Ableton Forum

i can't get anywhere to actually play with a push in person, but i've decided that i want it, just based on what i've seen online. my question is whether you can drive the arrangement recording from the push and if so, whether everything gets captured and played back exactly as you banged it out. for example, start a 1 bar loop and play around with placements of different drums in step-sequencer mode for 4 bars. is it possible to capture the 'live' notes each iteration of the pattern to arrangement or is the clip in session view only going to contain my last pattern? hope that makes sense. thx.

Only the last.

If you have something that's mildly nice for you, save it and create a new clip. You can obviously copy/duplicate clips as well.

ahh okay that's what i thought. i see a lot of cool live performances where people are tweaking/adding/removing on the fly, mid-pattern. i thought the wizards at ableton found a way to print all that dynamic stuff to arrangement. kind of takes you out of the live performance mode if you have to duplicate a clip that may not even be the right length. would something like that even be feasible? it'd be great if the session view play-head were used to print to arrangement vs the clip launch. maybe we can have a new 'live arrangement' record mode from push?

slicedbread wrote:ahh okay that's what i thought. i see a lot of cool live performances where people are tweaking/adding/removing on the fly, mid-pattern. i thought the wizards at ableton found a way to print all that dynamic stuff to arrangement. kind of takes you out of the live performance mode if you have to duplicate a clip that may not even be the right length. would something like that even be feasible? it'd be great if the session view play-head were used to print to arrangement vs the clip launch. maybe we can have a new 'live arrangement' record mode from push?

No wizzardry involved: that's how it works. Or I'm misunderstanding you. Everything you do in Session will be recorded to Arrangement (after you hit arrangement record obviously)
The session clip will only contain the last thing you did, but the arrangement has all the wankery you played in.
You can then take this arrangement and make another Session clip from it, or you can just let the Arrangement loop.

You can record in real time in to arragement as you want but it's not something "automatic", I owuld first make some clips with the base ideas upon which I would improvise.

sure, i could record live to arrangement like any other midi controller, but what i'm asking about is the ability to print the step-sequencer pattern variations on each loop pass to arrangement, such that each iteration's changing pattern is captured. the session clip would always contain my last pattern, but i'd also want all the (step-sequencer) happy accidents recorded as i got there. i'm sure it'd be obvious to me if i could just get somewhere to play with it a bit.

slicedbread wrote:sure, i could record live to arrangement like any other midi controller, but what i'm asking about is the ability to print the step-sequencer pattern variations on each loop pass to arrangement, such that each iteration's changing pattern is captured. the session clip would always contain my last pattern, but i'd also want all the (step-sequencer) happy accidents recorded as i got there. i'm sure it'd be obvious to me if i could just get somewhere to play with it a bit.

Well yes, that's what we are trying to explain.
Let's say you have a clip in Session view looping.
Then you hit Arrangement record.
Now what ever changes you make to the looping clip in Session will be recorded to Arrangement.
I's like with regular midi recording, whatever note is at the position of the playhead at the time will get recorded to arrangement. When you alter the looping clip, such that the next time the playhead passes over a certain part, the notes are changed (because you entered or removed a step) then that change will be what is recorded into Arrangement.

It's a very nice way to input drums, because it's like a slowed down version of live drumming, because you always have the width of the step sequencer time to actually put in the note where you want it. But it's also something to learn, because you have to train your brain to that different passing of time.

TomViolenz wrote:

slicedbread wrote:sure, i could record live to arrangement like any other midi controller, but what i'm asking about is the ability to print the step-sequencer pattern variations on each loop pass to arrangement, such that each iteration's changing pattern is captured. the session clip would always contain my last pattern, but i'd also want all the (step-sequencer) happy accidents recorded as i got there. i'm sure it'd be obvious to me if i could just get somewhere to play with it a bit.

Well yes, that's what we are trying to explain.
Let's say you have a clip in Session view looping.
Then you hit Arrangement record.
Now what ever changes you make to the looping clip in Session will be recorded to Arrangement.
I's like with regular midi recording, whatever note is at the position of the playhead at the time will get recorded to arrangement. When you alter the looping clip, such that the next time the playhead passes over a certain part, the notes are changed (because you entered or removed a step) then that change will be what is recorded into Arrangement.

It's a very nice way to input drums, because it's like a slowed down version of live drumming, because you always have the width of the step sequencer time to actually put in the note where you want it. But it's also something to learn, because you have to train your brain to that different passing of time.

that's exactly what i wanted to hear. thx!

slicedbread wrote:

TomViolenz wrote:

slicedbread wrote:sure, i could record live to arrangement like any other midi controller, but what i'm asking about is the ability to print the step-sequencer pattern variations on each loop pass to arrangement, such that each iteration's changing pattern is captured. the session clip would always contain my last pattern, but i'd also want all the (step-sequencer) happy accidents recorded as i got there. i'm sure it'd be obvious to me if i could just get somewhere to play with it a bit.

Well yes, that's what we are trying to explain.
Let's say you have a clip in Session view looping.
Then you hit Arrangement record.
Now what ever changes you make to the looping clip in Session will be recorded to Arrangement.
I's like with regular midi recording, whatever note is at the position of the playhead at the time will get recorded to arrangement. When you alter the looping clip, such that the next time the playhead passes over a certain part, the notes are changed (because you entered or removed a step) then that change will be what is recorded into Arrangement.

It's a very nice way to input drums, because it's like a slowed down version of live drumming, because you always have the width of the step sequencer time to actually put in the note where you want it. But it's also something to learn, because you have to train your brain to that different passing of time.

that's exactly what i wanted to hear. thx!

Thought so

My tip would be to also buy the PXT script for Push, because its multi note step sequencer is the best for this.
You have 8 of your drum pads visible at the same time in the rows with 8 steps each on the columns. The resolution buttons next to the grid change the resolution of the grid. So while 1/8th or 1/4th is probably the best for standard hits a quick change to 1/4 tripletts or 1/8 tripletts is very easy.
And even changing to the next 8 pads is very quick, because octave up/down is actually 8st in chromatic mode in the PXT script for exactly this purpose of DrumRacks.