Hi guys, it's Alex from PNCb you get and pmt newcastle and today. I'm going to give you [ten] reasons
Why you need push [two] if you're an ableton user?
for those that aren't aware push is the official flagship controller for live from Ableton and
Because it comes from Berlin directly it offers seamless hardware software
Integration and very deep control of all of lives unique features, it's a large unit
It's quite a bit bigger than the novation Launchpad probe. Which is probably the next best third-Party controller for live and
It's quite heavy too, but in a good way, [it] feels really solid and the top shell is anodized aluminium nice
More importantly than that though. It's many things in one it's an instrument a
mixer a launch pad for your clips a
drum machine a step sequencer and a sampler
It's equally at home in the studio and on stage
So let's have a closer look push 2 requires live 9.5 and a book to work
So make sure you update your software if needs be it
Plugs in via usb as you would expect and has its own power supply
Because our lures lights won't illuminate on their own
Right in the middle we have an 8x8 grid of RGB. [led] pads. Which is very much multi-purpose
It's not only for triggering clips in the session view but also for playing drums and intuitively playing harmonies and melodies as well
we can trigger clips in the session view
We can play drums if we have a drum rack selected and go over to note Mod
We can play the drums either in real time or we can use the step sequencer which appears above
and if we want access to all the pads if we've got quite an extensive drum rack we just hit layout and
We get access to all 64 and you can play melodies and harmonies quite intuitively by selecting an appropriate
instrument and going to note mod and then using the scale function
so if we press the scale button we can see we've got a lot of different skills to choose from and we
[can] either set out the grid in?
Enki or in chromatic mode so in chromatic every note on the keyboard is presented to us
and
The ones that are in key with the scale that we've selectors are
Lit up if we go to in Key
We can guarantee that we're never going to play anything out of key because only the notes that are in [that] scale will be given
So the pads obviously also
Capture velocity information with every note that we play although we can bypass this at any time by pressing the accent button in which case
every note that we play will be at full velocity and it's probably also a good opportunity now to show you the touch strip at
The side of the grid which is currently being used to control pitch bend
So the screen on push 1 was great, but the screen on push 2 is fantastic
Not only is it a higher resolution and full color
But it contextually shows us instrument and effect parameters so browsing is easy
And it's really clear to see everything that you've got in your library
It's nice and clear when it comes to changing parameters of devices and perhaps best of all is when we look at sampling
Waveforms in Samplers
I displayed super accurately and it's just really easy and clear to go through and alter different parts of your sample without having to refer
Back to the software and within this lovely high-resolution display push [to] now finally supports
loading and browsing of
Third-Party Plugins
amazing use something like
Complete time to do all your composition. No problem put down that mouse use your push instead it sounds trivial
But it's really handy having basic functions at your fingertips as well. Undo mutants or
Metronome Master temple all of these things are functions that require you to look back at your computer screen
But now you can just use them directly from the hardware itself less time being uninspired more time making music
Lives most unique feature is of course the session view and push allows us to get the most out of the overdub feature
This is where we have a clip [that] already has some notes in it
But we want to overdub some more notes over the top non-destructively and we access this all through the record button
So I've been using live since about version seven and one obstacle that I've kept running into is
recording something like drums where I'm using two hands to record something in and
Not being able to hit the record button quick enough to stop that Midi clip
Exactly on two bars or four bars or whatever it is so instead of having a two bar loop
I've got a [2.1] bar loop
So I've got a stop player back going as a software and manually change it to two bars
And it just takes extra time and it's not very inspiring
But luckily now with push [2] we have a button called [fixed-length] and what that's going to do is
Make every new clip that we create an exact length that we specify perfect, so if we press and hold the fixed length button
We can see the options of how long we want you clips to be so we'll leave it on two bars
So now when I hit record I can clear the drums and not have to worry about
Press and record at exactly the right time because we're going to get a [two] bar loop and that is a fact
Okay, so we're not all accomplished trimmers and even then not many of us can play in perfect sixteenth notes or triplet notes [onto] [these]
