How 'standalone' is Push 2?

The Lounge Other Gear
#1

Everyone in here likely has hardware so, coming from that angle, how ‘standalone’ do you find Push 2? It looks amazing from what I’ve seen. Just wondering how tied to computer screen people feel. And basically if it’s possible to do most things without being even in the same space as the attached computer. I’m gassing for it for studio use but also thinking I could maybe use it with a long usb cable and jam on the sofa around my kids etc. Looks pretty robust. Does that seem feasible with only the push 2 screen? Thanks.

Edit - should probably mention I mainly use ableton for messing with samples/oops. I do very little tracking/structural arrangement in ableton, I still do that stuff in Sonar. Can you add/move warp markers etc in Push 2 with as much control as mouse/computer?

#2

Just remember Push isnt an audio interface and doesn’t have record inputs, so technically you still need three boxes for that setup.

A long USB would definately be cool.

In all honesty theres a lot you cant do on Push. Finer details like track routings, the Live preferences, and macro mappings aren’t configurable on Push, so those kinds of customizations you need to do on the computer.

That said if you’re all setup and ready to jam, you can rock with Push for hours before grabbing for the mouse.

It’s more of a ‘session view’ instrument. Push consolidates the session view experience into a single controller for clip launch, drum beat programming, melodic and sample performance and editing, mixing, automation, and recording.

Me personally, and this is more of a side-note, I really missed out on the whole ITB OTB dichotomy. I wasn’t on forums during that time whenever those two acronyms emerged. For all Push provides I honestly don’t have a problem going to the mouse every so often, and can’t say I’ve ever felt a need to ‘get away’ from the computer, the mouse, or the screen.

What scares me more is all this drive to move toward iPads for music control.

I cant stand iPads.

3 Likes
#3

The ipad is great. Touchable, Lemur, V-Control, Pro Tools Control, Logic Remote, Omni TR, Cubase iC Pro, Midi Designer, Music IO. I use and love all these apps.

#4

Bummer. Curious if you can name clips and tracks from the controller?

#5

Nope

That said, tracks take their name of the preset or instrument you choose, so if that’s something you’ve already created previously its already done.

#6

today i was trying to re-order my plugins on a specific track – a reverb of sorts into a delay – i wanted to try it the other way.

i had 2 choices with PUSH2
[ul]
[li]delete and recreate the effects[/li]
[li]use the computer to quickly swap spots. [/li]
[/ul]

i chose the computer route. it was fast.

so, the question is a little loaded because the opportunity to work a certain way always changes the way we feel about a workflow. BECAUSE i’ve always been able to do an action in a computer-qwerty-mouse driven ableton situation i anticipate having the same control via a hardware situation.

it’s REALLY useable without looking at your computer. and it’s really intuitive to get around with. but… you will feel restricted in some organization senses. though those restrictions are very inline with hardware restrictions.

#7

It’ the first controller Ive found that I can really forget the computer for most things. You forget about the Laptop looking at the beautiful screen on PUSH and the beauty of the unit makes playing Live a pleasure.

#8

Thanks for the replies. Shame about the fx routing being untweakable from push, that’s something I’ll sometimes need but not deal breaker. .is it possible to switch/open/create/name projects? And how about warp markers? Does push 2 give all the same functionality as mouse in terms of using/adding warp markers and adjusting their timing left/right to tidy up loops or get creative etc?

#9

Actually you can swap and move effects around. It was demonstrated in the Push 2 sound design tutorial.

#10

No opening and saving of projects, I agree that would be awesome.
The new simpler device offers some warp functionailty, but no on a per clip basis, you can change the warp mode but thats about it.
Check out some videos on the new Simpler, it does some pretty cool stuff.
What Push does I think is offer some pretty cool ways of ‘playing’ live… For instance the recently added 64 pad drum mode can now slice a sample across all 64 pads on the fly, from Simpler, basically at the twist of a button.

#11

Push and Live can be as stand-alone as you like. As always it depends on your expectations. You can set up templates that automaticly open with Live, where everything is pre- configured ( like audio from / audio to / macros / racks / naming). Most of the things you can’t do from Push ( at the moment) are easier to do with a mouse and keyboard anyway. But this is just the snapshot of the features now avaible, they will put alot of love into Push 2 . Have a look :joy:

[hr]

