Ableton Forum

Hi all.

A couple of days ago I stumbled on Ableton Push while watching some song covers on Youtube, which the user used it for drumming (using it like a drumpad). For myself, I'm am a small time drummer in a small time band and was quite intrigued by it. I've seen such things before, but I thought the Ableton Push was different.

I did a little homework and researched on it, and went down to the local store to have a look. Pleasingly, it had (or at least, I thought it had) three important features which I needed, and I hope I'm correct about, hopefully the community around here can help me out with it.

In my position, I would like to use it as a drum replacement (instead of using it as a DJ mixer). Before I go on, the following are my needs:
1. Being able to do step sequencing with good visual representation, which would be rather important for a freshman like me in this field. A large number of pads would help with that a lot.
2. Being able to do live drum beats.
3. Being able to change/play pre-programmed on the go. e.g. say one basic one programmed for stanza, one for chorus, one for bridge, etc, and I can just queue them into place when the time is right. Mainly for setting up the high hat beats and maybe some claps etc, while I play the snare/kicks.

With that my concerns are as follows:

a. In the note/drum mode, the 64 buttons are divided into 3 sections, top part for step sequencing, bottom left for drumming, and most importantly, the bottom right part, which is described as a loop length control. Does the loop length control allow me to do point(3) as mentioned above? Or is it one entire long track that is broken up into 16 parts and I'm just triggering a start point somewhere - I got a little confused by the manual on this part.

b. I know the Ableton Push is way more powerful that what I need above, and cost wise also a little steeper. In the interest of budget, I've looked around I've seen the Launchpad S in picture as well, which also has 64 pads, which I feel would be rather useful for someone new like me going into the field due to the good visual representation when it comes to step sequencing. I noticed it had the top two rows for the displaying the play head with the next 6 rows as the step sequencer instead. Without using advanced or self scripted things like python API etc, would I be able to have the same configuration of the Ableton Push on the Launchpad S? Would it be a feature from the Ableton Live, somehow.

Thanks for the help!

I would have to say that basically for your needs if Push cannot do it no controller will (mabe maschne possibly but I cannot comment on that).

In terms of the drumming side you are probably more of a pro than I am but lets see if I can offer something at least:

1. This is a given. You can basically start a new clip and set the length you want it to be. Then you have the choice to either play your beat live and record into the clip or sequence as you go. After it is recorded you can alter any of the hits easily. When you hit a drum sample it displays all the notes on the top sequencer part.
2. Yep, I would see no worries at all there
3. Yep. You could create a simple bass drum only beat then when you want to add a new element you can press Duplicate and start on a new copy of the clip and change that. You can then go back to the previous clip at any time and you could then build up many clips and mix them using the clip trigger mode....

Then there is PXT Live which allows you to switch (on-the-fly) to another User Mode which offers more direct functionality like changing loop lengths on the fly in time with the tempo etc. You would have to experiment with how to get it all to fit your needs but I am sure it would be pretty suitable.

The launchpad devices are basically just for triggering clips, not drumming. They are not velocity sensitive and they don't really lend themselves well to drumming. The pads are small and require too much pressure to tap. You cannot get the same function on the LP without using scripts. I believe there are some around to do that but if you went that rout you would end up wondering why you just didn't get a push.