Hey everyone,
I’m curious to hear who’ve used the Ableton Push 3 standalone in a live setup.
I’m currently exploring ways to integrate it into my performance workflow, and I’d love to know:
• How stable and reliable has it been for you on stage?
• Any limitations or unexpected issues you’ve run into?
I’d really appreciate any insights, setup tips or experiences you can share especially if you’re doing hybrid or experimental electronic performances.
Thanks in advance!
Looks like Surgeon was using it at STOOR last night for an eight hour set so I guess it must be stable enough for live use now: Speedy J | Public Energy on Instagram: "STOOR Live Day 1 Soundcheck done! The space ship is ready for takeoff. 🚀"
I’ve used it live a handful of times - and integrated it with a single eurorack case + a few midi-controllers - with no issues. It’s been a great way to leave the laptop behind in the studio…
F me. That’s some insane gear on that table. Surgeon seems to be using both a ableton push 3 and a Maschine 3/plus.
The maschine its from Regis setup
‘If you don’t have a Xone 96, you’re not getting in.’
Funny looking at that setup where multiple people are playing, P3SA is like the perfect tool.
I used mine fairly early on for a live set, when they’d been only out a month or so, and one of the screens on a page hung/froze on the clip waveform view. I sort of bumbled through as I could still use things and the clips could still be triggered.
Admit, I haven’t had it crash or be weird for ages, but that time freaked me out so haven’t used it since, until I practice and get my confidence back with it. But that’s now more of a me problem.
I found and this surprised me, less of a technical thing, but it was more mentally demanding than I expected for live stuff. I use it for composing and writing more these days, but the shift to launching clips, mixing, adding fx and stuff. I’d say, creating and practicing a live focussed template, rather than browsing around and changing pages etc is probably super helpful in a live situation where everything to think about is just way more taxing. The muscle memory just wasn’t there for me, as it was also fairly new, but I’d had the previous push, so thought it would be fine. Conclusion, plan and practice your live sets a lot before taking an all in one thing out to the gig
Yep, exactly. This has been my goal for a while now both for creating in the studio and potentially playing out.
But, it takes a lot of work to do it. I went down a rabbit hole a bit where my template got way way way too complicated and I was teaching myself Max to customise it. Ended up realising that I hadn’t really been making music for a long time, just messing with my Push template, so parked it for now. Plus life getting in the way.
Probably in the new year I’m gonna get back to it but scale back the ambition and UI a lot to make it more playable. Also got a Torso T-1 because a lot of the complexity was coming from trigger / drum sequencers I’d been building and it basically covers that, but still haven’t really learned it properly. Also this was before the new push control scheme for the max rhythm generator came out and I’ve yet to find the time to see where and how that might integrate. And the latest beta should be able to hook up directly to DJ mixers over USB, although again I still have to try this with my PX5, which may be a better option than using a midi controller as I had previously seeing as I already know how to play that mixer.
Also, on that point, whatever setup you land on needs practice to get fluent enough to actually perform and improvise in real time. A big part of the task here, whether hardware or software, is to cut the complexity / cognitive load down to something you can manage, bearing in mind that everyone is about 75% stupider when they’re on a stage with a bunch of people looking at them. And from there get the reps in.
But I do think that as tools go Push is uniquely capable in terms of building your custom live performance setup - especially with stuff like Dyad that’s pretty much designed for this. And it’s mature at this point imho, would have no real worries about stability, really the thing is committing to doing the prep work. You probably could still just use a pretty much vanilla version and it’d go fine with practice, but I don’t think that’s getting the most out of the capabilities here.
I think it’s fine to use if you’re building the set on the Push in standalone mode. I built a set on the computer that I intended to run standalone and predictably it didn’t work, the Push kept crashing on project load. It was my fault, it had loads of WAV files/stems + complicated midi routing setups and more than a few m4l devices. Even the M1 Macbook Air I ended up borrowing to run the set chugged a little bit.
Tl:dr it’s fine now, two years on from release. Just make the set on the machine.
Yes, I think you have to adapt the setup. With a computer, we tend to keep adding more and more, but here, you need to minimize. I think I’ll add an extra controller, like a Launch Control XL, because having only 8 knobs and switching between pages makes live performance more complicated. And as previously said, on stage we’re a bit dumber 
you have to adapt accordingly for maximum playability
Fwiw I’ve never had a problem with building sets on the computer and transferring to Push - find it a lot easier for setting up mapping, routing and tweaking max devices. Also when I’ve mapped my midi controller in the software it’s worked fine when running the same set in standalone.
But I’ve also been working with standalone parameters in mind rather than just transferring over sets built to run on the computer if that makes sense.
There’s a loopop video on this where he talks about building sets horizontally rather than vertically - I have tended to stick with the vertical approach, i.e. a fixed 8 track configuration and move down through scenes. I also seem to recall someone in the user thread reporting performance issues and it also turned out that they were doing the horizontal thing, i.e. a new set of tracks for each section of their set.
Exactly! In the Standalone version, there’s no Arrangement View! Everything happens in Session View, which is ideal for live performances.
You think in loops, clips, and scenes instead of a linear timeline.
Btw you can keep a fix structue then twist it improvisation part, shift between structured and improvised parts on the fly.
You build and deconstruct everything in real time, adapting to the moment rather than following a predefined path.