How to Create Jon Hopkins' Sound on Ableton Push 3

If you own an Ableton Push 3 and you've wanted that chopped, restless synth sound Jon Hopkins gets on a track like Emerald Rush, you can build it on the standalone with nothing but stock devices and a clever bit of routing.

Most people add movement to a synth with sidechain compression.

It works, and it's on half the records you've heard this year.

Hopkins does something different.

He uses sidechain to switch a sound on, not to duck it down.

The device doing the work is a humble noise gate, the one most people only reach for to clean up noise.

That's the whole trick.

A gate, sidechained to a rhythm, chopping a sustained synth into something that moves.

You can set the entire thing up on the Push 3 standalone.

I teach Ableton and Push 3 for a living, and this is one of the routings I keep coming back to.

Here's how to get the Jon Hopkins sound on your Push 3.

How does Jon Hopkins get that chopped synth sound?

The synth in Emerald Rush never sits still.

It stutters and shifts, and it lands in slightly different spots each time round.

That glitchy, rhythmic feel is the thing people try to copy and usually can't.

On the original, Hopkins used a custom one-off plugin built for that sound.

You don't have one of those.

You have a noise gate, and that gets you most of the way there.

The reason it works comes down to what a gate does.

Normally it stays shut and only opens when a signal is loud enough to pass through, which is how it cleans up noise.

Sidechain it to a rhythm instead and it opens in that rhythm, so it slices a held synth note into a pattern.

That's a cousin of the trance gate, where a gate chops a sustained sound into steps.

The difference here is the pattern comes from a sidechain, so you can shape it like a performance rather than a fixed grid.

If you're on a laptop with Live open rather than the Push 3 standalone, the Ableton Live version of this Jon Hopkins sound walks through it from that side.

How to set up the ghost sidechain trigger on Push 3

Before the gate can do anything, it needs something to react to.

That something is a trigger track.

Make a new track and play in a rhythm.

Resist the straight 4/4.

A syncopated pattern, with hits off the obvious beats, gives the chop its stutter and keeps it from sounding like a metronome.

Here's the part that catches people out.

You're never going to hear this track.

Mute it.

That's what a ghost sidechain is.

The trigger track is silent and exists for one job, to open the gate on the synth next to it.

Every time it fires, the synth speaks.

Between hits, silence.

Get the rhythm of this trigger right and you've done most of the creative work.

The gate follows it.

How to sidechain the noise gate on the Push 3

Load a noise gate onto your synth track.

The Push 3 has a reputation for menu diving, and it's not always unfair.

This is not that.

It's 3 moves.

Open the gate's sidechain section.

Set the source to the muted trigger track you made.

Then bring the threshold down, slowly.

Watch what happens as the threshold drops.

The gate starts opening only when the trigger hits, and the steady synth turns into a rhythm that matches your trigger pattern.

Take the threshold too far and the gate hangs open, so you lose the effect.

Not far enough and nothing gets through.

There's a sweet spot where the chop is clean, and you find it by ear.

That's the core of the sound, done entirely on the standalone.

That's the core sound, 3 moves on the hardware.

How to shape the gate with attack, hold and release

Once the gate is chopping, you shape it the way you'd shape a synth envelope.

There are 3 controls.

Attack sets how fast the gate opens when the trigger hits.

Fast gives you a sharp stab.

Slow eases the sound in, so each hit fades up rather than snapping on.

Hold sets how long the gate stays open after it's triggered.

Longer hold, longer notes.

Release sets how fast it snaps shut again.

A quick release gives tight, gated stabs.

A longer one lets each note ring out before it closes.

Between those 3, you can go from a hard, percussive chop to something soft and washed, all from the same trigger pattern.

This is where the sound stops being a trick and starts being yours.

How to make the Push 3 dials move like Jon Hopkins

Listen to a Hopkins track and nothing repeats.

The sound is always shifting.

To get close, the gate dials can't stay still either.

The first option is automation.

Draw the threshold or the release so it moves across your clip.

It works, but you're tied to the length of the clip, so the movement loops when the clip loops.

The bigger option arrived with Live 12.4, which takes the Push to version 2.4.

You can now map Live's Modulator devices straight onto parameters on the Push 3 standalone.

Before this update that was not possible in standalone mode at all.

That means an LFO or an envelope-driven modulator can ride the gate's threshold or release on its own, so the chop drifts and reshapes without you touching a thing.

