off some tricks. We'll share some links in the chat for anyone not familiar with him, but let me say we're in for a treat. All the tracks we've been playing before this session are all produced by Datson and we're honored to have them here with us today. Let's get started.
Hey everyone, I'm Jesse. I'm the head of hardware at Ableton. Like Ben said, uh I work remotely here in Philadelphia and I've been at Ableton for a little over 20 years. Um I'm a beatmaker, guitarist, and synthesizer nerd like many of you. And um first I'm going to take you through some of the history of Push, how it came about, and then I want to get into kind of my setup and what excites me about Push and some of the new things that are coming in 12.2. So I'm just going to share my screen here. All right. All right.
So first off, many of you already know what this is. Uh but what is Push? It's our flagship hardware instrument. It's a product designed for making music from scratch with your hands, for creating beats, melodies, harmonies, working with samples, and exploring a large library of sounds and playing expressively. So, I think for for many different people, push is a different thing. For me, it's kind of all of those things, and some of you will find combinations of these things. It's um it's my expressive synthesizer when I'm using the instruments inside of Live. It's a sampler. It's a drum machine. It's a multi-track recording studio. It can be your live show, a controller for live. Um, it can control your external synthesizers, and it could be a hub for your modular gear. So, I'm going to get into a little bit about most of that stuff later. Um, but first, let me take you into a little of the history.
All right. So, predating my time at Ableton back in the early 2000s, there were the beginnings of live controllers that were dedicated to live. On the left, we have Robert Hanka, who's one of our founders, mono first mono deck, which as you can see, got a lot of use. And then you started to see some of these other things like the U control, which got like a face for using with live. Still a great controller many years later. And then kind of after that when I joined was about the time when uh controllers were just exploding. So there were tons and tons of controllers out there. Not many really dedicated to one DAW or other. They were kind of broadly worked with different things. Um and then the monome came which was also really important in the history of push and other products. I think just that that grid of buttons could do so many different things. It could be a sequencer, a sample chopper, lots of different things. I think around 2007 you started to see really more dedicated products for live but these were pretty much custommade for the most part like Robert's Monodec 2 which is amazing Richie Hottton's controller live control live and DJ Sasha's Maven controller which were really rugged cool products for performing live and um that's where I got into hardware was about this time I was working um on live light with different partners and things like that and um this got me in close touch with Akai Professional and with Akai Professional and a man named Glenn Darcy over there we collaborated to make the APC40 which was the first real dedicated controller for Ableton Live and uh at the same around the same time the Novation Launchpad we worked with them on that and um so these were two were the first things that were really made for Ableton Live.
At this time though, I was really um you know, I come from an MPC 2000XL background long ago and um at that time I was really interested in making something that would work really well with um with drum rack in live. So we were coming up with different ideas and you know I of course wanted them to be standalone. I wanted to have samples on the display all these things that I'd had in the past but we we had to start kind of step by step. These are some early sketches I made to um sort of complement the APC40, which weren't the direction we ended up going because one day as I was deep into designing a product for drum racks, our our boss and founder Ghart said, you know, it needs to work for melodies and samples as well. And so I was like, great, now I have to go back to the drawing board. But that was really fun and exciting to kind of have this bigger challenge to make push into something that could be not just drums, but kind of all of production.
So, I think back in our push one days, we had these images of like Push being a product that could work on the grid or off the grid. So, whether you're a step sequencer or you're playing with your hands on pads, we wanted Push to be able to do both of those things and build on the legacy of those products. And then, as I said, Ghard wanted it to also play melody and harmony across many octaves. Um, but we wanted it to be able to fit into a backpack. And we wanted, I think, the melody and harmony part to work in a way that you didn't have to learn every key and scale in uh like you do on a piano, having to learn the black and white keys to play the same chord in 12 different keys. So, some of my early sketches of Push were colorful and ugly um and uh luckily we have great industrial designers uh to help us um make it pretty and timeless as well as functional. So, you can see here I had two touch strips. There's different ways it was going to go. At the time, we had a two two uh line LCD screen. And um I think to to pitch this at the company, I needed to really make a prototype of it. And it was a real struggle to make something this big as a prototype. So, I went to work with a hacksaw and uh some Legos and glued a bunch of buttons together to make the first push prototype. I've got it over here actually at the moment. But um yeah, this was just sawed up different products. It wasn't velocity sensitive. My wife was always asking me if I was really working as I was digging through the Lego bin to move buttons around and figure out what was the best layout for it. Uh and then we got to our first prototype. So this is a non-working prototype from AAI. I show it here because it also had something cool with it. One of the engineers at Akaya was using his pocket uh graphing calculator and he was like, "It should have a cover that's also a stand for it." And so we made that and if you look at push one, there's a line on it. But we realized about a month before release that sliding it in would break the wall off the push. So we had to pull that unfortunately, but it was a cool idea at the time. I wish we had done it. But you'll still see on push one that little groove where that would have fit.
