Sitting on the Fence - Push or Maschine

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
Guillermo Barrancos
Posts: 290
Joined: Tue Mar 05, 2013 8:05 am

Re: Sitting on the Fence - Push or Maschine

Post by Guillermo Barrancos » Wed Mar 13, 2013 3:20 pm

panten wrote:
Guillermo Barrancos wrote:Usermode has no lights??? 8O
For now I guess. No one has figured it out. It's not even hit the shops yet.
I don't worry about stuff like this, it's just a matter of time. I think it's quite easy to be knee-jerk about Push at the moment. Just trying to absorb all the information about it right now, good and bad.

Julien Bayle seems to be all over it right now
http://julienbayle.net/ableton-push/ So I'm following his experiments.
Well I Guess Julien can give us a quick answer on this then.
As it would be utterly stupid if there is no Visual feedback at all in User-mode!
On the video you showed, it just looked fake, With the guy playing on a dead Push Controller.

lo.key
Posts: 360
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2009 7:05 pm

Re: Sitting on the Fence - Push or Maschine

Post by lo.key » Wed Mar 13, 2013 3:44 pm

humnumb wrote:Push is limited to 16 pads (4x4) at once for Drum Racks. Nesting a drum rack inside of an instrument rack is a rather cumbersome workaround, if that even works, that most people aren't going to find acceptable just to be able to trigger 64 drum rack pads at once.
its limited to 4x4 if you want a step sequencer. If you want 64 samples, you can use sampler very easily to do just that (its just as flexible as drum racks for many purposes), and if you truly need to use a drum rack, its as simple as a right click 'group to instrument rack' and you're finished. Its hardly cumbersome.
humnumb wrote:You can't browse or load 3rd party plugins on Push. There's no automapping either. You can configure plugins beforehand but that's useless since nothing gets saved and you'd have to do it over every single time you load the same plugin. You will still need to save it as a rack beforehand for any of that and to still have recall.
So you have some prep work to do. Once. And then its done.

humnumb wrote:Requiring Max4Live or doing things like "control_surface calls to the LOM" is the furthest thing from being able to "easily remap components of the device" and only points out the deficiencies of Push as a MIDI controller outside of controlling Live and the fact that it doesn't even have an editor and that the notes cannot be changed. In contrast, Maschine comes with an excellent Controller Editor where you can easily remap everything and make as many MIDI controller templates as you'd like.
Well, i guess if you're not interested in a powerful remapping and programming environment, then you may not be very interested in the M4L implementation. But despite your misgivings it is very easy to accomplish a great deal in max and the LOM without too much stress. And Live itself can easily transpose midi notes using racks, and using the IAC bus allows very easy and flexible midi mapping abilities. What are you thinking of doing that you would find difficult with the currently available options? It seems to me you want 'flexibility' but dont want to learn how to achieve it ;p

remember that at its core, push is a class compliant midi device. You can do any mapping tricks with it that you could with any other device, and then in addition you can build deeper integration if you wish. The best of both worlds.



humnumb wrote:Usermode has no lights???
the point of user mode is to let you control your own lights. Just pipe midi notes into it, velocity controls the rgb value. You can do this similar to an edison setup, or write a more complex patch to control the lighting and pad behaviour. Thats what its for!

Guillermo Barrancos
Posts: 290
Joined: Tue Mar 05, 2013 8:05 am

Re: Sitting on the Fence - Push or Maschine

Post by Guillermo Barrancos » Wed Mar 13, 2013 3:49 pm

lo.key wrote:
humnumb wrote:Usermode has no lights???
the point of user mode is to let you control your own lights. Just pipe midi notes into it, velocity controls the rgb value. You can do this similar to an edison setup, or write a more complex patch to control the lighting and pad behaviour. Thats what its for!
But what about the LED display? In that guy's video running usermode, even the LED display was off.
I had expected it to at least show the basic standard info in Usermode as well?

lo.key
Posts: 360
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2009 7:05 pm

Re: Sitting on the Fence - Push or Maschine

Post by lo.key » Wed Mar 13, 2013 5:35 pm

what would you consider 'basic standard info'?

