Atom Piano roll and Ableton's Push 2

cuberoo_

I love the workflow of Push and Ableton, but I really wanted something that was not my laptop to replace
my OP-1 workflow, with a bit more flexibility, and so I recently jumped into the
music making world of iOS. It's so much fun and I generally find my self making lots
of music on the iPad, often returning with stems to Ableton, or in some cases making
samples, drum kits, and so on in Ableton and moving them for musical ideas in
iOS. It's a really great workflow for me. However, while I have other midi controllers,
I found myself really missing the Push and I used to the layout. However, unlike Novation’s controllers the Push is really difficult to use without Ableton, it requires the host software to understand Push in a way that is not required for many other controllers.

So over the last couple of month’s I’ve been on a mission, late at night, to try and get a reasonable workflow with the Push 2 and AUM. For this I’ve developed a small auv3 MIDI controller that works with the Push is designed to work with Marek Bereza’s Koala Sampler, coming to the App store soon. This app is designed to work using the Push 2 as a controller for Koala. Additionally, I wanted a more general clip launcher, MIDI keyboard, and also a simple controller Elliott Garage’s
sEGments. For this I needed something that worked as MIDI sequencer and clip launcher.

Enter Atom Piano Roll 2.0,
developed by Victor Porof, which is a MIDI sequencer and clip launcher for iPad. It is
designed to be used in Auv3 hosts, such as AUM.

One of the really cool things about Atom 2, is it lets you extend it with your own code to support different hardware Midi controllers. For example, it comes with support for Novation's Launchpad. Atom can be extended using Javascript combined with its API. This repo provides a script for Push 2, which supports the following features:

• Clip launcher
  • Launch
  • Record
  • Note and step input
  • Scene launching
  • Auto-grid layout
  • Auto-routing
  • Track Mute/Solo
• Note mode
  • In key mode
  • Chromatic mode
• Scales
  • Major
  • Minor
  • Dorian
  • (easy to add more, I just don’t use them much.)
• sGElements controller

Were is it?

You can grab it from Github, you just needd Push.js an copy it to the directory:

iCloud Drive/Atom/Piano Roll 2.0.3/Controllers/

Once installed you need to enable the script by going to setting menu, the hamburger menu on the top right of the auv3, click on “TOGGLE SCRIPTS”, and select Push2.

How does it work

To keep things short, please first read the pages, in Atom’s manual, on clip launching and using the Launchpad pro. The Push 2 interface is very similar, for example, it will launch in clip mode, depending on how many instances of Atom you have loaded will provide the ability to launch them as clips. Additionally, the following keys are supported:

• Record arms the tracks, select a pad to put into record mode
• Mute/Solo toggles tracks into mute or solo mode
• Launch a scene with one of the “>” keys
• Stop a clip by pressing an empty one in that track or use the stop clip, if the track has no empty tracks.
• Stop a scene my pressing a scene with no tracks
• Scale allows you to select the root note and a scale, currently only Major, Minor, and Dorian are supported.
• Pressing note once will enter note mode, by default an in key keyboard, similar to Ableton’s Push 2. Pressing note again will enter sEGments mode, which the bottom left 4x4 pads map to sEGements first 16 pads, and the bottom right 4x4 pads to sEGments 2nd 16 pads (this requires an IAP to enable in sEGments).

If please are interested I can make a video on how to install and use it, but hopefully it should be pretty straightforward.

Finally, as I'm the only person to have used it, it seems very likely there will be bugs, just drop me a note and I'll try to fix them.

wahnfrieden

Very interested, a video demo of its features would be lovely

wahnfrieden

Please also demo your auv3.

It would be incredible if you added Ableton Push 2 step sequencing.

Dmitry

are you still developing the auv3 plugin?

I would be happy if I could use push in chromatic mode with backlight and the ability to switch channels, that would be more than enough.

tk32

Incredible work @cuberoo_

I hope @blueveek sees this.

cuberoo_

@Dmitry said:
are you still developing the auv3 plugin?

I would be happy if I could use push in chromatic mode with backlight and the ability to switch channels, that would be more than enough.

Hi, i've not done much for a month or so as been a bit over run at work and also got back into Ableton 11 and so less push at the time. However, would like to get back to it and tie it in with Loopy Pro, which I've have been using quite a bit.

steve99

@cuberoo_ I’ve recently got a Push so I am also really interested in this. Will be investigating the Atom script soon and watching for further developments. Sounds exciting for Loopy.

MatthewKay

@cuberoo_ said:

@Dmitry said:
are you still developing the auv3 plugin?

I would be happy if I could use push in chromatic mode with backlight and the ability to switch channels, that would be more than enough.

Hi, i've not done much for a month or so as been a bit over run at work and also got back into Ableton 11 and so less push at the time. However, would like to get back to it and tie it in with Loopy Pro, which I've have been using quite a bit.

I would love to see Loopy Pro and the Push 2 playing nicely!

zilld2017

Color me intrigued! My Push is gathering dust over there in the corner.

Carnbot

Yes I'd definitely be interested in Loopy Pro integration. I don't use it enough with Ableton. I'd love to see more host apps integration with Push 2 like Bespoke synth does.

cuberoo_

the main issue and drawback that is sad compared to ableton integration, or even bespoke, is that as far as i can tell it is not possible to access the screen on ios. the problem is that ios blocks access to usb devices in general, it special cases storage devices, midi, and audio, but otherwise i'm not sure it's possible. that being said i'm not very experienced with ios app coding and so maybe it is.

rs2000

@cuberoo_ said:
the main issue and drawback that is sad compared to ableton integration, or even bespoke, is that as far as i can tell it is not possible to access the screen on ios. the problem is that ios blocks access to usb devices in general, it special cases storage devices, midi, and audio, but otherwise i'm not sure it's possible. that being said i'm not very experienced with ios app coding and so maybe it is.

Maybe AirPlay is an option? Not sure if the protocol spec is open.

Edit: Yes it is!
https://github.com/FD-/RPiPlay

Ploe

Sounds Great. Will it also work with Push 1?

rs2000

@Ploe said:
Sounds Great. Will it also work with Push 1?

Not really. AirPlay will "only" mirror the screen so in order to detect text, you'd have to implement some kind of robust OCR.
Not an easy task.

Carnbot

@cuberoo_ said:
the main issue and drawback that is sad compared to ableton integration, or even bespoke, is that as far as i can tell it is not possible to access the screen on ios. the problem is that ios blocks access to usb devices in general, it special cases storage devices, midi, and audio, but otherwise i'm not sure it's possible. that being said i'm not very experienced with ios app coding and so maybe it is.

Yeah I see, so a developer of an app can't create an api to get around this?
I guess it's not surprising that Apple will restrict access.