So we get to push one 2012. We have four lines of LCDs which I think is still a classy and good-looking product and um still works well today and um uh then but at the time it was our first stage. this is what we could get to in a certain amount of development time. And um we knew we wanted to do more and we wanted to spend a lot more time on it, which is why we moved from working with Akai to making it ourselves because we knew we had one product we really wanted to focus on where they have a ton. And I think they did an awesome job on push one, but that got us to push two, which also has this great um uh LCD display on it where you can really see samples and you can see filter cut off and envelopes and things like that. And we spent a lot of time really tweaking the devices and different views to get uh great stuff showing on that display. But still, here we are in 2015 and we know uh since the beginning, we wanted this to be standalone and we wanted more expression. So that's what took us a very long time to do when you know that push 3 came out in 2023. I think the two big parts of it are um are making it standalone of course where we have actually like live working inside of it so you can transfer your projects back and forth um and have it more portable. Um I think actually the main reason I like standalone now is surprising to me. It's more in my studio with all my gear here, which I'll show you in a second. I love to turn off my computer because it it keeps me from uh being on eBay at 11:00 p.m. and buying another module or something that uh keeps me from making music. So, this standalone really helps me to focus and keep away from the distractions of my computer. Then the expressive side of it, I think, is to make uh make it so that electronic instruments like this can get some of that same soul and feel into your playing like you would have on a guitar. And if you're guitarists out there know, you can tell one guitarist from another just by listening to their finger on the VA of a string. And you know, I don't think we're there yet, but I think that possibility is there for musicians to really get their own voice with the way they're using something as expressive as Push 3 is.
So, who makes Push? I'm just going to give you a little insight into our team. We've got a hard hardware engineering department, which is does firmware and mechanical electrical engineering. Um, talks to our factories uh where we make it to make sure it works as well as we want. We have a push software and design team who are working on the new features for different updates, a supply chain team to deal with things like tariffs and getting it uh getting it from our production area to the different warehouses to finally get it to you. And then there's a variety of us who are sort of in between all of this working on project management, user research, um customs and things like that. And in this picture, I think the push software and design team is always working on push. And then everyone else is kind of splitting their time between push and move. And so we also have a move software team that's that's working only on the move features. And we we do sync up with these. So we have a lot of things in common between move and push. And we want them to make sense when you're moving from one product to the other.
This is uh where I am right now. This is my studio. Lots of synthesizers, external audio gear. It's always an in andout process of new stuff, new instruments. I love keyboards, guitars, um synthesizers, modular a bit, and then um yeah, so this is just this is where I'm going to be showing you stuff from today. And uh I put tried to put together a diagram of how it all works. And then I realized that this would be even more complicated if I show all the ways things cross. But basically, I've got push connected to a USB hub, which goes to some of my MP synthesizers, and then it also goes to a MIDI interface that goes to my older synthesizers. I've got that all either coming into a patchbay or into an ADAT interface where I can extend the uh ins and outs of push. And then I also send this to external effects. I've got turntables coming in, keyboards and guitars coming in. And I'm kind of patching some of this stuff if it's not just going in all the way. And I have a second setup with ADAT which goes to a modular setup over here which is um uses an expert sleepers ES10 for me to do all the ins and outs from that.
So that was uh that's the beginning of the thing. Now I'm going to make some music and and show you a little bit about how I how I use the different parts of Push and what they mean to me. It's not going to be comprehensive, but I think you'll um you'll hopefully get something out of it. I think Ben, you can stop sharing that screen if you want at this point.
All right. So, let me get my my view up here. And what I've got here, what I'm doing today, I'm going to do um connected to my computer. Everything I'm doing today, I would normally do it standalone, but I want you to be able to see into some of these devices. So, that's why I've put some of that here for you.