The display takes sysex, haven't seen the spec on the protocol, but it will be handled the same way as the display, sending midi sysex packets to the user mode midi input.


In my opinion, user mode is best used for completely replacing the functionality of the push, for example for monome emulation. For uses like you are describing, where you simply want to change how a specific hardware component functions (like changing the pad behaviour), this is easily done in m4l using the control_surface calls (which hopefully will be well documented shortly, Dennis needs to spend more time on his documentation job than his push song and dance routine). Using control_surface you can 'grab' control of specific components of the push, while retaining the functionality of the rest of the hardware.

humnumb
Posts: 636
Joined: Thu Nov 02, 2006 2:27 pm

Re: Sitting on the Fence - Push or Maschine

Post by humnumb » Wed Mar 13, 2013 8:31 pm

panten wrote:
humnumb wrote:Push is limited to 16 pads (4x4) at once for Drum Racks.
Not true at all. Push has a User Mode which will allow you to trigger 64 rack pads., we've already gone over this in this thread I thought.
Push is limited to 16 pads (4x4) at once for Drum Racks out of the box.

In order to hack it to control more pads at once, you have to use up the User Mode and program it in Max4Live or Python. And User Mode has limitations like not being able to update the display with custom texts like you can with Maschine's MIDI mode, and only sending out simple MIDI messages for the Push's encoders. You'd still need to program something with M4L or Python for anything more advanced.

As far as that "drum rack nested in an instrument" idea, Push cannot load a drum rack that has been nested into an instrument rack.

There are also other issues with Push that makes it limited as a general MIDI controller and even when it comes to controlling Live's own Drum Racks.
- Drum Rack's sends and mixer are not available with Live's control surface support and therefore you wouldn't be able to access them with Push.
- Push does not support 14bit MIDI CCs.
- As previously mentioned, Push's displays are only character displays, not graphical, with no way to show things like waveforms.
- It has no editor, no MIDI specification chart, and no ability to load templates.
- We all know about Push not being able to sample directly to Drum Rack pads, slicing to Drum Rack, editing samples, duplicating Drum Rack pads...etc.

lo.key
Posts: 360
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2009 7:05 pm

Re: Sitting on the Fence - Push or Maschine

Post by lo.key » Wed Mar 13, 2013 9:08 pm

humnumb wrote:Push is limited to 16 pads (4x4) at once for Drum Racks.

as ive spelled out previously, its limited to 4x4 if you want a step sequencer. If you want 64 samples, you can use sampler very easily to do just that (its just as flexible as drum racks for many purposes), and if you truly need to use a drum rack, its as simple as a right click 'group to instrument rack' and you're finished. Its hardly cumbersome.




humnumb wrote: As far as that "drum rack nested in an instrument" idea, Push cannot load a drum rack that has been nested into an instrument rack.
why do you believe this? Push can load instrument racks just fine. Anyway, it sounds like maschine is the right device for you, good day!

humnumb
Posts: 636
Joined: Thu Nov 02, 2006 2:27 pm

Re: Sitting on the Fence - Push or Maschine

Post by humnumb » Wed Mar 13, 2013 9:18 pm

lo.key wrote:
humnumb wrote: As far as that "drum rack nested in an instrument" idea, Push cannot load a drum rack that has been nested into an instrument rack.
why do you believe this? Push can load instrument racks just fine.
Based on Ableton's answer in the Push thread:
" As of right now in order for push you can't load a drum rack that has been nested into an instrument rack.
can you comment on if this is the way it will stay?"
"I can't comment, but your wish is noted."
viewtopic.php?p=1489492#p1489492

panten
Posts: 967
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2012 1:02 pm
Location: South of London

Re: Sitting on the Fence - Push or Maschine

Post by panten » Wed Mar 13, 2013 9:31 pm

lo.key wrote:...its as simple as a right click 'group to instrument rack' and you're finished. Its hardly cumbersome.
humnumb (whether he is playing or not) is the best devil's advocate for this thread, by systematically picking at every negative point. It's slightly unfortunate though that s/he seems to flavour certain aspects to the Push workflow with negativity e.g. 'you will still have to do this or that in order for it to work'.

