41 thoughts on “Build A Track In 10 Minutes With Ableton Push

  1. its not horrible, but its not really inspiring either

    pretty damn generic

    im more interested in seeing how push can help create really experimental type stuff, because i know it can.. it has to

    unfortunately im moving away from live at this point, its just so unoptimized and unwieldy … cpu usage is out of control, midi timing is shit, etc.

    im sorta counting on bitwig to save the day, otherwise i may have to go back to a primarily hardware setup

  2. don’t we already have enough “tracks” that were made in 10 minutes on youtube? they should’ve titled it, “how to make a TEST in 10 minutes” because that’s what kids are into these days, testing gear as opposed to creating music.

  3. I’d much prefer a track that took 10 weeks to finish. If you’re immediate goal is a live dance gig, its clearly one of the better tools to be had. I just seems too easy if used only at this level. Learning to play an instrument well in real-time, or adapting to being in a band with its various personal mechanisms, seems to yield better music. I like composing alone for its own sake, but you make greater strides if you force yourself to think outside the box. I happen to love The Box, but you really use it best when you play a violin patch phrased like the real thing. A little more of that flex room would make so-called “dance music” far better.

    1. I think “band music” can be pretty atrocious too especially if you consider most of today’s pop music: the same chord progressions over and over and boring generic stuff too. Honestly I’d rather see someone “pushing buttons” in a musical way rather than listen to some bloke play two chords over and over on a guitar.
      It really does not matter what instrument you use to convey how you feel but rather HOW you use that instrument (tool).
      Yes, this video is generic because it’s a demo but I am sure that this guy can do some pretty amazing stuff if he was asked to put more time into the music. You do have to admit he has skills using Push (his instrument of choice in this video)…
      This video is about getting started with Push and how easy it is to use, not about intellectual masturbation.

  4. It’s “a track in 10 min (including arrangement)” not “a hit in 10 min”. This demonstration is really good and shows how fast you can work with a very good knowledge of your stuff and a well thought workflow.
    If you want to make original and catchy music, you have to spend more than 10 min to produce it.

  5. Thats just showing off. I’d rather see Nick create a track from this thing, as he does a good job of explaining everything as he goes along.

  6. Very blue peter …… you either use lives presets which are ok, or you use the ones you made earlier. I love my push but it’s not that simple, if you want to get it work for you, you have to go beyond the presets and make your own. And don’t forget VST/AU’s too……. It’s a labour of love

  7. Ok, the purpose was to show Push is world class reliable with Live 9. Half tutorial; Half gig, quite nothing. According to previous comments, it is not horrible, but just as 99% the same as generic tracks we can hear everywhere. This guy say he has no time to compose. That’s really a shame, composing needs time. Push is one of the greatest controller ever made, also a live tool, but PUSH never obliged you to make a track in less than ten minutes. At the opposite, i find it fine to take time, and take “ten weeks” as said above. Sign of time.

  8. Good effort and very interesting experiment to maybe just show some tricks and what’s possible. Nobody is saying, hopefully, that this track is ready to go on his next EP. Maybe he goes from this basic jammed-out version and refines it over the next “10 weeks”. It’s decent way to quickly get ideas out, like he said.

  9. Push and Ableton are very, very seductive stuff. I once watched a guy playing with Launchpad and to this mostly OTB person, it was very attractive and tempting. But I agree with some of the above comments – one would need to work hard to go beyond the toybox factor and create a signature track that says something. And I’m not putting the video down at all; it is a demonstration.

  10. Octatrack and a hardware synth or 2 (Analog4/tetra/waldorf) and you have the same thing only easier and more fun to use with no computer and no upgrading!! This is great, Push is cool, but it feels like they are trying to go backward to whats been there the whole time.

    1. Jep, that’s exactly what they claimed to do with push, bring peeps back to a simple, intuitive workflow. And a octatrack plus two synths is defenetly a great solution but also a metric buttload of money, at least for me, as a student at a jazz-college :\ I like push 🙂

    2. honestly i much prefer the mpc as the main sequencer.
      OT “always save” bugged me out. monophonic tracks aswell.
      not to speak of IMO convoluted sample management.

      mpc jjos and a couple of volcas/rocket is all you need folks.
      all well under 1k.

      1. Yeah, I had the same problems with OT. It’s just way too easy to mess things up if you’re not careful. I need to be able to go crazy on a track I’ve previously saved and then be able to revert to the saved version when I realize I’ve gone too far. With the OT I was always destroying things. Plus weird file management like you say.

  11. The problem with Maschine and Push is, you start fiddling with this flashing grids, overproduced sound presets and in the end the track sounds exactly like in this video.
    I got rid of both and back to good old midi keyboards and piano roll sequencing. For me it’s much more flexibility that way. Just getting rid of this stupid loop/grids.

