Since version 5.4, Ardour has had full support for the Ableton Push2. This is an expensive but beautifully engineered control surface primarily targetting the workflow found in Ableton's Live software and other similar tools such as Bitwig. As of 5.4, Ardour does not offer the same kind of workflow, so we have repurposed the Push 2 to be used for mixing and editing and musical performance, without the clip/scene oriented approach in Live. This may change in future versions of Ardour.
Plug the USB cable from the Push 2 into a USB2 or USB3 port on your computer. For brighter backlighting, also plug in the power supply (this is not necessary for use).
The Push 2 will be automatically recognized by your operating system, and will appear in any of the lists of possible MIDI ports in both Ardour and other similar software.
To connect the Push 2 to Ardour, open the Preferences dialog, and then click on "Control Surfaces". Click on the "Enable" button in the line that says "Ableton Push 2" in order to activate Ardour's Push 2 support.
Once you select the input and output port, Ardour will initialize the Push 2 and it will be ready to use. You only need do this once: once these ports are connected and your session has been saved, the connections will be made automatically in this and other future sessions.
With the Push 2 support in Ardour 5.4, you can do the following things:
Messages sent from the 8x8 pad grid and the "pitch bend bar" are routed to a special MIDI port within Ardour called "Ableton Pads" (no extra latency is incurred from this routing). Although you can manually connect this port to whatever you wish, the normal behaviour of Ardour's Push 2 support is to connect the pads to the most recently selected MIDI track.
This means that to play a soft-synth/instrument plugin in a given MIDI track with the Push 2, you just need to select that track.
If multiple MIDI tracks are selected at once, the first selected track will be used. Note that messages originating from all other controls on the Push 2 will not not be delivered to the "Ableton Pads" port. This makes no difference in practice, because the other controls do not send messages that are useful for musical performance.
This is the default mode that Ardour will start the Push 2 in. In this mode, the 8 knobs at the top of the device, the 8 buttons below them, the video display and the 8 buttons below that are combined to provide a global view of the session mix.
The upper buttons are labelled by text in the video display just below them. Pressing one of the buttons changes the function of the knobs, and the parameters that will shown for each track/bus in the display. As of Ardour 5.4, the possible parameters are:
For tracks with 2 outputs, the display will show a knob indicating the pan width setting for the corresponding track/bus. The physical knob can be turned to adjust the width.
Unlike many DAWs, Ardour's stereo panners have "width" parameter that defaults to 100%. You cannot change the pan direction/azimuth of a track with 100% width, but must first reduce the width in order to pan it. Similarly, a track panned anywhere other than dead center has limits on the maximum width setting. If these concepts are not familiar to you, please be aware than many DAWs use a "panner" that actually implement "balance" and not "panning", hence the difference.
To change which tracks are shown while in global mix mode, use the left and right arrow/cursor keys just below and to the right of the display. Tracks and busses that are hidden in Ardour's GUI will also be hidden from display on the Push 2.
To select a track/bus directly from the Push 2, press the corresponding button below the display. The track name will be highlighted, and the selection will change in Ardour's GUI as well (and also any other control surfaces).
The Solo and Mute buttons to the left of the video display can be used to solo and mute tracks while in Global Mix mode. The operation will be applied to the first currently selected track(s).
There are two indications that one or more tracks are soloed:
To cancel solo, either:
Track Mix mode allows you to focus on a single track in more detail than is possible in Global Mix mode. To enter (or leave) Track Mix mode, press the "Mix" button.
In Track Mix mode, various aspects of the state of the first selected track/bus will be displayed on the Push 2. Above the display, the first 4 knobs control track volume (gain), pan directiom/azimuth, pan width, and where appropriate, track input trim.
Below the display, 7 buttons provide immediate control of mute, solo, rec-enable, monitoring (input or disk or automatic), solo isolate and solo safe state. When a a track is muted due to other track(s) soloing, the mute button will flash (to differentiate from its state when it is explicitly muted).
The video display also shows meters for the track, which as in Global Mix mode, precisely match the meter type shown in Ardour's GUI. There are also two time displays showing the current playhead position in both musical (beats|bars|ticks) format, and as hours:minutes:seconds.
To change which track is visible in Track Mix mode, use the left/right arrow/cursor keys just below and to the right of the video display.
Press the Scale button to enter Scale mode. The display will look like this:
In the center, 37 scales are presented. Scroll through them by either using the cursor/arrow keys to the lower right of the display, or the knobs above the display. The scale will change dynamically as you scroll. You can also scroll in whole pages using the upper right and upper left buttons above the display (they will display "<" and ">" if scrolling is possible).
To change the root note of the scale, press the corresponding button above or below the video display.The button will be lit to indicate your selection (and the text will be highlighted).
By default, Ardour configures the Push 2 pads to use "in-key" mode, where all pads correspond to notes "in" the chosen scale. Notes corresponding to the root note, or the equivalent note in higher octaves, are highlighted with the color of the current target MIDI track.
In "chromatic" mode, the pads correspond to a continuous sequence of notes starting with your selected root note. Pads corresponding to notes in the scale are illuminated; those corresponding to the root note are lit with the color the current target MIDI track. Other pads are left dark, but you can still play them.
To switch between them, press button on the lower left of the video display; the text above it will display the current mode (though it is usually visually self-evident from the pad lighting pattern).
In addition to the layouts described above, many (but not all) of the buttons and knobs around the edges of the Push 2 will carry out various functions related to their (illuminated) label. As of Ardour 5.4, this includes: