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Step Sequencing with Push

Lesson 11 from: Ableton Push Fast Start

Josh Spoon

Step Sequencing with Push

Lesson 11 from: Ableton Push Fast Start

Josh Spoon

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Lesson Info

11. Step Sequencing with Push

Lesson Info

Step Sequencing with Push

We're going to start talking about steps sequencing with push and uh with showed a little bit earlier about the steps sequencing feature but we're gonna go a little bit more in depth and this is really nice for people who want to be able to do kind of like in the drum mode to be able to just kind of go step by step and create their sounds well not necessarily have to play everything live so once again if you want to use any type of many device inside of live and you want to load an instrument, we're gonna go to browse or add track already have tracks here so I'm just going to hit browse on the push and let me see here made switched to the grand piano and I'm just gonna replace the grand piano with, uh, new device here so we're gonna go ah, but navigate no, not the sub fatty so yeah like I've said before you can get anywhere pretty much inside of live um through this menu here and necks let's teo and yes for l so I just loaded this instrument and yes for l it's um it's available on maxw...

ell live dot com so it's ah max for a live in treatment that replicates the nintendo any s chip and so I've got that loaded up suppress prowse again for it to go away and let's so have the auto filter on and right now I don't want the auto felt iran so to turn it off I just select the auto filter and change its state which is to off so now it's a lot brighter so maybe I'll turn that on and then so we don't blow it everybody's ear drums out there as you're watching a work and your boss comes around and here's a bunch of buzzing what are you doing oh mr space lead all right so we have the audio filter they're set to kind of cut off some of the highs and we just have this nice uh device here I'm gonna try to change something try to get the sound a little bit the way I like it all right so we have the note mon we added in an instrument and switch slot here uh we press note mode again and it's going to change to the step sequence sir and so the steps sequencer breaks down the grid a little bit differently so as you could see there's a light blue color here this is our route note and then we're going up from there and then this right here is just like on the drum act this is your loop control right here and you can move up and down ah you're actives again using active down and up and then you can also just like the drum rack move up and down actives by using the touch trip so I like to just move by active because it stays going by blocks with the route if you go here it goes by note and so if you kind of want the route to be at the bottom all the time it gets kind of difficult think shift yeah shift will keep it ah with the route on the bottom so I'm gonna do let's say c four and just like the uh with the drums in the drum mode you can just start stepping so each vertical line is a step and it goes by whatever the grid is here so let's say I want to d'oh what's to eighth notes first so we see if we start the metronome not moving I don't have to could play so if I I'll just play a clip rule quick I'll make a clip that's one bar long and had the fixed good on said state it's a going to default before so if we look like I said before always check your fixed grid because sometimes he'll forget that it's on uh so if I look at it play he does each bar here up at the top for me to see and then it changes depending on my resolution here seventy eighth and it's going by a quarter appear because each of these eighths equals a quarter eso reach bar so if I let's just say start step sequencing and let's say I want to stay with each bar here and I can just start just like I did with the kick drum earlier you can't just say ok, way have step just going like that and you can add multiple notes on there so so I can add multiple notes and actually miss which this too because it's probably easier to hear with like a piano I think this is doing a lot of glide and things like that let me switch again pianos always the best presenter I will go teo some player I'll go to pianos and keys and then grand piano swap it out and as you could see, like when you're working on push if you don't like the sound you're using just load and others out so it browns again to get back to, uh my device view so if I want to add accord just like only at these sub quid sub uh, thirds going up it's just like that keep personal top remember the top is always, uh, live controls so you were able to put in multiple notes you could put him in one of the time or all together so I could just go here to put those three could take three out I also have the ability tio hold it down and nudge and I couldn't hold down a nudge a number of them or I could change the length of the number of them so if I hold us down and I could make the length longer or shorter and if I want to nudge them connected them forward or back and since there's notes in front of it when I'm nudging and it actually cuts them short and then I can bring it back so uh you have that and since they're different lengths let me turn this on down there we go it's already one step so as you can see that one wasn't going down because the length is one step and the way to get under length is the fines they have to turn the fine control down and so then I have this shorter note ah now I can go into any of these and change them all together or one of the time um so if I want to do two measures I could do just like the loop control and then just click on the two on bar too has nothing on it so let's go up let's stay in bar too so we can keeping you in the process go down and active and add one so the triad the top two of the year and the bottom ones in the active below um and then that's also where going by note could come in handy because you could just move what you want into view so I could see both of them on this on the grid together so any questions so far with that everybody feeling good about that out there I mean if you have any questions I'll be happy to answer them s so you could set that up really nice and easy now you can keep going through your steps and like just like the drums you can select you know just one or these two are a combination that you wish um so the next thing we'll talk about is uh step sequencing with