Ableton Forum

I'd say the fact that so many people see very little use for an actual keyboard points squarely to how much uninteresting music is being released, and you don't have to be a concert pianist to see the advantage.

Take our resident electro producer Mint Invader for example who broke through a major barrier by using actual chords in a song.

I also feel short octave keyboards are almost as useless for coming up with interesting ideas when writing. I'm not saying it can't be done but it's a big advantage being able to play a bass line and high end at the same time.

sparklepuff wrote:

antarktika wrote:I'd think it more so replaces/crushes lemur.

Then you haven't used a lemur.

It did crush the Lemur.
As for replacing Lemur functionality it's already pretty close to it and is certainly well on its way. One only needs to look at the amount of constant development activity for the iPad including efforts by ex-Lemur developers.

beats me wrote:I'd say the fact that so many people see very little use for an actual keyboard points squarely to how much uninteresting music is being released, and you don't have to be a concert pianist to see the advantage.

Take our resident electro producer Mint Invader for example who broke through a major barrier by using actual chords in a song.

I also feel short octave keyboards are almost as useless for coming up with interesting ideas when writing. I'm not saying it can't be done but it's a big advantage being able to play a bass line and high end at the same time.

definitely. a real keyboard is something much better. but it's not as portable.

and +11 to the chords thing, too. i love create some loop that is absolutely non-melodic, and after playing a while tweaking the sounds, just change to some chord, or actually just change the base-note. and that simple one change triggers so massive amounts of emotions, it's, still unbelievable to me. melody might be underrated currently. but that has one great thing about it: if it's sparse, it will be more impressive the moment you show it. if all is just one great melody after the other, it's boring. but after some great rhythmical percussive grooving thing, suddenly going into a chord progression is awesome.


and about the lemur. well, i'd prefer to switch from my lemur to a BIGGER touchscreen. the ipad is smaller.

davepermen wrote:and about the lemur. well, i'd prefer to switch from my lemur to a BIGGER touchscreen. the ipad is smaller.

and I was wondering if ableton releases an "touch" version of live, when you can run the Live GUI to an BIG led televisor...

ShelLuser wrote:IMO software will never replace hardware like this. While you can basically launch stuff using the launchpad with your eyes closed you'll never be able to pull that off with a touchscreen.

Why would you be closing your eyes? Are you a blind dj? Seems foolish IMO. And you'll never be able to control your entire setup wireless from within the crowd with the Fisher Price launchpad.
And the "hardware" you speak of, is nothing without the software that makes it work because it is a "controller". Your launchpad is reduced to an oversize drink coaster when your software crashes. Tell me, can you do smooth fades with your Lunchpad? no, it has no faders, you are stuck with choppy incremental fades.
You should have grabbed the Akai APC40 instead of the cheap wannabe.

AYBABTU wrote:

ShelLuser wrote:IMO software will never replace hardware like this. While you can basically launch stuff using the launchpad with your eyes closed you'll never be able to pull that off with a touchscreen.

Why would you be closing your eyes? Are you a blind dj? Seems foolish IMO.

I know. Why would want to be closing their eyes? To really feel the move you're pulling off?

AYBABTU wrote:And you'll never be able to control your entire setup wireless from within the crowd with the Fisher Price launchpad.
And the "hardware" you speak of, is nothing without the software that makes it work because it is a "controller". Your launchpad is reduced to an oversize drink coaster when your software crashes. Tell me, can you do smooth fades with your Lunchpad? no, it has no faders, you are stuck with choppy incremental fades.
You should have grabbed the Akai APC40 instead of the cheap wannabe.

I agree with everything you said above except for the APC40. That thing is a big hunk of oversized plastic that couldn't even figure out how to be bus-powered. And now it's crushed and consigned to the waste basket thanks to a more truly useful and versatile controller like touchAble.

humnumb wrote:

AYBABTU wrote:

ShelLuser wrote:IMO software will never replace hardware like this. While you can basically launch stuff using the launchpad with your eyes closed you'll never be able to pull that off with a touchscreen.

Why would you be closing your eyes? Are you a blind dj? Seems foolish IMO.

I know. Why would want to be closing their eyes? To really feel the move you're pulling off?

stevie wonder for the win. i'd gladly trade my eyesight for that level of talent.

davepermen wrote:i won't move to touchscreen only until i can feel what i touch, too.

lots of great things happening in the touchscreen scene, of course. exploring it is great. but it does't ever take away "tweaking a knob".

Totally true.
For instance, i can't use a touch screen to trigger clips because i need to feel them on my fingers while doing some other thing with the other hand before launching them.
same thing for knobs and faders.

But for X/Y pads.....

personally, it's the inverse, even if i use touch screens from a while, i still prefer hardware knobs/faders for continuous controllers like faders knobs, XY, i don't like the feeling and latency of moving across a piece of glass with no force feeback.

but for every kind of boolean or integer states (swichs, listboxes ect) that don't need velocity im ok with touch, and can
have a custom function related visual feeback. prefer then the modular advantages of touchscreens, especially for a clip grid where you clearly see clips names and colors, can quicly make huges labeled and colored matrixs, where it's much easier to spot thingz than track where is your fx ie on middle of a monome256.

on APc as well you don't know wich track is what, wich clip is wich unless serious concentration or counting, or looking at the screen wich is all i want to avoid when im stone.

that's why i decided to build myself an Osc touchscreen session view clip launcher similar to touchable, but with usine so i can do what i want without waiting for approval of the dude and ill keep real HW knobs and XY setup for fxs tweaks.
i think i atlast found my dream setup:

Touchscreen + usine , with nanopad for velocity real pads and XY,
and evolution UC16 for 16 knobs and real crossfader. Ensemble is portable and ultra modular, im really happy with that.

Maschine and iPad is the perfect combo.

scientist wrote: stevie wonder for the win.[/url] i'd gladly trade my eyesight for that level of talent.

Seriously? Well...hold still....

omfg.

Most of the time you still need to look at your hardware for knob/slider locations, so that's a horrid reason to not go with touchscreen.

In fact, nearly every DJ I've ever seen - in person or on YouTube - is usually staring at their fucking knob so intently whilst fiddling that it seems as though he's trying to form an ESP connection.

*stare*
*stare*
*stare*
*fiddle*
*fiddle*
*fiddle*
*stare*
*fiddle*
*fiddle*
*fiddle*
*stare*
*stare*
*stare*
*stare*
*stare*
*stare*
*fiddle*
*fiddle*

*fap*
*fap*
*fap*
*fap*



*stare*
*stare*
*fiddle*
*fiddle*

LoopStationZebra wrote:omfg.

Most of the time you still need to look at your hardware for knob/slider locations, so that's a horrid reason to not go with touchscreen.

In fact, nearly every DJ I've ever seen - in person or on YouTube - is usually staring at their fucking knob so intently whilst fiddling that it seems as though he's trying to form an ESP connection.

But it's a lot harder to do the "ducking the landing airplane" maneuver when you don't have something to physically grab on to while leaning way back and unleashing the sonic awesomeness.

I'm waiting for somebody to get all Hendrix with their iPad, launching clips with their nose and doing filter sweeps with their ass (filter wipes?) just before lighting it on fire.

doing gig from dance-floor = win win situation