Push's melodic seq - does anyone actually use it?

[siliconarc]

and if you do, do you actually like using it?

i appreciate how it works, technically. i find it quite clever and all.
but holy shit it's a pain in the ass to use effectively.

what bothers me the most is that the Push itself holds so much potential in its interface - the touchstrip, the touch encoders, the pads themselves - that could be used in such great ways to make many different, interesting and FUN step sequencers, and yet it seems to me that they chose the most boring and frustrating one. i get angry using it.

i recently got a microbrute. its melodic step seq is basic, but it's fun and immediate.
arturia's upcoming beatstep has a great-looking melodic step seq too.

it may just be me that feels this way, i know, but it would be nice to know i'm not the only one

[tedlogan]

I really enjoy using it, but only for very a very specific-sounding group of tracks I work on. I like coming up with strange arpeggios with it on a one bar loop, often with notes spanning many octaves, then double it, then slightly alter the second bar.

I'd let it loop over and over, changing notes/steps on the fly, until I like what I hear.
Then I'd go back and automate parameters on certain steps.

Another arpeggiated approach I like is to simply get a rhythm going with very few notes, often only the rootnote, adding and deleting steps randomly til I come up with a rhythm I enjoy.

Both of these approaches enable me to occasionally come up with a piece I'd probably not have written if it wasn't for the melodic step sequencer.

Nothing revolutionary of course, but I do love arpeggios, as you probably gathered, and I also like ones with many atonal or dischordant notes in between.

[clydesdale]

It needs a FOLD function, a CHORD function, and a better way to manage notes outside the 7 note window. The shorter scales like pentatonic work better, chromatic is a real bear for me. I haven't used the PXT version yet but it looks closer to the style of the drum seq which I think works pretty well.

[panten]

To my mind, Monophonic Melodic step sequencing would be preferable.

[login]

Of course for complex things it is quite difficult to use, but what steop sequencer is not?

At least is better that using the mouse.

[cyclicAMP]

Personally I don't find much inspiration from it and so don't really have much use for it.

I would much prefer to have the button matrix give more complete control over clip editing.

[siliconarc]

At least is better that using the mouse.

that should be their strapline

my main beef with the melodic step seq is that it's no fun to use.
it mimics Live's onscreen seq with a one note per pad approach which is, given the limited space on the Push, baffling.
it looks pretty, but writing anything other than the simplest of riffs becomes a chore very quickly.

i'd love to see some options for melodic step input. one rough idea:
basically the same linear workflow as the drumrack step seq, but with multiple notes per 1x8 lane (left to right, x 8 ).
you use one encoder to choose a scale, another encoder to scan through notes in that scale, and when happy with the note, add with the pads.
each pad can contain any note. holding the pad lets you change the note, just as you can with the velocity etc currently, and you have 8 lanes to build chords.
oh yea, and the touchstrip sets the velocity when committing the notes to pads.

[yur2die4]

I keep intending to try it with impulse

[jayjay67]

FOLD function PLEASE!

[Skullee]

I personally love this feature. It just makes it more fun than using my mouse. I use the half and half mode where the top half is step sequencer and the bottom half is notes.
It can be a bit of a learning curve to get time-effective with it, but I think its worth it. Its just way more fun to me.
I would also like to see a fold option, and also an option to move notes/chords up and down. I mean, you can size the notes and nudge them, so I don't think it would be too complicated for them to add a function to be able to move notes up and down as well.

[[jur]]

Setting Push's scale to "in key" instead of "chromatic" acts somehow as a fold mode.