So, I think first of all, Push is my my drum machine. And um it can be used as we showed before to sequence drums, to play drums one at a time and overdub them or you can finger drum all at once. And then we've added uh expressive drums which is something I really love about it now which is um so I can take like I have a I have sort of an acoustic kit here and I can take play a drum and um play kind of the inbetweens of the high hat being closed or open. So if I have a really tight high hat, I can open it all the way up from really closed to really tightly. And you know, I'm not I don't exactly hit it, but it just gives a great feel to it. And I sort of get an idea. So it's going to give me like And these are all multi-layered velocity sensitive samples. So, I've got probably like I don't know 30 or 40 samples across different uh velocity levels and different different um recordings or articulations of a high hat in there. And you can do all this in sampler or with multiple simplers. Um we have other references for how you can do this later. Um, but uh there's some cool things about this layout too is if you press the layout button, you can use this as your sequencer and have a loop selector over here. You could have it be your 16 velocities. So I can hit that and [music] play that high hat at different velocities, which is nice if you want to do like a Um, and then in 12.2, we've also added 16 pitches. [music] So, um, that's been long requested. Really fun to use, especially on 808s if you want to do like a baseline or something inside of your drum rack. And then, um, 64 pads. I leave it here a lot because often I'll have tons of drums here. In this setup, I've just got one here. Um, but let me make a beat now actually. So, [music] when you're capturing, it's important to hit that one at the end. It helps a lot. [music] So, I've got a little beat here. Um, one thing I really love about this is the editing on here. So, I can really go in and I like this even better than MIDI clip view in uh in Live. So, let me go over to here, this view, so you can see a little closer where I am. I love this because I can see the exact nudge of different different drums in there. And, um, when I'm working with high hats, I'm often trying to get that second offbeat high hat to have a little nudge to it. And this way, I can sort of make sure that it's consistent along the way. Now, I'm I love finger drumming and I like recording, but I'm never perfect. So, I love to quantize, but I don't like to quantize all the way. If I hold that, I can quantize this 90%, which is usually where I do 70 to 90%. So, if I quantize it that way, now the other thing we've got going on [music] is uh the groove pool in 12.2. And we've wanted this since the beginning, but we finally got it, which is great. I can add my different grooves to it. That's too much groove for me. But if I take it down a bit. [music] And now I'm gonna cheat and speed up a bit. Get a kind of Tony Allen feel to this. [music] Now you can hear how those high hats really like move. They're kind of going open and closed and really get it like [music] a great swing to it. Not just in the swing rhythmically, but in the the velocity of it and the open and close of the high hat. So that's part of why I really love it as a drum machine.
Um, now let me see. I think um the next thing it is for me a lot is a multittrack recorder. So um I'm using it often just record my keyboards, my guitars. Um I'll take it downstairs and I have an ADAT interface there and I have my um my drum set set up with uh you know microphones that are attached to an ADAT interface and that way I can just always just plug right in and um uh and multitrack record right into Push just by bringing it to my basement with one cable. Um, so right now I'm going to try to play some uh clavinet on here. I'm not a great keyboard player. Uh, that's why I made push. So, um, I'll try my best, but I can always quantize it later. And when I'm recording audio, the thing I like to do is just start recording and, um, and I'll use the fixed length to loop the last few measures of whatever I record. So, I just jam until I get something right and then I press fixed length rather than trying to make myself get it on the on the first try. So, Heat. [music] Heat. >> [music] >> Good enough for now. So, I press that fixed length button. And because I have that fixed length button set here now to I have it at recording length at four bars, it just loops the last uh four bars of that recording that I do. Um, which is really fun to quickly get going with stuff. So, I'm going to set this to maybe two bar loop. And now I got something like, [music] and don't forget in Live, you can also quantize audio, too. So, I can press the quantize button and get that a little tighter if I want to. And um [music] might want to take it to a And I could also add that groove to it too if I wanted to. So, like let's let's try that. Oh, it's already got the groove on it. [music] I think I don't want the groove on it because I was playing along to the groove. [music] All right.
So, now that's I've showed you my drum machine. It's my multittrack recorder. Um, but it's also for me uh my sampler. And I do sampling a little there's different ways you can do it. You can load a sample into a simpler onto a drum rack, but uh for me the way the best way I like to do it is to load a sample into an audio clip cuz since 11.3 our auto warping is really good, especially for like old soul stuff and funk stuff that doesn't have a metronome to it. So if I load something here, um uh I'm just going to load this sample I made here. And um what I why I like doing it here is because it auto warps it really nicely. And then I can also set the loop before I put it into a simpler and just saves me a step to do it this way. Um, uh, let's see. So, I'm gonna set this about here. And I'll show you what I mean by set it. So, I have the loop set now. And I'm going to solo this track so we can hear it. [music] Set that to complex pro. Now, I can use that loop position to scroll through and just hear different parts of the sample. So, I think I'm going to take that first part. I like [music] now I could just use that and have the loop and that that would be the end of the day. But um I love to convert it to a simpler. I could here when I hold the convert button I can do it through drum pad. I can convert it from audio to MIDI. But I'm going to do it to a simpler today. And there's a lot of ways you can use simpler on it. But why I love this now is because it's warped in there. Um when I hit it and re-trigger it, it's going to be at different pitches. The time stays the same. So like, oh, solo that track. [music] But, uh, that's cool. But with pushes pads, you can do even more to it. You can actually change the pitch of it while it's playing without re-triggering it, too. So, I can do a lot of fun kind of wild ideas you can get to there. Um, the other thing is these slicing modes and I'm just going to go through those real quick. So, the first one is transient. So, [music] really gets to every little last beat of it, but I can turn that sensitivity down if I want less transients. But, I generally don't use that unless I'm working with like a drum loop that I want to split into all its different drum parts. But what I like to do often is do manual slicing. I think they call it lazy chop where you uh with manual slicing I can just go. [music] And of course I can zoom in on any of those slices and get them exactly right. but probably even more than I do the manual slicing because it's warped. I love to do the beat slicing. Um, and this is fun because like if this is four quarter notes, I can just sort of play anywhere around in here and it'll sound good. So like So, oh, here's another part that's great for me is through. When you put it to through, it'll just keep playing until you play something else. >> [music] >> and then of course I can capture that if I want. And I've got that. I can go in there. Um I think I didn't get it quite right. Let me try that again. So um let's see. So [music] that should work. Change that offset. [music] Quantize it a bit. Now, this is a little much to add to that other stuff I've been doing. So, it's my opportunity to show you the new auto filter, which is really a lot of fun. Um, it takes some of those low frequencies out so it doesn't clash so much with the other stuff I'm doing. And I'm going to take that auto filter. And, um, one thing that's really fun about the new auto filter in 12.2 to is the DJ single knob which is um so here let's hear it goes all the way from left to right where you can cut out all the highs or all the lows [music] and I can go and I can take that and um I can automate that if I want but it's I like to use the LFO a lot too which is [music] sync it up put it to quarter note now. Okay.
