From the second the initial sneak peeks and press releases drop about anything in the production world, a narrow and hyperfocused zeitgeist begins to establish around the product’s most clickbaity features, shiniest bells or whistles, and its most often-used features. This is even more true with a device as deep and complex as the Push 3, which does the more incredible music production world a disservice as it leaves some of the more nuanced features and more open-ended functions undiscussed and, thus, unused by all save for the deepest user-manual divers.
We wanted to flip the script on this, instead going right to the source and asking somebody who was directly involved in making Ableton’s latest controller, the Push 3 (which took home the award from the best new instrument of 2023), what their favorite features are on the device and how they use some of the more hidden features in clever and innovative ways.
The following is a sweet interview with an expert on all things Push 3. Jesse Terry did help make the thing, so he should know its best features better than anyone else! So, let’s dive in…
Learn Five Game-Changing Features That Shipped With The Push 3 In Our Deep Dive Coverage Of The Launch Of Ableton’s Latest Controller
What inspired the inclusion of the “Learn” feature, and how do you envision users benefiting from it?
We know that Push is a complex beast; with the latest Push, there is even more to learn. There are a lot of concepts to understand, especially if you are new to Push and Live, but even if you are a Push 2 expert.
We have a few goals with the Learn button.
We do a ton of great movies and lessons on our website, and we want to guide people there. We also want to offer a way to learn the essentials without going to the computer or your phone, as that’s a point of Push, to keep you in the groove and away from distractions. We hope to add more content here as the feature set of Push evolves.
Learn Why The Push 3 Took Home Our Editor’s Choice Award For The Best New Instrument To Hit The Market In 2023 Right Here
How does the Fixed Length recording option enhance the user’s production process?
There are two functions of Fixed Length that I use all the time. The primary function is to hold the button, set the length you want, and then turn Fixed Length On. I use this for performing or building up ideas very quickly.
It’s excellent onstage if you want to build up a song from scratch in a live looping way. Perhaps you capture a phrase you play on drums, then add a few 4-bar measures. Fixed Length gives you that assurance you’ll get a recording length you expect and takes the timing of hitting the Record button out of the equation. It’s one less thing to mess up when creating a live-looped performance on the fly.
The secondary function of Fixed Length is perhaps less known and is one of my favorites. If you have a recording in progress and press the Fixed Length button, it will stop the recording and playback the last X bars of your recording, depending on the Fixed Length setting.
In practice, I have a drum and a bass part down; then I want to add a guitar. I don’t know what I want yet, so I jam on guitar while recording for a while – often just trying to get my rhythm tight enough. When I hear I got it right, I press the Fixed Length button – and I am looped at the part I want, rather than having to press record, and find and loop that section of my recording.
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What are some lesser-known uses of the “Layout” button in various Note Modes?
The Layout button works a bit differently for Drums and Instruments.
For Drums, I’m often in the 64-pad mode, so I can make really big kits with lots of articulations and variations. I also like the 16-Velocities layout, where you can play the selected pad at 16 different velocities. This is great for making nuanced but precise hi-hat and snare parts.
For Instruments, we have the typical scale-based playing layout, where I like Dorian, Pentatonic, and Blues scales a lot. With the expressive pads, you can also diatonically hit the blue notes between the scale and slide chords. Keeping the intervals correct while you slide is wildly creative.
I also have to shout out Melodic: Sequencer + 32 Notes, which we call “Scott’s Sequencer” internally, after developer Scott McCoid, who has made that and many other features for Push. In this layout, you can hold a chord, then hit a step, and in this way, sequence chords or notes very quickly.
Can you explain the considerations behind the available warp modes in Simpler and their typical use cases?
Generally, with warp modes, if I’m using a percussive or drum loop, I usually use Beats, as I like punch of the transients with this warp mode. Tones are good for melodic parts or basslines, and textures are good for, you guessed it, textures. But on Simpler, I almost always use Complex or Complex Pro, and I often switch between them. Push often leads me to explore playing different pitches on different pads, and I find Complex and Complex Pro handle this best.
They also are the go-to choice for material that is a mixture of different sounds, like an old soul/funk sample or whatever. Complex Pro is better when you want the sample to sound as close to the original as possible, at different pitches, as it tries to preserve the ‘formants’ of the original sound.