Set a slow LFO on the threshold and the rhythm shifts over a longer span than any single clip.

That's how you get from a static chop to something that evolves the way a Hopkins track does.

Setting that up takes seconds once you know where it lives, and the full guide to mapping modulators directly on the Push 3 standalone walks through getting an LFO onto a dial.

Key takeaways for the Jon Hopkins sound on Push 3

• It's a gate, not a compressor. The Jon Hopkins chopped sound comes from sidechaining a noise gate to switch the synth on, not from ducking it down.
• The trigger track is muted. A ghost sidechain means the rhythm you play in is silenced and only there to open the gate.
• The routing is the whole job. On the Push 3 standalone it takes only 3 moves.
• Shape it like an envelope. Attack, hold and release turn the chop from a hard stab into something softer and more musical.
• Modulation makes it evolve. Since Live 12.4 and Push 2.4 you can map an LFO onto the gate dials on the standalone, so the rhythm shifts on its own.

Final thoughts on the Jon Hopkins sound on Push 3

You don't need a custom plugin or a laptop to get a Jon Hopkins sound on the Push 3.

You need a noise gate and a muted trigger track.

The rest is finding where the threshold sits.

Get the trigger rhythm right and the gate does the heavy lifting.

Shape the envelope to taste, then let a modulator move it so it never repeats.

It's a trick built from stock devices that sounds like far more than that, and it runs entirely on the standalone.

If this is the kind of thing you want to do, the Ableton Push 3 course is built around exactly that standalone workflow.

And if you want to hear it in action, it's on the Push Patterns YouTube channel.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you make the Jon Hopkins sound on Push 3 with only stock plugins?

Yes.

The whole thing runs on Live's stock Gate, which is among the standard audio effects, so you don't need anything from a third party.

The Push 3 standalone ships with Live 12 Intro, and the Gate is there from the start.

If you own Standard or Suite you get the same device with more around it.

The original Emerald Rush sound used a custom plugin, but this gate trick gets a Push 3 owner most of the way there for nothing.

Does this work on the Push 3 controller, or only the standalone?

Both.

The controller version runs Live on your laptop, so every effect and routing option is right there, the Gate included.

The standalone runs Live on the device itself, which is where this guide is aimed, since the appeal is doing it with no computer.

The routing is identical on either one.

The only part that's specific to the standalone is mapping modulators on the hardware, which needs the Push 2.4 update.

The gate trick itself is the same on both.

Is a sidechained gate the same as a trance gate?

They're close relatives.

A trance gate chops a sustained sound using a fixed step pattern you programme in.

A sidechained gate does the same chopping, but it follows an audio rhythm from another track instead of a fixed grid.

That's the version this guide uses.

Following an audio trigger gives you a looser, more human feel, and it makes the rhythm easier to evolve later.

If you've used a trance gate before, you already understand what's happening here.

Do you need the Live 12.4 and Push 2.4 update for this?

Not for the core trick.

Sidechaining a gate to a muted track has worked in Live for years, so any recent version handles the chopped sound.

You only need Live 12.4, which takes the Push to 2.4, for a single part, mapping Live's Modulator devices directly on the Push 3 standalone with no laptop.

Before that update, standalone owners couldn't set up modulation on the device.

If you want the full picture of what landed, the rundown of the Push 2.4 update covers the modulation, the native MIDI mapping and Link Audio together.

Which Jon Hopkins track has this chopped synth sound?

The clearest example is Emerald Rush, from his 2018 album Singularity.

The main synth line stutters and shifts through the track, which is the chopped, rhythmic quality this guide recreates.

Hopkins built the original with a custom one-off plugin rather than a stock gate, so what you make here reaches the same idea a different way.

The technique turns up across his work, but Emerald Rush is the one most people point to.

Does this work with any synth?

More or less, as long as the sound is sustained.

The gate can only chop audio that's already playing, so a held pad or a long droning note gives it plenty to work with.

A short, plucky sound has almost nothing to cut into, so the effect barely shows.

Pick a patch with a long release and let it ring, and the gate has something to carve a rhythm from.

The synth itself matters less than how long it holds.

About the Author

Craig Lowe is a touring playback engineer and Ableton Live educator based in the UK.

He has worked with artists including Sam Fender, Melanie C and Years & Years, and teaches at ICMP, BIMM and ThinkSpace Education.

He runs Push Patterns, where he makes Ableton Live and Push 3 tutorials and courses.