So, we got through it's my sampler. It's my multittrack recorder. It's my drum machine. It's also my synthesizer in many ways. And one thing I really love about um using uh push as a synthesizer is like for me on a keyboard I never really got the hang of doing the pitchbend and modulation stuff. So um now with that under one finger it's really a lot easier for me. So let me just set this to the scale that I was in G Dorian on the clav. Um and now I can do things like [music] I can set that filter cut off so it's just under one finger. I can do the like the sort of funk sort of [music] and if I set it to in key also like then it just [music] makes it a lot easier where in the past I'd be managing this two hand stuff going on. Uh so let me take it back though to chromatic and I'll add a little oh another thing I really love with Cayman 12.2 is the um variations. So, I just have one analog synth here, but I put on different presets. I just change the presets how I like them. So, like I have [music] So, it's not exactly um changing the preset. It's just changing a lot of the parameters of the device. Um so, I can do it in real time really quickly like that. So, let me add a part to this. [music] >> [music] >> I got something in there somewhere. Not there. [music] Okay. So, as I'm going through this and now, of course, this works polyonically with other synthesizers, too. You can play each note of a chord will give you really special kind of expressive sounds and um really kind of bring back that sound that we had in the early 80s with like Michael Jackson and Toto on a Stevie Wonder on a CS80 where each note has its own distinctions and things like that. Um, okay.
Now, uh, another thing that I really love though with, um, uh, with is on the expressive chords device that we we're adding now. And this is something I've wanted for a long time as well here. Um, the new expressive chords device, it's a Max for live device. And, um, it comes with a bunch of different presets for it. So, um, where each of the each of these is a different chord, but I'm going to show you about how special it is on push three. So now this one pad I get a chord [music] and if I hit uh if I go into the device and let's go to the modulation and go to strum. Now I can set it so that the slide affects the strum. So if I hit the bottom of the pad it's the full chord. The [music] top of the pad it's a strum but not more than that. These are the articulations of it. So I can strum in the other way. [music] And let me go back to live real quick so you can see how this looks in the device because there's the articulations are really kind of crazy that you can get to um where down here if I hit these different articulations it's all different kinds of strums you can do to it and you can make your own and you can make them go up or down. Um but I'll keep it simple for now. So um let me get to a different scene now. I just want to have an empty scene and make something with this on the um on the drum part. Um and hang on a second. I'm just over in session view. I'm going to duplicate this clip. Play from here. And I [music] want to set this track. Make sure I'm on the right clip. Okay. [music] So now if I play something here, let's hear it. >> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> So that let me get it to the right part of the loop. [music] >> [music] >> And this chord set is one of my own that I did. U what I really love about the um expressive chord devices you can use it. You can create your own chord maps by importing from a um MIDI clip. So, uh, for instance, I just took a Royair's song and I, um, and I went and found I audio to MIDI it, found the chords I liked on it, and if I can see them in here. I can't seem to get into this chord. Oh, yeah. So, then I audied them, and I put them all onto uh, the quarter note, and then I imported in. I love doing this with jazz piano. Like, take a Bill Evans or Herby Hancock. uh find the chords you like with audio to MIDI and then um then just press that little import button down here and it brings them all in across your chord map. You can also do that with your own songs too. Like if you're playing live and you know you have like eight eight chords in a first set, you could bring those in and perform with one finger instead of learning all the different chord shapes and things which I also encourage you to do. That's a lot of fun too. Um um but uh so now let's say I've got a couple of these ideas together. You know, I would normally have probably, you know, four or five scenes, maybe more.