automation so you can step through your automation using the step sequence sir and if I go back to my piano here go down if you notice you you may be able see they're just like on the drum rack you could see this three dots here letting me know where notes are positioned so if I just go down and active or down to actives from where I was I can now see what's in view and it gives you a nice indicators if you're kind of like wait I was just playing something now I don't see anything you know maybe you forgot that you had scrolled up you can look and see where your notes are located and go right in there so automating your steps you can do this in note modin out of note mode but if you want to let's say automate the filter and steps you can select thes three pads so I want to dio actually don't even need to do that because it's in the step so I could just select the pad hit automate so we've only been talking about this notes selection right here and that's where the nuts and the length and the fine of velocity r and then there's the automate and that's how we get to our actual device parameters so now I'm looking at the brightness and the hardness and everything of the piano so I can come in here and let's turn the river mouth all the way up when do just drastic stuff so we can hear what's going on so then uh click on this one and turn the brightness up for an eighth note and then you can even use steps when there's not even any information on it second click here and then uh let's change the tone will spring that all the way up and so if I play it each step it'll change if you look at the brightness it's going up and then down to the step on if I show you on the clip thiss one I believe is the tone so we have the tone uh being at I think it was like fifty percent or so and then jumping up on the third step because I pressed on this third step to raise it up if I switch over to the envelope for brightness, you'll see that it's raised on the second step so if I play it ah actually this is river knows brightness so you see it's going up right when that's going on are you able to step through and add different effects which is really nice just for, um creating and you know, doing things kind of step sequence or style but it's also just good and kind of any kind of setting and you could change the grid as well size so if I wanted to be a quarter note automation and then I can just select anywhere in the first step and just turn the brightness up it will do it by quarter note we'll find the thirty second triplets I can do the step this way so if you see on the screen it's changing just the uh by a thirty second triple it on there so we turn this back to quarter note and brightness and make it really dark on so I could do this with all of my effects as well so I can go toe auto filter and against indu steps with this as well. I've got it on a quarter note it's to eighth so change the grid to eighth when I hold it down and then let's say I want the residents really high on the frequency down a little bit in the second one uh I want the residents even higher you know, bring the frequency up and the third one I might change it to a band bass then the fourth would I don't know how this is going to sound we're gonna we're gonna experiment a little bit here I really like kind of seeing where things take me so let's the change that so do all of these steps um and for this last one let's do a quarter note and then we're going to turn the l a foe on I don't have that ossa late okay? So let's see how this sounds so you have all of this going with nice control over the steps says I go through you see steps changing by sixteenth and forths and so it gives you a quick hands on ability tio to just be able to do your automation by steps and um in a little bit we'll talk um a little bit more about some other automation things when we talk about the grand scale of like, putting a track together uh any questions people are good? Yeah. Can we transpose the notes during the sequencing transposed the notes during the sequencing? Uh, I was one of like, stuff where I'm like no, I'm just like let me think for us they're going to make sure uh no you can't so what you could do is just add omitting plug in um or many device so I could just go shift at effect let me select grand piano shift at effect and then go down to pitch and then you could change the active here so they have defaults so if you just like I want to go up we'll just play higher so it'll show up on the grid the same but that's the easy way to do that so I'll just hit ah close browse hit, delete and then hit the twelve and I'll delete that in your music production do you prefer using step sequencing or the sixty four pad for melody construction and why I like the normal note view the sixty four paths because I usually um I am doing stuff kind of just by like I've been saying like by the relationship so the step sequence sir, you have to put it in and then see how it sounds against the other. So on the regular note mode I can just play and so what I usually do is like I play chords um and then on top of that I'll lay something down on top of it like a lead line or something like that the step sequence sir, I like for like three or three types things or stuff where you're going to have this kind of like rhythmic system going on that's when I go to the step sequence, sir, to make some, like, really cool rhythm and stuff. And then I incorporate this or different effects or a glider such to kind of do that. Everything cool, cool and good on the questions. All right. Uh, and then I have a tip. I really bad. I say so. Let me see. What the tips that ah, as I said, if, uh, ma'am, uh, there we go. Glasses, uh, effect automation. Sounds weak trying clearly increasing the step size. So if you know, is the last one that I did, the last steps sequence that I did automation was I said, let me do it a quarter because I wanted it to kind of ring out so the short of it is the less of an effect that's gonna have unless you're dealing with I could delay or something like that. But you know, if that you end up with that problem, use increased the step size toe like a quarter or fear of the sixteenth to an eighth, and then you'll be able to probably hear the effect better. And that's, why I pulled the not all the way up so we could make sure that we can hear everything.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Push Dummy Sheet.pdf
Push Chord Sheet.pdf
Beat Sheet.pdf
Read Me.rtf
TPK Files.zip

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