  12. There is a reason why instruments like piano and trumpet are so hard to learn and take months and years to master. It keeps hoards of terrible players from ever going into public. Some things should not be as easy as falling off a log. Music is one of them. Art in general, for that matter. Math and science. Architecture. Come to think of it, anything worth while. Ever taste the difference between a package of store cookies or even ten minute tube cookies compared with ones you slaved over to make from scratch? Which makes you go ahhhh? Same thing with music, man. Cutting corner tips are good for pros who already have the chops and can produce the good sound. Amateurs should not be deluded into thinking time savers are for them. They aren’t. Beginners still have to take the long haul over the bad road and find out if they should even be there.

    1. I split hairs on this one. I think the world is a much worse place when most people feel that only a few special people can play music. I think it’s fantastic that making music is so free and accessible for anyone now, and people are far better off for engaging in that pursuit at any level, even if they suck. The problem is when we collapse everything and start giving awards to beginner level music, rather than stressing the wonder and quality of more advanced productions. It’s the way cultures are now. We hang crap in art galleries, we put crap on the radio, and we put crap in movie theaters. And in the end, the consumer really doesn’t care all that much.

      That being said, I also know many people who have been playing instruments for a couple decades and still aren’t any good at it, so we need to stay relative and flexible with the “good things take time” view. I agree that they do, but good things take a lot less time for some of us.

      1. I disagree. People have always had access to music, either singing or guitar or banjo, jew’s harp, harmonica, recorder, whatever. People have ALWAYS had access to music. Things like this gadget are not suddenly inspiring tons of people in ways never before seen by mankind. This gadget turns playing clips of other people’s effort into instant candy for the uninitiate. I’ve never liked the idea of assembling bits and pieces of other people’s music and calling it your sound. And yes, there is the truism that good artists borrow while great artists steal. But, you have to be a great artist first and foremost to be able to do something great with what you’ve stolen. The problem is that all that amateur effort is now able to be pushed into the public eye whether the public wants it or not. Availability doesn’t make it better. It just makes it more unavoidable.

    2. ‘There is a reason why instruments like piano and trumpet are so hard to learn and take months and years to master. It keeps hoards of terrible players from ever going into public”

      You missed the point.

      Ableton Push + time + skills = productivity. If you put the time in with a powerful tool like this, you’re going to be able to get fast at what you do.

      Making instruments hard to learn or hard to play does not make anyone a great musician and will not make anyone’s music better. It will just delay you from getting to the point where you can make and record music and figure out for yourself what is good or bad.

  13. Plus, I’m getting this kind of Church of the Subgenius weird vibe from, well, I can’t put it any other way than bald guys in plaid shirts. It seems less of a coincidence than a cult. Maybe I’m just paranoid.

  14. Nice example of standard, generic electronic dance music. Pretty boring stuff. The dude is definitely proficient with Push but the end result is just more bland bullshit elevator music. Yes, this shit is the elevator music of our time.
    I love Live and I love Push. But if you want to do something interesting with it you need to put in the time and effort to create your own patches, instrument racks, drum racks, etc. You know, the actual “producing” part. Once you have a nice selection of original sounds, it’s fun and much more rewarding to “play” like this guy is.

    It’s the un-seen labor that goes into creating your own sounds that makes Push a great instrument. Or, you could do like this dude and use presets that 100,000 other people own and use and make music that sounds like a car commercial.

    I love how he says that he doesn’t have time to produce. Really? You’re a producer who has no time to produce? That’s appalling. Then he proceeds to spew out crap music in ten minutes after which he renders and “upload right to Soundcloud, its that easy!” God, we’re doomed!!

  15. It’s strange how many people are slagging on the guy’s music – when the whole point of the video is to demonstrate that Push allows for production virtuosity.

    In other words, if you’ve got skills and learn the tool, you should be able to do YOUR style proficiently with Push,

  16. all the push demos sound the same damn four on the floor. when is there gonna be some innovation with it and do a different sounding style/genre?!?! i have push and do weird stuff and find some cool themes along the way even using the step sequencer! its not worth the massive chunk of change if youre just doing that rhythm all day long.

    1. Please post an example as this is what i would aim to do also….
      I agree that push seems to be aimed at the 4/4 loop market and have yet to see how it would handle more varied beats as say the NI maschine can.

      1. I’d love to see some varied beats from Maschine if you have links. Not being sarcastic, I own Maschine and would find them inspirational to expand my thinking when working with it.

  17. Judging by some of these responses, it’s obvious a lot of people have never taught a class or demoed a product or piece of software. The end result is not the focus. How he got there is, because it’s supposed to infer how you can get to where you want to go. I’m guessing if it was something that wasn’t throw away, more time would be taken with the aesthetic choices.

    Also, why would someone want to demo his very best methods? I would assume someone would want to keep a little bit for him or herself.

    1. I agree, the guy is not demoing his music craft but how fast you can lay down ideas.
      Sure he could have done some kind of weird hip-hop beat turning into obscure electronica but, he didn’t…
      what I get from that is if I got an idea of a song it would be really easy to put it down in live with that push interface.
      In 10 min before going out with friends and my idea is safely recorded, then I’ll come back later (a bit more drunk) and there it is! I can swap sounds, do my magic tricks I can do only with the mouse and whathever is cool for me to do….
      I want it, I might sell maschine mikro for financing part of it, maybe.

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