Um another thing we've added in 12.2 is follow actions, but it kind of undersells actually how great this can be for um follow actions are really fun if you want to do interesting algorithmic stuff in your live set. But for me, this is great for as a songwriting tool. So I can hold the play button, hit the master track, and now that just enables follow actions on all these. So when I play this, however many scenes I have, it's going to play the next ones and loop back to the others. And if I go to clip view, I can see that I can have those clips play at different I can have them play once. I can have them play four times. So you can really put together the structure of your song and things like this. All right. So then if I do that now, if I play this, it's [music] going to automatically get ready to play this scene the next time I go forward. [music] [music] [music] And um yeah, that's how I get going. That's how I'm connecting kind of everything in my studio. Obviously, there's more synths, more ideas, more variations you want to do. and the duplicate button, the new button. Those are your friends when you're doing this kind of stuff. Um, another thing I do a lot that I'm didn't add here today is um controlling all these synthesizers. Like I have a chroma polaris over there that's too far for me to reach at the moment. So I went to maxforlive.com and surely somebody had made a controller for it. So now I have basically an external instrument that's setting MIDI from my USB hub to my MIDI interface to my synthesizer with the audio coming all the way back in. And then I have a controller too for it. So I can change the presets. I can [music] and I can go in and change really all the parameters of that synth. Now it depends which synth you have and But you'll find this is a great way for me. It's just a focus area where I focus here and let everything else around come into it. And yeah, that's that's a look into what I'm doing with it. And um thanks a lot for listening. Um I'd love to hear your questions. Anything else you got? I didn't get into modular. That's a whole another uh probably another deep dive at some point.
>> So we do have some questions in the chat already. Um, so there's one question about getting samples from a smartphone into Push 3, uh, without a computer like, uh, >> is there a workflow similar to like Dropbox or Google Drive that you might recommend? >> I mean, I recommend this, which is, uh, is a lightning to quarter inch cable that I have with me at all times. That's one thing I like doing it. But um uh I mean there are I guess there are probably opportunities with note and cloud actually, but I haven't done it this way. Generally like I I loaded enough samples to last me forever onto my uh onto my push and I don't really need it. But um if I do want something from Spotify, I use this cable personally that I got on Amazon. So >> cool. Uh we had one question about I guess maybe related to that you you maybe can't tell us this but is there any uh potential future for a push manager a bit like the move manager? >> Uh yes there's definitely potential for it. Um I can't I can't guarantee it or but um I understand the um I understand the wish and I think some of it is a little uh can be a little fiddly the way it is today. I think there's benefits to Push's way and there's benefits to Mo's way and we need to get better at getting the best of both products into both products I think. >> Cool. Um, and the last one we have is really about upgradability, but also how that kind of relates to repairability. Someone's asking um, you know, if they had an issue with Push that wasn't an upgrade, what the repair options are like for them and maybe how the design strategy affects that. Yeah, I mean we made it to to be as uh to have certain parts of it as repairable as possible. So like the jog wheel, which is something that you know you use a lot. Um and that's really its own thing that can be replaced. Um uh as is the processor, the battery, the SSD drive. Those are obviously pretty easy to replace. Um we're working on repair options uh for like if you break an encoder or things like that. Um, we should have news on that sometime soon. Um, but we want it to be repairable. We don't want you to have to throw it away or anything like that, especially for something that you've invested a lot in like this. So, I hope to have more news on that soon. >> Cool. Awesome. Okay. Uh, if there's no more questions, shall we go ahead and hear from Datson? Uh, oh, one just came in. Hey, can we get or is there somewhere guides on building Max devices specifically for Push? >> Uh, I'd have to look into where the guides are. Like, this is kind of the only area of I'm not a Max designer myself. Usually, I I um I can download somebody else's thing and open it up and uh poke around and hope to do things the way I want them, like I did with this Polaris controller I have on here. Um uh I uh sorry, wrong one. Yeah, this one. Um I guess what is it? It's uh live banks is the is the area you want to be to order your parameters the way you want. And we want this all to be better soon. We're working on on improving this. But um live banks is really the area you want to get to. And I would recommend just download find a synth that you have. Go to maxforlive.com find something there and edit it. tried poking around. Um, but there probably are guides. I just don't know. I'm not sure myself, but I'll look I'll look into it. >> Sure. So, two more questions just came in. Um, one is to do with the future of push in terms of accessibility. Uh, any plans to support the screen reader functionality for for Push 3 in standalone mode? Yeah, I can't give I can't give uh uh any detailed information on it at the moment, but I I hear the wish and I've met others that also asked for that and um yeah, we'll do our best. Um it's it's complicated I think. Uh it's better on Move than it is on push for sure. Um so I I hope we do better there. >> Cool. Uh of course there's the the annual question about ARM for push. Uh yeah, it's uh complicated uh and because live doesn't natively run on ARM, but it is something we're aware of, you know, and I think um uh there are certainly benefits to ARM. Uh but this this processor we have here is really the fastest and best one we could possibly get at the time for making this. But uh there's definitely benefits to ARM as well. We will see. >> Cool. So, there are some more coming in. Uh, but I wonder if we should head over to Datson and we can answer the rest of the questions in the chat. >> Awesome, Jesse. Great. >> Thank you so much. >> And now, >> thank you all. I'll uh >> I'll go over to the chat.
