More Notations for Push, Olafur Arnalds Cover
A busy semester of teaching has kept the Ableton Push notation project on the back burner for a few months, but I have had a few moments to continue thinking about it.
I was so appreciative of the many Push users, composers, and educators who took the time to read my last big post setting out a notation design for the Ableton Push. I got so much insightful feedback and engagement with the idea, and it's given me a lot to think about.
Here are a few main things that came out of that:
A system which covers EVERY POSSIBLE gesture and action on the Push is probably neither possible nor desirable.
An 8-line tab system (while I still think it is a good avenue) is a hard sell if another method can work. The tab system makes more sense for 16-pad finder-drummers.
Few composers or educators need or want a notation system where the piece is exhaustively communicated within one written document - there is a place for a system which assumes the user already knows basically how the piece should sound, and gives them hints on physically how to execute it.
In the meantime I had a gig with Nonsemble in which we played a few arrangements as a 5-piece with Push and string quartet. I had to learn to play the pieces pretty quick, and I found it interesting to observe what scribblings I instinctively made to help me remember the pieces. In one particular piece, "Near Light" by Olafur Arnalds, I had the piano part written out, and what I ended up doing was sketching 8x8 grids above each bar in the music, and sketching what pads I would use in that bar.
It helped a lot to learn the piece, so I took some time to refine the idea. Below is a cleaned-up version of the full piece, notated in this gestural format. Pads played together on the first beat are black, pads which follow after are grey. An arrow indicates the order of sequential notes.
Also find the pdf version here.
This works super well for this piece because it is almost totally based on slow-moving simple chords and arpeggios. However I can imagine that for anything more complex/variable, it would quickly become unwieldy. It also depends very heavily on the player already knowing how the piece should go.
However it has the strength of being almost instantly interpretable with basically no music theory or staff notation literacy. I think the reason I intuitively began scrubbing the grids in this way is because it is the most immediate way to visualise simple patterns on the grid. It was also considerably easier for me to draw up, which would suggest that it would be easier to implement into notation software.
It could also be fairly effectively combined with staff notation, in the same way that guitar notation often includes chord diagrams above the staff.
Anyway, here is a video of me playing it, I hope others might be inspired to try it out! If you do, please let me know you go with it!
Die Hard Arnalds Fans - please forgive the liberties I've taken with the structure of the composition...
https://youtu.be/4UPEeES4F9M