Ableton Forum

Yo
I've been eagerly anticipating Push.
It arrived this morning and I'm loving the potential it's going to offer me - and its simplicity.

However I'm really struggling with 1 thing that I dreamt would all work quite neatly with push - and it isn't... really.

Perhaps someone out there could offer me a sneaky work-around?

In anticipation of PUSH, I've been building a project for live performance:

I built one crucial Instrument Rack, containing a series of 11 chains, all of which contain different drum racks - all containing different sounds on them [drum hits/vox stabs/synth stabs], unique to each specific song. I have a macro knob [1 to 11] which helps me quickly change chains and get up the relevant drum rack for the relevant tune I'm playing at the time. ALL good, in theory.

HOWEVER, I was hoping that when I got PUSH, the amazing little 4x4 drum pad feature that instinctively activates in NOTE MODE when your focusing on a DRUM RACK would instinctively work out that my Instrument rack is actually just playing a series of DRUM RACKS on every activated chain - and I would thus be able to enjoy playing those sounds on the corresponding 4x4 pads on PUSH.

Alas. PUSH simply considers the Instrument Rack to be a piano roll type instrument - and ignores what's inside it. This is logical. I understand.
But it's a major bummer as the Piano Roll style NOTE Mode on Push is a bit of a mind-bender and can't very intuitively be used to play a drum rack instrument.

Is my only alternative to now make 11 new separate midi tracks and paste each different Drum Rack onto each one?
Then, when I change what song I'm performing live I simply record-arm the appropriate midi track that has the Drum Rack with the right sounds?

It's all doable of course, but it just massively multiplies the amount of stuff going / tracks on the screen in session mode - which I'm trying to minimize as much as possible.

Perhaps I'm missing an obvious alternative [compact] solution here; if anyone has any brainwaves on the subject, I'll be epicly grateful!

Thank you : )

PS. Hope what I'm saying is clear enough. I can try to be more explicit if not.

just make a second track with just a drumrack on it, then route the midi out from that track to the track with the instrument rack containing all your other drum racks.

Duude, that was a rad idea thank you.

I just tried it but it currently only half solves the problem:

If I permanently record-arm the new dummy drum-rack track, everything works fine as long as I'm focusing on that empty drum rack - as you say, the midi messages forward to the corresponding drum racks in the Instrument rack on the track next door perfectly.

but the moment I click on the actual instrument rack with the sounds in, so that I can see what sounds my Push drum pads are pertaining to, it automatically [invisibly] record-arms the instrument rack again and activates the piano roll style NOTE editor on Push, despite the permanent red record-arm button still showing on the dummy drum pad next door.

It's kind of cool that Push is so quick and easy that whatever you're looking at you can tweak and play instantly, but this has kind of scuppered my plans.

I'm sure there's a work-around somehow, though I didn't quite consider that it's primarily a creative tool - and not a controller directly aimed at live performance, which is something I just read elsewhere on here. So I'm not sure quite how flexible PUSH will be able to be in this situation.

Thanks for your suggestion, please keep em coming!

J

ahh, yeah, that would happen, wouldnt it ;p hmm. well, im not entirely sure if this will work, but i know someone has done some minor hacking to the push .py scripts to allow it to detect a drum rack nested inside of an instrument rack. No mention of how it responds if you have multiple chains, but i -think- it will work as long as the first chain at least is a drum rack. The script is in the first post of the link below, give it a shot...
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=191287


if that doesnt work, well you should be able to at least keep the focus on the drum rack dummy track, and shift the knob focus to the other track, which would at least let you control the chain knob and other macros...

other than that, maybe its just going to make more sense to return to the 'one instrument per track' approach, as its fairly easy to hop around between tracks using the push, and we dont need to worry about arming, the nested instruments approach (which in some senses was a hack in its own right) may not be as necessary anymore...

ps...also, it depends on how many cells each independent drum track contains, but with the touch fader and octave buttons its pretty easy to move up and down the drum rack, that would give you 8 separate 16 cell drumsets...

Oh my god.

Brother, I cannot thank you enough!!!

That script was just the ticket!!! Mate, honestly you've saved my bacon

thank you x

J

hey excellent! Glad i could help, go thank the script maker too ;D and then make some awesome noises ;D