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D-Pad Theory

Lesson 5 from: Ableton Push Fast Start

Josh Spoon

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Lesson Info

5. D-Pad Theory

Next Lesson: Creating Chords

Lesson Info

D-Pad Theory

So the next thing I would talk to you about I kind of came up with this idea of deep had theory when I was playing around with push when I first got it I realized just like we've been talking about this a lot of patterns in here when we're dealing with squares were inevitably get patterns um and so with these patterns I realize is that you can navigate like we were doing if you want to go one, two, three, four, five right where you want to go one, two, three, four, five, six you can go up like that and I get around pretty easily what I realize is especially on whatever note you're on, you just want to really know the relationship from the note that you're on to the note that you're going to and push makes it really simple to do that so ah, I had this idea that just calling the d pad theory so I could play an active with real ease I could keep my fingers in one position uh and that just translates like to any notes so if I want to play a c or really one because it doesn't matter what ke...

y you're in right now if I just want to play the one and then I want to go up for I just know this is for my told you ah fourth is just up if I want to play a fifth I could just go down and then right next to one is two and behind one is seven and so I've realized that if I just memorize what isn't you know in front of me right now in this kind of deep pad so if there's any eighties babies out there like me you played nintendo you maybe had the genesis and so you had the side direction or you know you maybe had that was the one the stick the arcades the and this any has advantage you had that you can kind of go dagnall so if you have the up down left right and then the diagonals a baby starts elect then you know you could navigate around and that's the same kind of concept here s oh let me go here this next slide um another thing that people say with these numbers here when I'm talking one two three four five six is the nashville numbering system so when we also go into cords were going to be using numbers as well instead of notes because notes don't really matter in this kind of world not to put off any you guys that a musician's musician notes do matter but you know in this kind of situation it's really about the numbers and the relationships as opposed to what were you playing you know d you playing the f what are you playing it's just the relationships so here's uh here's what it looks like just broken down so you have um thanks. So you have this this view right here what? I just show you on the keyboards so you have the first pad that you're on so this isn't in a relationship like right now this is the one in the court like if we were playing c this is c or the one because we can see that it's illuminated turquoise but whatever note you're on that one for relationship person purposes is your one and so from there you can navigate to where you want to go, so if you play that note and you say I want to play, uh I want to play the seventh of that, you know, you could just go back one I'm gonna play the fourth of that, you can just go up one uh, the second the fit you could just move your finger around, you don't have to jump up and down and then even if you jump up and down actives, if you know this relationship, then it doesn't really matter. You could start one process here and then finish it up in a higher active and, um, if you notice there's a couple of things going on here, um there are two, five, two fours s o I always think of things on push like tetris very game focused there s o we have like the fours right here and then it's just like a tetris l so we have four one over ah up three and if you are an algebra person than you know the over to I forget I was bad algebra but I remember there's a triangle involved so so you could just go up and you remember that if you just remember this process you know that you could jump actives you could do the nice well that's not a baseline but you know you could do like the baseline and you could do that anywhere so I could just pick so there's a relationship with that as well on then this other shapes that you can kind of pull out of this a swell when you're kind of playing melodies are trying to come up with melodies if you may not think like ok I want to play like uh what I want to play a let's say the one and then I want to play a fourth of that and then I want to play a third of the that one you could just think of like certain shapes so you could just say another tetris thing I want to do that block with the little piece on it ah so here and here to weigh have l uh then we have the backwards elf uh then you have the block upside down. So I can take any of these shapes and then kind of move them around on then turn this one up on its side are upon a ted all right go and then copied the same thing so it still has the same relationship uh going on within the notes and you're not sitting there worry and going oh no I'm playing this note but the next note I hope that it's right here I hope that if it's you know because of these relationships that they'll fit and that makes it really really nice to be able to do tow have that that relationship going on within your notes any questions you might have everybody's like I get this you're the best teacher ever it is pretty cool I think the national number system is the focus is on the intervals between the notes right? Read the note names which in this environment is really helpful yeah that's cool because if somebody says you know we'll talk about this later but if somebody says like play one four five in any in any key yes going oh good skills so since we're talking about that uh to get to your scales you can hit the scale button and then we have a ton of scale so we have normal major minor and then we have the door ian's the pixel indians and all that that we have um whole have whole tone scales minor blues wait pentatonix we have made your mind infinite tonic which is really nice for soloing um harmonic minor melodic minor then we start getting different eastern scales and things like that quite a bit of scales here uh I will say the major and minor is this kind of concept of the deep had theory and everything works very well for the major minor when you get in some of the eastern scales there based differently so you're not gonna have that same kind of relationship, but I think not really necessarily knowing even the tone even the relationships of the intervals in those type of scales is interesting enough to be able to, you know, come up with something cool where you're it's kind of like if you pick up a bass guitar and you don't have a plan and you start kind of plucking you're like oh that's interesting so you can have fun with that without necessarily knowing exactly what notes or in what intervals aaron that note so you pick whatever scale you want here so let's say we want a minor let's go simple and so we have see we could change it to any other scale and