How To Use - Ableton Push 2 with Julian Gray / 517

Ableton Push 2 with Julian Gray

View Course

This week Sonic Academy welcomes Collab Alliance and YouTube sensation Julian Gray to give us an in-depth look at the Ableton’s latest hardware controller for Live - the Push 2.

With its super–sensitive pads that turn this controller into a true keyboard instrument and the new graphic display which presents a lot more information including waveform visualisations, the Ableton Push 2 really opens up a new world of creative improvisation and experimentation.

In this course, Julian creates a cool and simple progressive track utilising this impressive controller and shows us how much fun you can have with this hands-on, tactile way of creating music.

The Ableton Push 2 isn’t just a controller but also an instrument that can really help your music have a more ‘human’ feel with the sensitivity of the pads catching the velocity more accurately than its predecessor, and automating live rather than drawing the curves in the DAW itself to help speed up your workflow.

Enjoy getting to grips with this awesome piece of hardware!

Hello Julian

Thanks for your efforts to show how the controller is working. If I need training of it, I would be happy to have you as my teacher and mentor!
Technically your up do date.
Unfortunately this makes not music indeed. As on the course we lost time about to guess accords, I was disappointed then: your terms and the verbal work-flow was correct and great.
But in same time I’ve understood, thanks to you, the actual content of today’s (loop-)music and it helps me to use, out of my heart, a keyboard which remembers a piano and its experience to use.
May I do a wish, it’s all the best to you; something of the best is to learn and play a real instrument.
My studio-friend said to me: I love all the synthesizer stuff in your part of our studio, but if I come for our country-band, I turn on my bass-amp and I am playing. The musical flow becomes to life and I’m not confronted with special needs of technique.

Sincerely yours
Daniel

Learned a few things along the way. Definitely an intro course. Not really one I would turn to if you are looking for a full in depth explanation of all the features though. It was more like a brief explanation of the unit as a whole up front, and then a few features demonstrated and then used repeatedly through-out the rest of the videos to write a track. There were a few good sound design pointers along the way for progressive house. So, like i said, I learned a few things yes, but was looking for more detail in places, and many of the features were not even covered.

The audio from Ableton is doubled when programming the percussion. Please fix.

thanks for the heads up - we’ll take a look at that now

Hi Alex, that video has now been fixed - thanks for bringing it to our attention.

The glare on Julian’s Push 2 screen is a deal-breaker. Sure, lighting is important but, the Push2 is back-lit as it is. Just a very shaky, difficult to listen & watch tutorial.

this is a push tutorial not a serum sound design tutorial

@Oblique82 - Sorry you didnt like :frowning:

Best Tutorial I’ve watched on here. Filled in a bunch of questions with working on a Push 2.

this tutorial does not cover in depth functions of the Push 2 and clearly was not planned well. plenty of “oops im sorry it should have been…” which makes it a little frustrating to watch. as a beginner’s tutorial, it should also cover instruments from basic ableton racks and not Serum or whatever plugins he is using kinda disappointed…

Thought the course was very good indeed. Cheers.

There is some good info. However, it was tough to get thru. Redo the course.

Great tutorial. Will come in handy for when my new push arrives!!!

Great overview of the Push 2 hardware

Looks good for basic skills,but could do with something more in depth!

Very useful tutorial- Julian is easy to follow and understand. If you have a push 2 and want to get up to speed quickly, look no further:-)

You need to turn of the the 4 pads to the right thats are lighted, just use one for 1 bar 2 for 2 bars etc. In the percussion video :slight_smile:

I probably would not have bought a subscription to SA if I knew that this tutorial requires the user to purchase additional software, Serum & Kick2. I have my hands full with Ableton Live 9 Suite and don’t want/need to purchase Serum & Kick 2. I think I’ll ask for a refund.

this was my comment as well