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Re: interesting controller/Ableton Push



It has every kind of Western and many non-Western scales set up out-of-the-box. They're selectable via a rotary knob and show up on the LCD display. The device itself is 'plug-in-and-play'; no drivers to install or anything.

That's about as un-fiddly as I can imagine a device of this kind to be! :)

Of course setting up custom scales will be a bit more complicated. But I imagine 95% of the time I'll want major or minor or ionian or whatever - and they're already there.


--On 07 March 2013 20:58 +0100 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/