>> Hey, what's up y'all? Am I coming in? I'm coming in loud and clear here. Awesome. Awesome. Uh I'm Datsson, y'all. And uh I'm just gonna go in on my process a little bit on a live beat and uh and take you through it. So I'm just going to take it right off the hop and we'll go like this and do a little overhead. Okay. [music] [singing] direction through the What if we looking in the wrong direction? [music] [music] >> [music] >> Yeah. [music] Yeah. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. Yeah, [music] [music] [music] >> [music] >> Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. [music] Yeah. [music] Heat. [music] >> [music] >> All right, cool. Sweet. I wanted to kind of give an uh an overview of like you know how I actually got to that stage. Um you know oftentimes the way I've been using push and it's funny because I'm actually quite new to push as as a controller because you know I've been using Ableton Live since Live 4. So uh it was learned on a computer versus applying it to the pads now. So, what's really neat about it for me is that you I've really really one of the biggest things for me recently has been that uh that capture because it's allowed me to kind of approach, you know, I'll go through and make my chop, which I can go go into in a second here with uh simpler and just doing like a duplicate uh manual chop process. But with this capture, it's allowed me to actually like play through once I've kind of flushed out all the chops and uh and where I'm at with it. It's allowed me to kind of like play through it and find points that I'm like, "Okay, this is really cool." And if I realize I'm like, "Oh, damn. I've been, you know, this was a really cool eight bars." I can actually click that and it I mean, you saw it right there. Like I didn't have any clips loaded at all yet or anything. that was, you know, entirely live, which is just something that's um incredible to me that that it's able to, you know, capture the BPM and it set it to 86 and uh kind of puts me in a position where I'm like, okay, I have like the the a really solid foundation for what will become a full track. And uh recently I've been setting it up in a way where uh I I retain my drum position always the same way where it's like kick snare. Uh let me unmute this here and make sure I have I don't have anything uh loaded up here. Okay, sweet. That's awesome. Effects. Let's see. Yeah, I definitely have that on. Okay. So, uh I always have kick, snare, closed hat, open hat, sometimes an auxiliary snare, and uh some, you know, again, toms potentially. What's uh what's funny is watching Jesse speak earlier, I was like, damn, I really got to get expressive drums on here. Uh because they sounded incredible, you know? And uh yeah, so now uh when I go into my simpler, the way I generally start it is off of one pad [music] >> and and I'll kind of start finding my way through the sample of how I um you know like to just duplicate a pad like this in this instance. Let me see if I can uh go to one that [music] >> Okay, so this is the original sample, one of my own samples. Um, and what I can do now is just go in and um I'll delete all of these and just have the single sample start. So generally what I'll do is find that start point and I just duplicate it and I continue [music] on you know >> and I continue [music] on and obviously I have things like my uh my choke group set on the that drum rack because I want the one pad to chop to cut the next one. So [music] check it out here. [music] [music] >> Maybe we can make something fresh really quick. [music] >> I like those parts like that. in the [singing] in the [music] wrong direction. >> Yep. [music] >> Through the past we see uncover. [music] [singing] >> Yeah, we got it. Okay. [music] >> Okay, let's go back to this one now. There we go. [music] [music] >> And one thing I got set up is um all my simplers here are mapped uh for the transpose knob into the drum rack just as a macro. So I can kind of, you know, on the fly [music] you know, [music] and I mean that's pretty sick. Even that little cut is [music] >> Yeah, I like it pitched up. [music] [music] >> [music] >> Okay, that's sick. So, in in this instance, I would like delete my previous clips like this, and we could go in and try capturing that little section for now. Like, [singing] [music] oh, I still got these ones in. Hold on up here. There we go. >> [music] >> Boom. Yeah, I like that a lot. So, uh, in these cases, I would take this and start kind of arranging it further. Uh, but I've been loving just kind of slowly adding elements over top of it. you know, this sample in particular has um it already has the bass in it and elements like that where I don't feel like I really need to add any. Uh but the neat thing is having these, you know, tracks for me, I've always been so used to working within uh one, you know, 16 pad group that it's allowed me to really start expanding on like what I'm actually putting in my beats uh with, you know, the faded keys thing. So in this instance, I actually have uh an external effect routed on it's called pedals. Uh an external effect routed for you know certain situations like this where I have uh the only way I can show it I think is like this. But right here I have like a little pedal setup of a microcosm and things like that where I can and kind of get like you know extra outboard stuff. So, [music] so the cool thing is Like again, it allows me to route the audio out through the pedals and then I'm able to just kind of create these um you know, loops and and ideas that