Live 9 Beta Release Notes

Sign in to our Beta Community to download the latest Beta version.
9.5.1b1 Versionshinweise
Improvements and feature changes:
[ul]
[li]The Python framework has been updated to support Python 2.7.[/li]
[li]Improved the time required to slice an audio sample to a Drum Rack.[/li]
[li]Updated fonts and added a number of special characters.[/li]
[li]The Live 8 Legacy Mode in Operator has been renamed to something more meaningful.[/li]
[li]Performance improvements in waveform rendering.[/li]
[li]Slicing visualization improvements and other minor cosmetic tweaks for Simpler and Sampler.[/li]
[li]While samples are offline or still decoding, Slice to Drum Rack and Slice to new Midi Track from Simpler are disabled.[/li]
[/ul]
Bugfixes:
[ul]
[li]Live might become unresponsive on OSX if no Max application can be found. Furthermore, Live would not find Max 7 on its own on Windows.[/li]
[li]Live could hang when loading sets referencing Max devices, if these were saved with Max 6.1.7 or earlier.[/li]
[li]Tracks created by dragging and dropping a Rack or Rack preset will now correctly be assigned with a new track color.[/li]
[li]Fixes a crash which might happen in conjunction with Complex / Pro modes.[/li]
[li]Live could hang at launch while displaying the splash screen on Windows 10.[/li]
[li]The modulation destinations for the new legacy filters in Simpler and Operator are now hidden and updated correctly when upgrading a device.[/li]
[li]Improved the CPU performance of Complex and Pro when playing back short loops. Note that while Clip loops are limited to at least 1/16 note in length, simpler loops can be as small as 50 samples.[/li]
[li]Live would crash when cropping samples in Sampler.[/li]
[/ul]
Changes for Push:
[ul]
[li]The color mapping for Push 2’s step sequencers has been improved, to better reflect different velocity ranges.[/li]
[li]Scales mode can now act as a momentary toggle if held.[/li]
[li]When simpler is in 64 pad slicing mode, the touch strip can work as Pitch Bend or Modulation Wheel.[/li]
[li]It is now possible to load and hotswap samples in audio tracks.[/li]
[li]It is now possible to toggle the Global Record button via Push by holding Shift and pressing the Session Record button.[/li]
[li]Sample names are now displayed in the browser while hotswapping.[/li]
[li]Introduced a short delay before showing the tempo/swing message when touching the encoders, to reduce the amount of notifications.[/li]
[li]When zoomed out on a long sample, it is now possible to see an indication of the existing slices on the Push 2 display.[/li]
[li]Push would keep showing the loop selector in sequencer mode after deleting a Clip.[/li]
[li]After converting an audio Clip to a Simpler from Push 2, device mode will be selected automatically.[/li]
[li]When converting between Simpler and Sampler, Push 2 would lose device selection.[/li]
[li]The display could get stuck in User mode on Push 2. Additionally, it is now possible to momentarily enter User mode by holding the respective button.[/li]
[li]Mute and Solo would not work on Push 2 if the currently selected track was outside the Session Ring.[/li]
[li]When loading a sample from the browser, Simpler’s “Mode” would be displayed as “Classic” on Push 2, regardless of the default for “Dropping Samples on Device View”.[/li]
[li]The Arrow Keys would stop working after switching between note and session mode while using the Push 2 browser.[/li]
[li]Selecting a scene in Live would cause Clip selection from Push not to work anymore.[/li]
[/ul]

#12

No opening and saving of projects, I agree that would be awesome.
The new simpler device offers some warp functionailty, but no on a per clip basis, you can change the warp mode but thats about it.
Check out some videos on the new Simpler, it does some pretty cool stuff.
What Push does I think is offer some pretty cool ways of ‘playing’ live… For instance the recently added 64 pad drum mode can now slice a sample across all 64 pads on the fly, from Simpler, basically at the twist of a button.[/quote]
Yeah from what I’ve seen I think I’ll pick one up at some point just for the ‘playing’ aspects you mention and things I’ve seen in the vids so far, seems like it would be super quick to do a lot of stuff similar to some OT functions and great for workflow/inspiration. Just trying to weigh up the other side of it, ie whether I could use it without a laptop anywhere close by. Which isn’t looking so promising overall, but to be fair I didn’t really expect it to, would have just been a bonus for sofa jams in a chaotic house :wink:

#13

Thanks for the info. Looks great and I imagine it will get further refined too. Looking forward to bringing one in to the work flow here asap :slight_smile:

#14

Got both Push Mk1 and Maschine Mk1, from the two, i find Maschine more on the “forget the pc” side than Push.
Push is great when performing and sketching, but often i get into mouse operation for fine tuning o settings modifies.
With Maschine i can do almost everything from the controller.
Of course that’s my limited experience, just my contribution to the thread :wink:

1 Like
#15

Yeah I’m kinda glad I don’t have the money right now as there’s talk of a new Maschine at Namm coming up, so I’ll be interested to see that. But I’m not sure I want another ‘element’ to juggle in the computer. Ableton + Sonar rewire combo is deep and Maschine couldn’t replace either of them for me (in its current guise at least). So just refining my ableton work flow makes more sense as things stand atm. I’m not sure if Push 2 works when Ableton is rewire slave, but that’s not a deal breaker really either, just have to do things slightly differently.

#16

3 long days have gone by since I’ve gotten my push 2. Once my macbook pro screen goes to sleep, I’m still browsing through all the vinyl loops I’ve recorded and I’m doing all my editing and slicing in a moments time all with my controller (This is why I almost bought a maschine studio). I can do some cooking around the house or clean up then get back to my push 2 and all my work is still there. This is such a great sketchpad.

Will it replace my octatrack / MPC / EPS / SP1200/ Studio 440 / S1000.???

No, I still love my hardware samplers, but for days when I need to decompress from a crazy day at work this is the machine I do it on. I find myself writing before bed, waking up, whenever now. It’s a controller that works with my schedule. :joy:

1 Like
#17

If Ableton could add a feature where you could work on track 1 on the push and you could simultaneously manipulate another track on the computer screen with the mouse that would be cool. Now that the push 2 gives us excellent visual feedback I would like to free up the laptop screen real-estate for other task.

1 Like
#18

Dude put that on the feature request forums on the Ableton page. That would be nuts. The question is why can’t it happen now? I think the only limitation is how the active track is the “focus” and could throw the controller off. Still I think you should suggest it on the Ableton forums.

#19

As a possible workaround, if you have Touchable for iPad you can actually view up to 3 different devices at once. I’ve only used it a bit, and I understand some features are not working since the last Ableton update, but it might be a way to augment the Push in an acceptable way.

#20

Have no idea but mine arrives tomorrow so getting excited now.