Push 3 in standalone mode runs for up to two and a half hours on its battery, which is shorter than plenty of club nights and most festival days.
That single number reorganizes how you build a set. Not because the hardware is weak, but because performing from clips means the machine is making decisions in real time, and every decision it makes is one you had to specify in advance.
The romantic version of clip performance is a musician improvising freely from a grid. The working version is closer to programming. You spend the preparation deciding what the software will do without you, then spend the show reacting to the small part you left open.
Ten actions are available. No Action, Stop, Restart, Previous, Next, First, Last, Any, Other, and Jump. That vocabulary is enough to build a section that walks forward, doubles back, or picks from a pool of variations without you touching anything.
Two chance controls set the probability that each action fires. Weight them, and a four-bar loop stops being a four-bar loop, because the third repeat might take a different branch than the second. A set that plays itself while your hands are busy is entirely achievable, and it is the only way to run vocals and clip triggering at once.
Timing has two modes. Linked is the default and fires the action at the end of the clip, or after the number of loops set in the multiplier. Unlinked fires after a duration you type in, ignoring clip length entirely.
Scenes gained the same flexibility in Live 12.2, released in June 2025. Scene Follow Actions can now be set to Longest, which waits for the longest clip in the row to finish rather than firing on an arbitrary count. If you build scenes from clips of mixed lengths, that one setting removes an entire category of onstage misfires
Trigger starts the clip on press and ignores the release. Gate starts on press and stops on release, so the clip lasts exactly as long as you hold it. Toggle starts on press and stops on the next press. Repeat retriggers the clip continuously while you hold, at the clip quantization rate.
Gate and Repeat are performance tools, and almost nobody uses them. Gate turns a pad into a hold-to-play stab. Repeat turns one into a stutter you can play rhythmically. Both are one dropdown away, and both change what your fingers can do.
Legato deserves separate attention. With it on, a launched clip takes over the play position from whatever was playing on that track, so you can switch material at any moment without losing your place in the bar. Swap a full drum loop for a broken one mid-phrase, and the groove continues rather than restarting.
The catch is technical. Legato switching can produce audio dropouts unless the clips share the same sample, or the track is set to RAM mode. Worth knowing in a rehearsal room rather than discovering it through a PA.
That is a competent computer with a fixed battery and no second screen. Up to two and a half hours of runtime means a support slot is comfortable and a long headline set is not, unless you are plugged in and confident about the socket.
Move sits at the other end. Four tracks, 32 pads, up to four hours of battery, and a set that travels to Live over Ableton Cloud through Move Manager. It is a sketching device that happens to be performable, not a stage instrument that happens to be portable.
That distinction matters more than the spec sheets suggest, and it is downstream of the two workflow surfaces now living in one application, because a grid you can perform from is standard equipment now rather than a specialism.
Whichever box you take, the preparation is the same. Every clip needs a launch mode chosen on purpose, every group needs its follow actions set and tested, every scene needs a length rule that survives clips of different sizes, and the whole thing needs running end to end on battery before anyone sells a ticket.
That single number reorganizes how you build a set. Not because the hardware is weak, but because performing from clips means the machine is making decisions in real time, and every decision it makes is one you had to specify in advance.
The romantic version of clip performance is a musician improvising freely from a grid. The working version is closer to programming. You spend the preparation deciding what the software will do without you, then spend the show reacting to the small part you left open.
Follow Actions do the work your hands cannot
Follow Actions are the difference between triggering clips and performing a set. They operate on groups, meaning clips in successive slots of the same track, and a track can hold as many groups as you like as long as an empty slot separates them.Ten actions are available. No Action, Stop, Restart, Previous, Next, First, Last, Any, Other, and Jump. That vocabulary is enough to build a section that walks forward, doubles back, or picks from a pool of variations without you touching anything.
Two chance controls set the probability that each action fires. Weight them, and a four-bar loop stops being a four-bar loop, because the third repeat might take a different branch than the second. A set that plays itself while your hands are busy is entirely achievable, and it is the only way to run vocals and clip triggering at once.
Timing has two modes. Linked is the default and fires the action at the end of the clip, or after the number of loops set in the multiplier. Unlinked fires after a duration you type in, ignoring clip length entirely.
Scenes gained the same flexibility in Live 12.2, released in June 2025. Scene Follow Actions can now be set to Longest, which waits for the longest clip in the row to finish rather than firing on an arbitrary count. If you build scenes from clips of mixed lengths, that one setting removes an entire category of onstage misfires
Launch modes decide what your hands actually control
Most people never leave the default and then wonder why the grid feels unresponsive. Four modes exist, and they behave very differently under pressure.Trigger starts the clip on press and ignores the release. Gate starts on press and stops on release, so the clip lasts exactly as long as you hold it. Toggle starts on press and stops on the next press. Repeat retriggers the clip continuously while you hold, at the clip quantization rate.
Gate and Repeat are performance tools, and almost nobody uses them. Gate turns a pad into a hold-to-play stab. Repeat turns one into a stutter you can play rhythmically. Both are one dropdown away, and both change what your fingers can do.
Legato deserves separate attention. With it on, a launched clip takes over the play position from whatever was playing on that track, so you can switch material at any moment without losing your place in the bar. Swap a full drum loop for a broken one mid-phrase, and the groove continues rather than restarting.
The catch is technical. Legato switching can produce audio dropouts unless the clips share the same sample, or the track is set to RAM mode. Worth knowing in a rehearsal room rather than discovering it through a PA.
Standalone hardware moves the failure points
Taking the laptop out changes what can go wrong. Push 3 standalone carries an eleventh-generation Core i3, eight gigabytes of memory, and a 256 gigabyte drive, with 64 MPE pads, a built-in audio interface, and CV and gate ports for anything modular in the rig.That is a competent computer with a fixed battery and no second screen. Up to two and a half hours of runtime means a support slot is comfortable and a long headline set is not, unless you are plugged in and confident about the socket.
Move sits at the other end. Four tracks, 32 pads, up to four hours of battery, and a set that travels to Live over Ableton Cloud through Move Manager. It is a sketching device that happens to be performable, not a stage instrument that happens to be portable.
That distinction matters more than the spec sheets suggest, and it is downstream of the two workflow surfaces now living in one application, because a grid you can perform from is standard equipment now rather than a specialism.
Whichever box you take, the preparation is the same. Every clip needs a launch mode chosen on purpose, every group needs its follow actions set and tested, every scene needs a length rule that survives clips of different sizes, and the whole thing needs running end to end on battery before anyone sells a ticket.