Tiny Little pads, but thankfully turns out push [2] is an excellent drummer
and is more than happy to do this for [us] all we need to do is press the repeat button and
Select a time interval so sixteenth notes for example, [and] now when we press and hold the Pad
We'll get a continuous rhythmically perfect stream of notes
This is also velocity sensitive as well, so the harder we push down on the pad the louder and volume it will be
So earlier we mentioned the rGB screen, and how good it [is] for sampling let's have another look at that again now
one of the most powerful samplers within ableton live is called simpler and you can see when we load [up] a
Simpler instrument with a sample already loaded in there. We get this really nice view look at that waveform
lovely stuff we can zoom in really easily and
We can trim the start and end point of our sample so again no more looking back over to the computer screen
We can just delve right in and do it all from the hardware and because simpler is awesome
It's going to automatically do a lot of the hard work for us, so
short samples will be treated as one shot so drum hits and stuff and
Long Samples will be automatically warped by default if you haven't looked into the warp feature available [tune] live in general
I would highly recommend doing so it's basically a very clever algorithm
That will a time stretch or reduce, whatever audio
You're putting into it to get it to fit perfectly in time with your project, so you could import a drum
Loop or something that's at a completely different tempo than what you're using in your project, and then worf will air quantize it in time
Did someone say remix?
So there are three fundamental [mods] to simpler classic is loaded by [default] and it will allow you to polyphonic replay your samples
And because I've already gone into the simpler and changed a few settings around which I'll show you here
We just press on simpler again
And we get a few more options available to us
I've gone to Warp change the warp mode to pro and turn the [formant] up
So now when we play different pictures that are different from the original pitch of the sample
It's not going to sound like a chipmunk basically. It's going to sound a little bit more natural
You can hear the difference if I start to change the formant back down to zero
So it's a good idea to experiment with the different warp [modes]
See what kind of cool sounds you can come up with the best thing about this walk mode is that you can play
Chords out with vocals essentially and again not have them sound all [weird] and mangled
Next along from Classic is one shot, and this is just how you'd expect
[it's] perfect for drum sounds and stuff [that'll] be monophonic by default
And it'll play the whole sample and the final mode is slicing and this one's a cool one
It'll go through and detect the transients in your audio
And then split [up] your sample into different slices which you can then play across the grid so if we extend this sample out
We can see that. It's detecting transients and starting to split them up
so if we carry on and do this quite a lot we can obviously have up to 64 on one page of
short slices
where it starts to get really powerful is with the convert button so once you've
sliced up your audio like this you might want
Certain parts to be pitched up or down or you might want to add [effect] them and so on
So what we need to do now is press convert, and that's going to convert this
simpler into a drum rack and we all know how powerful drum racks are
So once the software is doing its thing [now]. [we've] got a fully playable drum rack
Moving on push isn't just meant for the composition and live performance stages
It's also built for mixing
with a touch of the mix button we get an overview of all the tracks in our project and the volumes of each one with
a really accurate display showing peak and RMS levels very very handy and
With another press of the mix button we focus specifically on whatever track
We have selected so then we can go through and change the panning or the sends of each one as well
[you] [can] also mix group tracks or tracks the container drum rack or an instrument rack if that makes sense?
It's not as [difficult] as it sounds
So you'll see a specific icon if you've got a group or a drum rack or something like that loaded
So you press it once press it again, and then it will unfold so you can see all the different parts in there
which you can then go through and
Mix as you would normally so there's no limitations here
And finally maybe one of the lesser-known facts about push [two] are the two foot switch inputs on the back
The first one is for a sustain pedal [and] the second one can be used with an unlatch pedal to arm recording
and
There are your 10 reasons?
Why you?
Need a push suit if you are in ableton user are there any features that I missed out that you absolutely love about push to
Write them in the comments below
And if you enjoyed this video don't forget to subscribe to pm TV you get for lots more product demos and tutorials
I'll see you [next] time
you