it does flat, so if you're kind of a sharp fan just you know translated quick in your head but you go minor b flat and then wait I just have b flat that easily that quick next I can go over to the far right here on the screen and we see fixed and what that's saying is we want to have this number here fixed as sea or not so if it's fixed uh no we have season always at the bottom corner if it's yes then bees here ah and then we have in key and out of key so if I I'll actually change this to major and I'll change this to e and I'll have in key see on the first road that was fixed on the second row we have in key so I hit that again and then it goes chromatic so you don't have to be in in the you know in key mode where everything's perfect all the time if you want to play incidentals you can uh it's just is easiest going a chromatic and if you look at this right here I put it in e because if you're like a sort of guitar players if your guitar player it's saying it looks exactly the same like if we laid the strings on top of here that's how the relationship would go because we have uh wait right on so we have half right here g hee hee hee ok so you have that chromatic lee broken down for you and then you can get to any incidentals and things like that as well. Let's say it's scale again to leave and then I can get back into uh the view so I just left chromatic on sex you need to go back in turn chromatic off and so now we have uh back to the view we had and we're in major e okay so um let's get ahead there okay let's talk about recording ah little melody here so in recording a instrument uh with push it's the same system so if I want to record I'm gonna just hit record and start playing one that I could do is I can like I said I can hit fixed grid which allows me to set the length and I want to record so if I hold down fix grid I get the option of doing one beat if I want to up to thirty two bars of recording so let's say we want to four bars so I just let go and we're hold down select the length let go and so now when I press as long as fixed link this on so if you see if I just toggle it off it's dim and then that's fixed length on uh check that when you're going to start record because you may set a fixed length and then you don't want to use the fixed length make sure that's turned off because it will just fix the length and then you'll keep playing and wonder why it's looping and not playing what you are playing so I fixed length on and I'm going tio hit record here am I still in ninety six? Yes and turn the metrodome on move this go and let me make sure I have a count in one bar and I'm gonna move do something we haven't talked about yet but I've lived back up to the first clip all right, here we go so I'm gonna hit record ah so I simply just recorded a melody in there and I just use that system of knowing like where I want to go on where I need to go uh in the deep had to get around so it's that simple just record your notes in and get them you know, in while you're playing um then once they're in you can you know, go in and kind of mess with your settings for the instrument and see how they say sound ah have still have a filter cut off and I have some chorus and some delay ah you see also which is cool is when it plays back you could see exactly like where you played um even if you have, um, a clip of somebody else playing something maybe like how do you do that? You have a clip of it you can kind of watch like always played this played that and it's really nice to be able to see that s so now that I have this and I can let's say this is my melody I wanted to be really straightforward I could quad ties this so just like we do with the drums make sure it's right so I pretty much played like coal notes quarter notes so let's do it hold it down and then go to quarter on and let's do no swing let's make it really rigid then I just hit kwan ties and if you're looking at the screen here me switch this so you can see it again so undo so you see that's where I played it and then if I read d'oh it's not doing undoes here but okay s o if I go in quantifies it and go two fourths ah ah so as you see it kind of move some things over I have the ability to go in and change that. Um so don't talk about that in a second but we could talk about it right now we'll go and hit note again and you can actually go into step mode and I can navigate toe where the notes are so the second one was short so you just hold it down and then extend the length ah wait that's a way for you to go in and change ah you're lengths and things like that in the steppe secrets or mode I usually replay it myself I feel like I like that kind of work flow I used the step sequence server more step like sequencing things uh also we have uh undo this I'll just delete it and then I will uh show you could use repeat as well and then I can also have sweet and let's see, I think it may find a little bit a different instrument here for us to do a repeat on active down this's nice because aiken d'oh e so you have a nice repeat right out here to be able to do baselines and things like that very simple same functionality as we did with the drums for the read to repeat to be on there so we can go to see what the something kind of cool so I'll stop before a geek out um so yeah, you have that repeat mode there for your drums and like I said, you have swing you can add to it or for your instruments you have swing that you can add to it as well any questions about that everybody's feeling good? We do have a question you can you add swing after you've made a recording can you make it swing for just single notes in a recording so right once it's recorded you khun dio swing through the colonization so hee repeats not on e always is the metronomic keep yourself from going crazy e all right so he was asking about swinging afterwards all right so if I do kwan ties on dh let's see these are already on the grid so I probably need to do something like sixteenth note triplets and then swing it yeah so yeah you need tio set your quantifies amount to a different amount of everything's on the grid and I believe if you turn the quantities down zero and then said it set your swing it'll just swing it uh so yeah well and I did that it quantifies it and swung it as well I think some of that kind of like the beginning of that so it's like one of those saying those happy little accidents I kind of like the feel of this first couple of notes so I could if I wanted to like go in and kind of just copy and move those around like I just like the way that is a copy of moving around but yes so that's how you would swing that any other questions is there step sequence or type thing for melodies so that you could go in and edit a melody? Yeah so that's what I was just showing just a second ago and we're going talk about that in depth after we talk about cords and stuff like that yeah yeah stating what yeah did somebody have a question about that are you were just wondering I was just wondering cool

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Push Dummy Sheet.pdf
Push Chord Sheet.pdf
Beat Sheet.pdf
Read Me.rtf
TPK Files.zip

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