Now You Can Hack Ableton Push 2's Screen For Custom Video

If you've ever looked at the high-res Ableton Push 2 screen and wished you could use it to display custom video animations from a Max patch then you're going to love this imp.push Max external object.  

At AskAudio we love hacks that make controllers and music hardware do things outside of their intended use or scope. In this case David Butler has created imp.push, a Cycling 74 Max external object for sending jitter video matrices to the Ableton Push 2 LCD display.

In short, you can now use the Push 2 ontroller as a custom interface for a Max patch! Here's an example of imp.push in action:

Here's what David tells us via his website:

"I see it (Ableton Push 2) as a high-quality RGB grid controller and a set of re-purposable function buttons, with the massive bonus of a totally customisable built-in LED display, which runs at desktop display refresh rate.

"In order to start getting some of my plans for integration with various software going, my first order of business was to prove that I could output my own video to the display. This proved nicely easy thanks to Ableton's API documents and libusb, and after a few hours of effort I have a pretty simple Max object which happily streams Jitter matrices at 60 Hz over USB.

"In the interests of sharing, I've released this external on Github, and you can also download it from my max externals page. I'd like to expand the scope of the external in future to include parsing for all the button LEDs (from their raw MIDI note/controller values) and also full LED control. If you'd like to help out, head over to Github and send me a pull request."

Web: http://www.theimpersonalstereo.com/blog/blog/2016/5/imppush-beta-released 

Learn more about using Push 2 (in a more conventional way) here.

 

Rounik is the Executive Editor for Ask.Audio & macProVideo. He's built a crack team of professional musicians and writers to create one of the most visited online resources for news, review, tutorials and interviews for modern musician and producer. As an Apple Certified Trainer for Logic Pro Rounik has taught teachers, professional... Read More

Discussion

Want to join the discussion?

Create an account or login to get started!