MPE with a controller
I already mentioned at the beginning of the chapter that, ideally, you should have an MPE controller (a physical controller) to get the most out of this feature; however, as you have seen throughout this chapter, it is not fully necessary.
There are a couple of different brands making MPE controllers, which you can easily find on the internet. When you have a controller, all the different modulations created by Slide, Pressure, and so on (which we have been exploring and using by manually drawing envelopes) can be controlled physically by sliding and applying pressure with your fingers while you are playing and recording.
What is really fun is that Ableton Push 2 can be also used to a certain extent to control MPE, as the Push has Polyphonic Aftertouch! (There’s more about Push 2 in Chapter 15, Playing Live.) Polyphonic Aftertouch creates a MIDI message specifically to each key that can be assigned to modulate parameters specific to each key/note...