PULL – New iPad Touchscreen Device Controller for Ableton

PULL – is a touchscreen device controller for Ableton that uses the iPad. It is an extremely fast and efficient workflow tool. Use it alongside other controllers, such as Ableton PUSH, or APC40, or any other controller, even a mouse. In a nutshell, PULL allows you to edit fullscreen versions of ableton devices, max devices and VST’s from your iPad . It follows any device that is currently selected and displays a very large, multi-touch template on the iPad for editing.

The software uses a combination of Ableton, Max for live and the Lemur iPad app to achieve this.

PULL for Ableton is born

We noticed that while there are some great controllers for Ableton, most of these lack intuitiveness when editing devices (only allowing you to edit the 8 banks of parameters at a time, using generic knobs).

PULL is set to change this, providing much larger, full screen, multi-touch versions that are designed to look just like Ableton devices and VST’s.

There are templates for every Ableton device included and many more available as addons

16 thoughts on “PULL – New iPad Touchscreen Device Controller for Ableton

  1. Pingback: PULL – Ableton touchscreen iPad workflow tool! by XMONSTA : Steelberry Clones

  2. Stephane morisse says:

    Hi, it looks like a very nice controller (I own Lemur, Touch OSC and Mira + various hw) and seems to work very smoothly as far as one can tell from a teaser. The price is a bit high for me, even if, as a Max a Lemur programmer, I know the time involved.

    • xmonsta says:

      Hi Stephane,

      There’s a review from Ableton Live Expert on PULL here if it helps – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_cWeV8M3Qk . It might give a bit more insight into how robustly the device works and how much time and effort it took to create. There are a lot of things happening in this app that haven’t been possible before. You can send plugin templates to the Lemur automatically when you select them (without the editor), using python. There’s also over 60 templates (for every Ableton device) and soon there will be the ability to manage VST plugins.

      Although it seems quite a simple thing, managing devices with a touchscreen is a real game changer for production and mixing. It’s a huge time saver when compared to using a mouse and due the increase in workflow speed, it enables the musician to come up with ideas more quickly and try new things out they hadn’t done before.

      Hope it helps give an overview. We’re committed to creating the highest quality software and support.

      Cheers

      X

  3. Stephane morisse says:

    Thanks for the link to the test. It seems to work really well. Like I wrote, I’m conscious that this is a great amount of work and a very cool idea !

  4. Stephane morisse says:

    Can you use it in an ad hoc network ?

  5. D1rtyDuck says:

    Looks very cool, i think i will buy and try this as soon as Lemur works again 🙁
    But by the way, i just thought about to modify this a little bit, would be cool tohave the parameters of one device at diffrent pages 8 parameters maximum on each page, so you can connect a hardwarecontroler to lemur and use 8 knobs to control automaticle the 8 shown parameters. What do you you think, could this work with lemur?

    • xmonsta says:

      Hi D1rtyDuck,

      You could do it this way. There are a few other ways too. You could edit the existing templates and just create a simple show/hide paging system, then copy the existing faders/knobs etc wherever you like in those pages. Another way could be to just put your devices inside a rack, because that has 8 dials, and they’re shown very large in PULL (probably this is the easiest way)

      Cheers

      Xmonsta

  6. D1rtyDuck says:

    no i ment something else. You know controlling ableton with a touchscreen is way better than using a mous but the best way is using real knobs, so my idea was to use to group the parameters in pairs of maximum of 8 parameters and use 8 knobs on a hardware to controll the 8 parameters wivh are shown in lemur. You know what I mean?

    • xmonsta says:

      No, I’m afraid PULL is not capable of this. I guess its a personal choice, some people prefer hardware. However, there are other people that find it difficult to visualise the parameters quickly using hardware parameter banks of 8, that dont reflect the synths/effects they’re used to. This is what PULL is good for, replicating the workflow that you’re used to, but speeding it up quite a bit. A harware controller could not do what PULL can do. Similarly, PULL is not trying to do what a hardware controller is mostly used for (such as mixing desk capabilities, volume, solo etc). PULL also brings another dimension as a controller, because people usually tweak the sounds until they like them and then draw in some automation. Whereas, with PULL, you can record the automation into session or arrangement, which is also quite a nice/quick way of working once you get used to it. I guess it comes down to personal preference.

    • Divina says:

      Does the APC40 fit into the production work flow as well as it looks like it will in the live work flow? I used to have all sorts of work ardonus for using my padkontrol with Live. Been thinking about getting an APC40 for a little while now and getting back on the performance thing.

  7. jamesway says:

    Greetings, I appreciated your work getting mu to function with live 9.
    A couple questions, is it easy to add additional pages to Pull? Can I check show tabs again in lemur editor and add my own custom thing ?

    Also, any plans to add clip launching functionality like Mu or maybe a sample view? I’ve seen some pretty cool max demonstrations with waveforms.

    Also a side note for all, Wifi is laggy and buggy, hardwired is much smoother, hardly any audio dropouts or glitches I’ve read. It may be my wifi, though I’ve tried 4 different methods and have found windows just plain sucks when it comes to wifi and especially web browsing and window scrolling. Open up windows task manager and a simple web page such as google home and try scrolling and watch the cpu spikes, similar effects with wifi. I’d be a bit scared displaying anything which is automated over wifi.
    Does anyone know a cheap way to hardwire an ipad? Without buying some overpriced piece of hardware?
    This company used to have a cheap one, http://www.xmos.com/ . Interestingly that same company gave an award to the pilot of the first Malaysian plane to disappear for his awesome motorized virtual flight chair project he designed for his top notch home virtual flight system.

  8. xmonsta says:

    Yes, you can use PULL in send mode (which sends all the templates to the Lemur). This way you can create a tab in your favourite template and copy the PULL tab into it.

    We may release a clip launcher soon. We have something in the works right now, but it’s not ready yet. However, there are some really good clip launchers already available. For instance you could use LiveControl 2, or Shove templates and copy PULL into these in send mode. All these have great clip launchers. We haven’t got anything planned with waveforms at the moment.

    Agreed wifi can be a little laggy on Windows. It really depends on what the app is trying to do. In the case of PULL, you’re sending very little information over wifi (just a few parameters at a time), so there is very little lag with Windows or Mac. You can also use adhoc mode, which speeds things up drastically, but it’s not really necessary.

    Haven’t seen anything available for hardwired network connection to iPad. Apparently there is some way to do it with a jailbroken app, but we can’t recommend to jailbreak ios.

  9. Kyle says:

    I would like to see more screen shots of the Ableton native device templates.
    Specifically of the spectrum plugin.

  10. xmonsta says:

    Unfortunately, there are no controllable parameters in the Spectrum plugin, so there is nothing for PULL to manage. Since there is nothing to control we havent created a template for Spectrum. Ableton dont give us access to the Spectrum wave, so it wont be possible to beam that to the Lemur. There are only two other devices with missing templates, which are the External Audio Effect, and External Instrument, because also these do not have any parameters to control.

    • Kyle says:

      Understandable. I got that feeling when looking into the way that the plugin was designed, hence the curiosity.
      Still an amazing product, however, i would love to see some sort of spectrum introduced into later versions of your product, even if it is not through the use of the native plugins. Probably not possible at this time, but that would be amazing.

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