form this what to me feels like a full track. So, um yeah, you know, like uh it's been really neat for me. It's been a really cool uh sort of growth for me in expanding all that. So again, the capture button, man, that's been such a huge thing for me. And h having this access to like map effects, you know, for the group, which allow again those little [music] Let's see if I got my kick routed still. Yep. Yep. So like these little effects So, it's neat for me. This new DJ, honestly, the auto filter, the And I love that Jesse covered it. I was sitting here watching his segment and just being like, "Yes." Um, the the one knob filter has been so fun. You know, it's such a quick access, quick filter. or it does it without really like clipping the bottom or top end that way. So, um yeah, I've been really loving this. I've been really loving it. So, yeah, if anybody's got any questions about the process or anything, I I might have missed some if there were any earlier. Uh I tried to keep my eye on the uh on the chat, but yeah, man. I I really see myself continuing to just build this way and and it's funny cuz as I'm like, you know, the other day I was chopping it and I added a fifth row and that for me was like a first. Uh again, having been working within that 16 grid. Uh you know, I I start kind of shifting that up and my reach is definitely there. Like I can trigger all the way up to here. So uh you know, this sample is quite simple. So, it it didn't allow for me to go too deep within it, but um yeah, it's been really neat expanding that. And uh you know, instead of having like how I normally have say it's 16 pad machine with the SP, it's cool because now I'm kind of treating part of this as the SP for me with like effects um >> and little things like that and just like a master choke. Um, so yeah, it's it's been really cool. Let me see. I know I saw a question. Do you use any of the MP capabilities on push in your workflow? Uh, the only MP stuff I've used is with like a really simple surface level, really surface level stuff with like with this Misty synth, you know, some synth stuff, but uh not a lot yet, you know. I'm like really what I'm really keen to do now is um the expressive drums within this, you know, having that like sometimes one shots work great. In this instance, I think they work great because I'm not necessarily trying to emulate uh you know, if I was doing more fills or something, I'd want maybe better sounds than just
like, [music] you know, like not that they're bad, it's just having that expressiveness would be really neat within live playing. You know what I mean?
Is it possible to layer drum hits in a rack? Maybe I was not precise enough. If I meant from Push 3 standalone, is it possible? That's a question I think we could ask Ben or Jesse potentially. I'm not sure exactly if you could do that on standalone.
So, uh, which layout? It's on the 64 pads layout. Yeah, the pedal setup. I have to have an actual channel sending out my my main rig sending through and they go back in through the interface so that I can cuz I'm working within Ableton um DAW. So yeah, I feel like the only way to get that happening is by sending it out and sending it back in. So it does require the extra channels.
Cybrain, thank you very much. Jesse Terry, there it is. Yeah, your wish is noted just like that. Wow. That's amazing.
Any tips on how to get good at finger drumming? Um, practice. I know it's the worst thing, but we talking about practice, you know, like really it's something that is just cannot be overlooked and and it's kind of like, you know, I'm a self-taught drummer. Um, I'm a self-taught drummer and I I never really had the um like commitment that I wish I had, you know, uh to the craft. But the way I learned was like playing to music that I liked, you know, and um and I think that that is true with finger drumming as well as like playing uh playing along to it, you know, and there are courses out there like mine, but uh yeah, there are so many great resources and like I said, like finding a a layout that works for you cuz the same layout won't work for everyone. But like I said, like my favorite is uh having kick on pad one, snare, closed hat, open hat. Um because it's just the easiest for me.
I I do this thing that I dubbed the sun technique in live um in live drumming. But uh yeah, I've got a course, School of Live Beats. Um yeah, focuses on really just that. It's like the idea is like having the dexterity and reach to trigger samples while still triggering another pad like um like a high hat. And that's what I was doing if I wanted to go like [music] [music] >> [music] [music] [music] >> So you can kind of like mess around with it and having, you know, like triggering the hat with my thumb and the sample just gives me the feeling of like me sitting behind the kit and not losing that um not losing that sort of pocket and feel of it. So um [laughter]
Kyle Young. Yeah. So, it's really obviously having a background in drumming definitely helps. Um, but it's not required, you know. It's not required because I've seen people who don't have a background in drumming excel at finger drumming, you know, and um there's another Ableton Push user, Rojo, who's also an incredible graphic designer and stuff and uh artist all around, but he uses the push and he's a classically trained pianist, but the way he approaches playing it is just incredible and it's so um so expressive and dynamic and you know,
Yeah. Don't you think the push has too few buttons for live performance? No. No, [laughter] I don't.
