A few weeks ago, DJ/musician/programmer/producer, AfroDJMac, uploaded an article about his Ableton Live Push emulator here, later he did a followup article: http://tinyurl.com/bvch2c6. This Live set allowed the user to turn their Launchpad, one of the most popular pieces of hardware for Ableton Live, into a keyboard for any virtual instrument.
As some of you may know, Ableton is coming out with a new product with Akai: the Ableton Push. This product is going to retail for $600 alone. A little out of some people's price ranges, especially when many will be just starting out with Ableton and will not necessarily know their way around the new live 9 interface. Some of the new functions that the Akai Push gives its user over what I consider its predecessor, the Novation Launchpad ($150 initially ~$100 now), is it's step sequencer, drum rack layout, and a Keyboard Layout, which AfroDJMac created in his post which I have listed above. Though all three of these functions are incredibly innovative for Ableton, the Scales function in the Keyboard Layout is what I will be focusing on for this article.
Since his article, he has done a follow up with fans of his who have sent him their Push Emulators.
As a piano and midi controller enthusiast, I have been trying to create a useable keyboard on my Launchpad since I first started programming midi instruments, first in Traktor, and next in Ableton. However, Ableton beat me to it, by designing the push with a keyboard that gives the fourth interval of any scale on the button above, and the next note for the button to the right, which means that as you move to the right, you would move up a major scale like so: CDEFGABC and if you go up from the same note, your intervals would be as follows: CFBEADGC. This sequence gives a compact, yet, wide range of notes available to the player such that when the player alternates between moving 3 notes to the right and then one note up (in relation to the starting note in the sequence of 3), the player, creates a scale.
If you did not quite understand that explanation, perhaps this video will give you a better idea:
As some of you may know, Ableton is coming out with a new product with Akai: the Ableton Push. This product is going to retail for $600 alone. A little out of some people's price ranges, especially when many will be just starting out with Ableton and will not necessarily know their way around the new live 9 interface. Some of the new functions that the Akai Push gives its user over what I consider its predecessor, the Novation Launchpad ($150 initially ~$100 now), is it's step sequencer, drum rack layout, and a Keyboard Layout, which AfroDJMac created in his post which I have listed above. Though all three of these functions are incredibly innovative for Ableton, the Scales function in the Keyboard Layout is what I will be focusing on for this article.
Since his article, he has done a follow up with fans of his who have sent him their Push Emulators.
As a piano and midi controller enthusiast, I have been trying to create a useable keyboard on my Launchpad since I first started programming midi instruments, first in Traktor, and next in Ableton. However, Ableton beat me to it, by designing the push with a keyboard that gives the fourth interval of any scale on the button above, and the next note for the button to the right, which means that as you move to the right, you would move up a major scale like so: CDEFGABC and if you go up from the same note, your intervals would be as follows: CFBEADGC. This sequence gives a compact, yet, wide range of notes available to the player such that when the player alternates between moving 3 notes to the right and then one note up (in relation to the starting note in the sequence of 3), the player, creates a scale.
If you did not quite understand that explanation, perhaps this video will give you a better idea:
The development of this product is different than most midi controllers that are on the market today for producers and DJs in that it is designed to be treated like an instrument and complete Ableton controller and not like a regular controller, which is assignable, meaning mappable, or connectable to a particular parameter, knob, or button in your Digital Audio Workstation. This way of looking at the product makes it modular, and versatile (while it still is if you turn off the python scripts). Granted, it has been great when software companies are try to give their users more control over their software, but these devices have been lacking in their universal control over the software. Native Instruments first came out with the Maschine and Maschine Mikro, which gave users the ability to create and sequence entire songs within Maschine, a budding software at the time. However, introducing a new Digital Audio Workstation without a timeline has been cumbersome for users of NI, and now, it is Ableton's turn and they seemed to have topped the game with the Push, but as I mentioned before, it is incredibly expensive and has not even come out yet. Perhaps the price will go down a few months after it does, but most of us nerds are unable to wait until then...
Therefore, people have taken it upon themselves to create innovative solutions to this problem. What I have come up with is a single effect rack that processes all of the midi input from the Launchpad and outputs an imitation of what the Push would do with Python code.
This has caused the means of my solution to be quite a bit less elegant than Ableton's, but without python scripting experience, or much Max for Live experience (which most of you will recognize as a object based language that can be used within Ableton) I have resorted to using in house midi effects. I will reiterate: This effect rack is not going to be better than Python scripts or a Max for Live device, but it will get the job done, and give you all the visual feedback you can wish for. Be warned, a single effect rack takes up more than 400 MB of memory, so it is not worthwhile to have more than one per launchpad that you have available, but the conversion is instantaneous and exactly as much fun as the Push.
I will be creating a video tutorial if there is any interest in this product, and following up with a Max for Live device, and soon after a Max emulator for those people who have Max from Cycling '74. In the meantime though, feel free to use this emulator as you please.
Download as zip file available here:
Comments
Post a Comment