However, Complex is less CPU intensive, and I often prefer the slightly less realistic sound. You can also pitch bend your samples in tune by sliding left and right while they are playing. The sample will bend according to the set key and scale, and will change pitch without retriggering, which is amazing.
Need Ideas On Where To Take Your Productions Next While Using The Push 3? Here’s Our Favorite Tutorials Using Ableton’s Latest Controller and Instrument
What inspired the “Note Edit Mode,” and how does it streamline the editing process?
We knew that if Push were to be standalone, we would need a way to edit notes faster than with a step sequencer. We also have this great custom-designed jog wheel. The result from our designers exceeded my expectations.
I knew I wanted things like easy selection, nudging, and changing length and velocity, but I was surprised by how immediate it is with one hand on the jog wheel and one on the 8 encoders. I’m often working on the notes in between the beats to get funky or offbeat Dilla-style feel to my hi-hats. Now that I can see all the values laid out in front of me, I can quickly move between notes or tracks and get the nudge or velocity timing exactly right and matched up (or not) within a measure or between instruments on different tracks.
I also love how seamless it is to enter the mode just by touching the jog wheel. Like everywhere else, we still want to do more to improve this area of Push.
How do the “Global Mix Mode” and “Track Mix Mode” complement each other in a mixing context?
I find Track Mix Mode super useful when creating to address the volume, pan, sends, and the ins and outs of the selected track and hone in on a track sound quickly. I have a setup where I use an ADAT Expander to add eight input channels, so I often go to the track input/output to adjust my input channel to record different instruments in my studio. Global Mix mode is handy for adjusting different tracks in parallel alongside each other or adding dub-style sends to your performance.
I use this mostly when in a mixing stage or on stage, usually paired with the pads set to launch clips.
What are some unique or unconventional ways artists have utilized the Push 3’s features in their creative workflow?
I love seeing what different artists do with Push, as it continually changes my perception of this instrument I am deeply involved it. Some really amazing players have nuance in pitch and timing that bring it to life like a guitar or a violin. I love seeing what people like this do with it – Jonathan Stein, Jamie Blake, DiVinci, and Stro Elliot are some favorites. Then, some people use it for studio creation with sampling, with modular gear, or with external synthesizers. There are too many examples to give, but a few that I’ve liked recently:
Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest makes racks with tons of Simplers in them, each with a different warped sample in them, kind of like a record bin filled with his current favorite selection of samples culled from one of the sickest record collections you have ever seen. He assigns the simplers to the Chain selector in a rack and switches between the samples with a single encoder. While this can also be done in Sampler in a more efficient way (which is good for oneshots) he needs the warping and chopping capabilities of Simpler (and the samples show up nicely onscreen when selected with Auto-Select in the rack turned on).
EdIT from the Glitch Mob has Push alongside a massive modular setup. I see artists doing this in a few ways, either via the Push breakout cables, which send up to 4 CV signals, or with modules like the Expert Sleepers ES9 or FH-2. I use both – the CV outs on Push make my old Sequential Pro One into a monophonic MPE synth with Slide controlling the Filter, or I have an FH-2 to make a crazy polyphonic MPE-capable modular setup that is awesome (and will make me broke).
It may be too early to name some artists doing wild stuff with expressive drums. You can assign Slide on a pad to different drum sounds,which can be used for highly realistic articulations or electronic madness. I also love assigning Slide on a pad to effects sends per pad, so you can add a dubby echo or reverb to the top of a pad.
Curious about the Prophet Rev 2 and Ableton combo? Explore ‘How Paradoks Uses the Prophet Rev 2 with Ableton: Why It’s the Perfect Synth for His Fast Workflow’ – get into the workflow here.
Will Vance is a professional music producer who has been involved in the industry for the better part of a decade and has been the managing editor at Magnetic Magazine since mid-2022. In that time period, he has published thousands of articles on music production, industry think pieces and educational articles about the music industry. Over the last decade as a professional music producer, Will Vance has also ran multiple successful and highly respected record labels in the industry, including Where The Heart Is Records as well as having launched a new label with a focus on community through Magnetic Magazine. When not running these labels or producing his own music, Vance is likely writing for other top industry sites like Waves or the Hyperbits Masterclass or working on his upcoming book on mindfulness in music production. On the rare chance he's not thinking about music production, he's probably running a game of Dungeons and Dragons with his friends which he has been the dungeon master for for many years.
