Here's the thing: music is a lot like math. The more you practice it, the more you find yourself becoming a "natural" at it.

I used to be terrible at math. Then I found a teacher who basically made me work every day on math problems.

Within a few months, I found that I actually enjoyed maths, and was even good at it.

Of course, without natural talent you're not going to become the next Bowie, but even a bit of practice can make you surprisingly competent.

I have a Push (v1) and it's a lot of fun. The whole idea is to pull out the functionality from Ableton onto a tactile device, and I think it succeeds in doing so. When I play with it, I stash my laptop to the side beecause you don't really need to stay glued to the screen while working with it.

Beyond its utility, it's a really beautiful device.

Are you able to use the Push as a generic input device? Could it drive something other than the Ableton software?

I can think of a ton of things I'd like to do where having a custom "keyboard" would be awesome.

Yes you can. There's a dedicated button that puts it into "user" mode, at which point you can use it as a general midi input device. Every button and encoder is mapped, including aftertouch. You can program the LCD display and set the colors of the pads (via midi sysex messages).

I'm not sure how programmable the display is on the Push 2, as it's a different display tech. I imagine you send it snapshots of a framebuffer rendered on your computer.

Me too. I own a Push 2 and Ableton Suite and I just practice and listen to a lot of music. Soon I will have some tracks to put up on sound cloud.