Another cool thing would be the possibility to sample directly to a pad in a drum rack. I I agree. That would be really cool. That's a different thing, you know. Yeah, definitely. Finger drumming is still very different than drumming. No doubt, you know. Absolutely agree. I'm you know again I you have to kind of switch your brain to for me playing the kick drum with my left hand um along with the snare you know uh so and there are like you know little patterns that you can learn that kind of help you uh develop those but yeah definitely guys practice practice practice uh that was a long-winded answer for how do I get better at finger drumming. Yep.
Is there a wish list for you personally for the push or move? Um, yeah. You know, like there are things that I I have the Move as well, and I love the Move. It's such a great unit. Uh, and there are so many things that are made on it that work so well. Uh, like if I hit a pad, and the volume, whatever pad I'm holding, it changes the volume. Those are things that are like workflow things that I love off the move. Yeah.
Do you always approach your music creation from a drummer or finger drummer perspective? Uh, not necessarily. You know, sometimes, uh, sometimes like, uh, I think I have another sample loaded up here, uh, I can show you another really quick method where it's like, um, if I just delete these out so I can do the same. Let's see. Hold on here. [music] >> [music] >> Okay, so this is kind of neat where it's like sometimes I like to just make drum breaks and pick from a folder of a bunch of drum breaks that I have uh and kind of like start from that or start chopping a sample and then bring in a drum break and play that chop to the drum break. like a pretty classic um chopping approach. Uh but you know, in this instance, we could do something really similar that I did with the live beat, but it allows a little bit more flexibility and like how many chops I can have. And uh you know, here I'm using simpler and I'm able to really get into the chop itself across all the pads. So, uh, if I wanted to just like do like, um, I'm [laughter] trying to think of a drum break, but, um, [music] let's see if that actually got it. Oh, wait. I got to do something longer than that, guys. We got to We got to do something longer than that. I can't be doing it. Okay, here we go. >> [music] >> Ah, got him. I might have cut it early. I might have cut it early, but let's see. Let's see it. [music] Yeah, I did cut it too early. I'm sorry. It worked so well for me before, but [music] I'm messing it up now. Okay, so let's try one more time. Okay, we got it. We got it. We got it. I I trust we got it now. Yep. We got it. We got it. We got it. Okay. So, we got like a very simple very simple loop. Um, so if I if you wanted to just [music] got something there that I can at least cut from [music] >> [music] [music] >> So, in in this instance, it's not a great chop or loop. I would probably do it again and just kind of like go down to the next one and do it again. Um, but you're given the freedom of a lot more and I can kind of uh go in and start to like it's similar to my live drum process, but um yeah, there's something different about live beats for me with like uh a lot of the recent tracks I've dropped um a few of which played during the loading screen uh of of today's stream, you know, they were done initially off of a live beat. And there's something about like when I listen to those beats, they I mean they're fully mixed and and mastered, so they sound, you know, not like a live beat that's missing elements from it or anything like that, but they were entirely live. And the neat thing about it is the subtle changes in my drums throughout the entire track. And and it's something that I'm like, there's just something so special about that being a drummer, you know, for the last 20 plus years. Uh there's just something so unique about that. And you know, there's nothing wrong with drum loops. I've been using so many so many of my own drum loops lately uh that you know, I'm like I just I do love I appreciate both both, you know, the loop and the the live the live play. So yeah, I feel like I'm I'm talking y'all's ears off right now with with uh just my love for it all, but um
Your finger drumming feels so coherent for the whole song, but at the same time changes slightly all the time. You can hear the amount of practice you put into it. Thank you. I really appreciate that. Uh yeah, I appreciate it. It It is really interesting. I mean, you just kind of I I definitely practiced in in learning to like stay in the pocket, but every now and again, you know, you can you can always um get fancy. Uh but it doesn't always have to be like a look at me show where I'm like constantly, you know, like going crazy on fills and stuff. There could be little subtle things. So, yeah.
Um any other questions? I mean, we really got deep deep into some of those questions on uh finger drumming and stuff there, but um yeah, thank you guys so much. I really appreciate it. This is so amazing for me. I'm grateful, you know. I'm grateful. I love Ableton. Y'all know I've been using it since live 4. It's something so cool to be here and sharing a live stream with Jesse. Uh it was so cool to see all the history on on the push, man. That was really inspiring.
So, yeah, I think I can wrap it there. Um, >> awesome. >> Ben, how are you? >> Hey, thank you so much. Thank you, Datson. Thank you, Jesse. >> Oh, wait. You're muted. >> Maybe I should unmute my >> Thank you, audience. >> Wait, I know why. >> We got it. >> You're not muted. I I think I have to have you >> right on my phone. >> I was just saying thank you. >> Oh, dude. Thank you. >> You Thank you, Datson. Thank you, Jesse. Thank you audience. [snorts] Uh we're gonna put on some music and take some questions in the chat before we wrap. Uh but have a good one. >> Yeah. Thank you guys so much.