On the fence about Push - Questions

[TeeJayEe]

I'll start by saying I was incredibly excited by Push, have had my pre-order in for a while, but while waiting for it to arrive, I've spent some time (perhaps more time than I should have) watching the increasing number of unboxing/demo/explanation videos on YouTube and reading over the features.

This is gonna be a long post, sorry.

I must admit, the novelty is starting to wear a bit thin even before I've got it, but I'm not sure if that's just me being silly, or whether now that the excitement has settled a bit, I've come to realise that it may not be worth the £430 and I may not actually have as much use for it as I thought.

The reason I'm thinking that is that I'm having trouble figuring out how my production is actually going to benefit from using it, or how my workflow might be improved. I'll list my concerns for the sake of clarity.

1. The Step Sequencer - I never program beats with this kind of method. 99% of the time I'll tap out drums by hand, the other 1% I'll draw them in. I tend to produce hip-hop/downtempo electro stuff and I often don't quantize anything. Well, maybe nudge a couple of the drums a bit if they're super sloppy but I love to make sure there's a human feel and swing to the drums. With that in mind, I can't see how I'd make much use of the step sequencer on Push, which appears to be one of the main features. I know you can 'perform' drum patterns just like you would on a normal controller, but solely doing that seems to defeat the object of the way Push is set-up.

2. The 'Easy Mode' Piano - I know my way round a piano along with enough music theory that I don't think this is gonna be a great help. I'm certainly no virtuoso but I know how scales are built, and the relative chords for each key, with that said, I think I'd prefer to continue playing stuff on actual keys rather than the buttons. It certainly looks cool the way Push handles it, but I can't see how it's all that useful for people who know a bit of theory and how to build melodies/chords on a real keyboard.

3. No Proper VST Support - I may have misunderstood this but Push only integrates automatically with Ableton instruments right? Apart from the Drum Rack, almost everything else I use is VST's, it's a shame these can't be automagically assigned to the encoders.

4. The 'Not looking at the Screen' Thing - This doesn't bother me really. I mean, once the initial loops are constructed, you're gonna be arranging on the screen anyway, tweaking automation, setting up effects, mixing etc so just letting me stare at the Push rather than the computer during the initial creation stage isn't really a big deal.

5. The Price - This isn't really a deal-breaker alone, but £430 is a LOT of money for a controller. I think this is why I'm so unsure about it. If it was like £250, I'd just buy it anyway, but £430 for a proprietary controller, it needs to offer some notable benefits for me to put down that kind of money.

This isn't supposed to be a rant, I guess I'm just curious to hear if I'm totally wrong and have missed a bunch of stuff, or whether I should indeed just cancel my preorder.

No disrespect to Ableton here either, I LOVE Live 9 and wouldn't change that for a second, but Push, I'm just not sure about.

Cheers

[yur2die4]

I wonder if it'll have good initial resale value especially if it hasn't been opened yet!

[TeeJayEe]

Very good point. I may hold on to the preorder

[panten]

If you're not convinced by any of these things then maybe you're right that it's not for you. It might be a case of having hands on time to get a feel for what Ableton were trying to achieve with Push.

..it needs to offer some notable benefits for me to put down that kind of money.

Just out of curiosity what kind of benefits would you consider justifying the cost? I have a number of notable things I think are missing but would like to hear what others think.

[TeeJayEe]

Just out of curiosity what kind of benefits would you consider justifying the cost? I have a number of notable things I think are missing but would like to hear what others think.

Good question.

You know, I honestly am not sure. I think this is the thing, the Push, to me at least, is filling a £429 hole in my workflow that doesn't really exist. I mean, sure there are little things that could be added/improved, like VST support, functionality for editing loops/slices/warping etc but they're not gonna change the overall appeal to me I don't think. And in reference to your question, I don't really think there's a piece of hardware that can. I'm pretty happy with my workflow, and I guess I'm just someone who would rather spend the money on stuff like synths, instruments or VST's.

I think it probably comes down to gear lust; It's a damn good looking piece of hardware, which I think blinded me a little at first, but I'm glad I had time to properly think about it.

[ian_halsall]

I got pushed off the fence.

[yur2die4]

Yeah, people who use Live mostly for production, might not find the greatest utility from it. It can be used to play around and get some ideas.

For me, from the moment I saw it being revealed, I viewed it as a multi tracking midi instrument with the ability to load new blank tracks, instruments, fx, and load browsing presets. It works very nicely for my workflow considering my main passion is Using Live to mess around musically on the fly. And the things I listed have been my biggest hindrances for controllers. I usually start with nothing in my set when I 'jam'... Imagine my surprise when I saw this thing hahaha

[baseinstinct]

it was a real surprise that no vst gets assigned to rotaries automatically (on second thought, I have been through that many times with previous hw). and what i got to know elsewhere, that it is a kind of instrument, rather than fully integrated controller. each time my expectations reach much higher than the devices turn out to deliver.

it would be no problem once Ableton Team provided an option of fully programming such devices like apc and push, not to mention other excluded by Ableton-Akai handshake devices, like padKONTROL etc. i mean (re)programming with light and data feedback.
without the need of max4live, of course!

[agent314]

VST parameters are automatically assigned, once they're configured

Which to me is a way, way better workflow than having to scroll through 600 parameters in Zebra to find the cutoff for the one filter module I'm actually using in that instance

[panten]

When you say 'automapping' do you expect it to Automap the things you want or just want ALL parameters mapped and ability to scroll through and adjust everything?

In my opinion it's not such a big deal to create my own mappings in the order that I'd like to see them appear on Push. This is even preferable.

To be honest I'm leaning more towards a mouseless workflow these days, which has been pushed by the Maschineheadz on that 'other Sitting on the fence thread'
I've been using nativeKontrol's awesome MPDRx & ClyphX scripts with my MPD32 and it has enabled me to spend way less time on the mouse and it's a joy.

So I for one am really excited about Push.

[yur2die4]

If it Really is a big deal, there is always this:
http://sonicbloom.net/en/ableton-live-i ... xt-part-3/

[panten]

WOW. So much hidden stuff in Ableton Live. Thanks for this heads-up yur2die4