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Re: interesting controller/Ableton Push



Hey everybody, a big hand for Phil - the pioneering pusher on this
mailing list! :-)  Looking forward to hear about your first
impressions.

If I had the money I too would pick one up right now on the intro deal.

Per


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
>>
>
>
>
>