I have witnessed humnumb/emptysea/noiserot berate people who complain about Machine that 'they need to learn and accept that Machine might not work in the same way they're used to. I think the same philosophy could be applied here.

lo.key
Posts: 360
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2009 7:05 pm

Re: Sitting on the Fence - Push or Maschine

Post by lo.key » Wed Mar 13, 2013 10:29 pm

@humnumb, the answer you quote is referring to the fact that if you place a drum rack in an instrument you get the 'instrument mode' instead of the 'drum rack sequencer', not that you cant load the rack at all.

panten
Posts: 967
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2012 1:02 pm
Location: South of London

Re: Sitting on the Fence - Push or Maschine

Post by panten » Wed Mar 13, 2013 10:55 pm

Lo.key, phew glad we cleared that one up.. and on that note the best vid demonstrating Push that I've seen/heard yet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-B_m3Kpwic. Completely mouse/keyboard free.
One thing that occurred to me watching that is how easy it seems to scroll up and down the drum Rack with the touch strip. Awesome.

'Literally you can load up a sound pack and compose a whole song or remix without ever having to touch the computer' - This statement has me excited as I've been coming to the conclusion that this is how I will probably work.
Last edited by panten on Wed Mar 13, 2013 11:14 pm, edited 3 times in total.

lo.key
Posts: 360
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2009 7:05 pm

Re: Sitting on the Fence - Push or Maschine

Post by lo.key » Wed Mar 13, 2013 11:02 pm

i thought tom cosms vid was a good example of the workflow...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZd0OQ-cTlY

panten
Posts: 967
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2012 1:02 pm
Location: South of London

Re: Sitting on the Fence - Push or Maschine

Post by panten » Wed Mar 13, 2013 11:10 pm

Yeah that's another great one, you can see him noodling around and feeling his way through the sounds. It looks fun to use for sure.

I hope my retailer get the 1st round of Push shipments like they say on their site. Only a couple of weekends to go now.

panten
Posts: 967
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2012 1:02 pm
Location: South of London

Re: Sitting on the Fence - Push or Maschine

Post by panten » Wed Mar 13, 2013 11:23 pm

Actually to hell with Push AND Maschine. I'm getting one of these.
Just gotta sell my car 1st :P

delicioso
Posts: 1331
Joined: Mon Sep 28, 2009 8:28 pm

Re: Sitting on the Fence - Push or Maschine

Post by delicioso » Thu Mar 14, 2013 3:12 am

It's almost as if Ableton left out features from Push that might overlap too much with Maschine. Obviously they had to narrow their focus and pick and choose what they wanted Push to control since Live is way too deep to have a fully dedicated controller but it does seem like they missed out on an opportunity here. I'm sure the geek squadron will eventually hack together scripts and solutions but not everyone will have or want to be messing with things like M4L. All in all, both Push and Maschine will have their place without stepping on each other's toes.

deva
Posts: 1685
Joined: Fri Jun 02, 2006 4:32 pm

Re: Sitting on the Fence - Push or Maschine

Post by deva » Thu Mar 14, 2013 7:45 am

humnumb wrote:You can't browse or load 3rd party plugins on Push. There's no automapping either. You can configure plugins beforehand but that's useless since nothing gets saved and you'd have to do it over every single time you load the same plugin. You will still need to save it as a rack beforehand for any of that and to still have recall.


It is trivial to save a 3rd party plug-in in a rack. Lots of people do it anyway cause they like using the rack macros.

What do you get some commission from NI for relentlessly hawking Machine like a salesman??

Post Reply