Using a Push 2 for Scaler Pad view

General Discussion
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#1

I’ve only just watched the Plugin Boutique chat video with Davide and Ed - https://youtu.be/wUbIB-rokho. Very informative and promising for the future.

One topic that was mentioned was the use of an Ableton Push 2 as a controller for Pads view. Interestingly, I have already done that!

When I moved from Ableton Live to a DAW that suited me better (Studio One, but that’s not important), I was left with a Push 2 that I did not want to gather dust. So I wrote an open-source Windows program (“PushWhacker”) to allow the Push to act as a general-purpose interface for any DAW. It has quite a number of alternative pad layouts, and one is a 7x8 grid for Scaler chord pads. There’s a brief description of it at http://www.brianavid.co.uk/PW-Summary.pdf. It also works with Ableton Live via the “User” mode button.

If anyone is interested in trying it, let me know and I will publish a download link. Unfortunately this is Windows only. I don’t have a Mac so am not in a position to produce a version for Macs. Sorry!

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How to audition chords using pads from controller (Midi Learn Option?)
#2

Very nice! I’m a Mac user but that would be cool.

#3

Well it’s open source, even though it was just written for my own use. So if any Mac C# developer wants to take on a port, most of the code should just work. The only bit which is Windows-specific is the Config UI and that is pretty trivial.

The code can be forked from GitHub - brianavid/PushWhacker.

#4

I would love to download this. Can you please assist in providing how to install this code properly?

#5

Additionally I would love to know how to configure this as my user mode so that I can continue to use the main script for controlling the DAW.

#6

Hi,

[EDITED to correct the name and link. If it failed to download earlier, please try again. It’s PushWhacker - not PushWacker!!!]

The Windows setup can be downloaded from http://www.brianavid.co.uk/PushWhackerSetup.zip. Just open the Zip and double-click the PushWhackerSetup MSI file. As I haven’t paid for a developer signing certificate, the installer is not signed and so you will probably get some warning about untrusted software. You will need to click past these alerts to each a “Run anyway” (or something similar). PushWhacker will appear in the list of apps in the Start menu. Once it is running, you need to set the Output Midi to a suitable virtual Midi port.

Ableton Live users should tick the option for “Shared with Ableton Live”. In this mode the Push 2 “User” button will toggle between normal “Live” mode and using PushWhacker. Unfortunately when Shared, there is no PushWhacker display. Use the “Page” arrows to get to the “Scalar” layout. It’s probably worth running the software for a short while first without “Shared” so that you can see the display and understand how to navigate around. Alternatively, don’t bother with the Page and arrow buttons and set the layout using the Config panel if you only want to use the Scaler layout.

I hope this is clear enough. Eventually I will write some proper documentation, but I want to wait until I stop adding to the software.