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Re: interesting controller/Ableton Push



<plug> :)

I know members of this list span the globe, but for those who are in the San Francisco area I am trying to book a special presentation of Push for the April gathering of the San Francisco Electronic Music Meetup (http://meetup.com/sf-emm). I'll know more in a couple of days (hopefully).

If there are certain things people want a demo of, I can put that request to the presenter. :)

Amy



On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 12:06 PM, Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com> wrote:
@mark,

If you connect a USB cable to a laptop running Live 9.x it does indeed
"work like that". It actually lets you control the Live application
from the pad, very much like an extension of the well known Roland TR
step sequencing concept.

But I'm more interested in simply playing MIDI notes from it, just
like any MIDI piano keyboard - but with a smarter chromatic keyboard
layout. In order to do that you only need to open a virtual instrument
in whatever laptop application picking up at the other end of the USB
cable. Practically no tweaking at all.

If you want to use it to control a custom looping rig you may very
well there will of course be a lot of mapping and tweaking. Maybe you
were actually talking only about this third alternative?

But for using it as an instrument that plays

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.perboysen.com
http://www.youtube.com/perboysen


On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 8:58 PM, mark francombe <mark@markfrancombe.com> wrote:
> Jesus Christ.. Does it work like that out of the box? I think not... !
> Can you imagine the hellish days and days of fiddly little assigning and
> mapping and tweaking... Looks so much like a job... not fun at all!
>
> I bet they sell a lot based on the lights tho... vewwy vewwy pweeedy!
> I might get one just to go on the wall!
>
> Mark
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 1:58 PM, Philip Conway <Philip.Conway@bristol.ac.uk>
> wrote:
>>
>> I pre-ordered Push yesterday.  It's a sizable lump of money for a
>> controller - especially one that I haven't been able to try out first hand -
>> but I couldn't resist the introductory offer.  It'll be here in just 12-14
>> weeks!...
>>
>> I'm quite excited about its potential as an instrument.  One appealing
>> thing is that, if the early reviews are to be believed, it is very well made
>> and feels heavy and solid.  This is no small thing for a musical instrument.
>> It's much easier to 'lose yourself' and get into 'the zone', as they say, if
>> you're playing something that just feels solid and high quality, rather than
>> flimsy and plasticy.  And, for me, whether or not you can 'lose yourself' in
>> an instrument is ultimately the marker of whether it's any good or not.
>>
>> In many ways Push makes much more sense than a traditional keyboard for
>> performing and composing electronic music since it allows any scalar mapping
>> of notes and makes that mapping intuitive by providing visual feedback.  In
>> this way it seems to let the player find relationships between notes and
>> sounds that don't rigidly adhere to the c-major scale structure of the
>> piano-style keyboard.
>>
>> This is how it should be for electronic music, which is not being limited
>> to the physical mechanisms of objects like the piano.  The piano keyboard
>> was an elegant invention but it resulted to some degree from the physical
>> requirements of whacking strings with little hammers.  Electronic music is
>> completely free from such physical connections but, with some expensive
>> exceptions (e.g. the Haken Continuum), instrument or interface design has
>> lagged a long way behind what programmers and sound designers have achieved.
>>
>> Push looks like a step in the right direction in that respect.  It's not
>> revolutionary in concept but it appears to have been very well done - at
>> least I hope so!
>>
>>
>>
>> Philip.
>>
>>
>> --On 07 March 2013 12:15 +0100 Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 2:36 AM, michael noble <looplog@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.weareroli.com/
>>>>
>>>> Anyone know anything more about this company or the controller?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Looks cool, like a "piano submarine" :-)  A little thin on information
>>> that page, isn't it? From the video it seems as notes are located in
>>> linear way, similar to a piano?
>>>
>>> I must say I'm more intrigued by Ableton's new instrument Push, due to
>>> its non linear location of notes. The chromatic scale layout on Push
>>> is based on rows differing by a fourths and this creates what to me
>>> seems to very playable note locations. In fact, the hand patterns are
>>> the same as if tapping a fourths tuned fretted string instrument.
>>> Another aspect I like with the Push is that some notes appear at
>>> several positions and can be played in unison but with different
>>> attack/_expression_, this too in common with fretted string instruments.
>>>
>>> I've been using an Akai EWI4000s for some years and think it is the
>>> most (musically) expressive MIDI controller instruments I've come
>>> across. Since it is based on breath control rather than
>>> hitting-something-with-a-hand velocity it a challenge to program good
>>> synth patches to play. I think Yamaha was great in the 80s with breath
>>> control but since then not much product development seems to have
>>> happend im this area. THat's odd, thinking about how a simple hose to
>>> blow into increases the expressiveness of any simple keyboard.
>>>
>>> Greetings from Sweden
>>>
>>> Per Boysen
>>> www.perboysen.com
>>> http://www.youtube.com/perboysen
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Mark Francombe
> www.markfrancombe.com
> www.ordoabkhao.com
> http://vimeo.com/user825094
> http://www.looop.no
> twitter @markfrancombe
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/24478662@N00/