This was a sobering read. As someone who easily fall into the GAS trap, especially when it comes to utopian dreams about perfect grooveboxes or the ideal workflow, I’ve noticed the almost unanimously positive sentiment around the Move and it’s made me want it more.
At the same time, I’ve been thinking to myself that I already have something that is pretty much perfect for my needs, where I can sketch and noodle with precision and an open wide sound palette, and take that sketch to a fully arranged song structure all in one box.
So why am I finding it so hard to resist the idea of the Move when that’s basically a bunch of compromises forcing me to embrace a much more hybrid workflow than I probably will prefer?
Plus the buttons of the MPC Live 2 is much softer and quieter from what I can tell when seeing demos of the Move. (I played with the Syntakt yesterday due to the new firmware and immediately my wife started to complain about the noise I was making next to her. )
So yeah, thanks for sharing your perspective. It’s needed here too.
Cool, but not necessarily crucial. So I agree with you, not really a strong reason to pay for a future cloud service unless maybe you do this for a living where time=money.
This is the most serious limitation for my needs, particularly that you can’t record automation over a full chain of patterns (also known as a “song”).
But on Move, with a drum rack on one track, and using the last three tracks as synth tracks. You have 16 monophonic but pitchable tracks, and three polyphonic tracks. So I personally, don’t really find that a limitation.
I personally find the lack of effects, and particularly the lack of sidechain options, more limiting.
Funnily enough. I’ve been playing with Ableton Note, in conjunction with my newly arrived Move, on my 5th generation iPad Air. And the speakers really are terrible on Move in comparison with the iPad.
It feels like Ableton will do what Novation did with the Circuit and drop the speaker idea for version 2.
I have a similar view on this. I often add 2-3 inserts at an early stage of picking a synth sound on the MPC, it’s part of the sound design process. Often it’s a combo of some distortion, something to age it (eg cassette flutter) and then a creative delay. How those effect chains are done can make all the difference in how I perceive the song embryo and that’s often the make or break. As in, I will either carry on developing the song idea or drop it altogether. So I’m guessing I’d have to really rethink that approach with a Move and consider it more as a note sheet tool to get you in the ballpark and use your imagination for the missing pieces. Kind of like how I often approach the Syntakt too.
It only has four tracks, so who needs a scene button anyway? You can totally hit all four pads at once!
I feel the same. The included FX are pretty bread-and-butter. I’d like some of the wilder effects that suit the experimental side of the Move. On the other hand, I’m really pushing the effects that are there, more than I ever have before, so there’s that.
A lot of expiremental sound design can be achieved by manipulating instrument parameters instead of relying on effect racks. For example I frequently use FM to mimic distortion, sine LFO going into pitch modulation to mimic wow/flutter and the Drum Sampler has built-in (although limited) FX capabilities. Not saying that it wouldn’t be nice to have a more complete audio track with better effect racks, but you can get pretty wild with the existing tools and even if that doesn’t work, there is still sampling.
Unrelated to this discussion, I made this yesterday. Nothing crazy, just some polyrythms and tried sampling from my iPhone. My next jam will probably be some breakbeat/breakcore with crazy sample mangling. Already made the drum rack, just need to glitch out some melodic one shots using Meld.
I wonder if you can audio input the Move into your iPad over usb-c like you can with a MacBook and use the iPad speakers? I use my 404mk2 into my 16" MBP like this regularly and it sounds decent enough for a semi-portable (on the couch in my case!) setup. It’s a shame to hear the Move speakers are quite poor though. I’m still hoping they’re at least marginally better than the EP-133 speaker!
You don’t get Wavetable with Intro though, right? So you couldn’t edit or even use those presets when exported into Live Intro. Or is it designed so that those presets still work in Live even if you don’t own Suite?
Nope, Wavetable is in Suite. But from what I gather: you get a “player version” with only the macros if you open it in Intro or Standard ; and you can’t make presets for Move with it for now because it is too huge.
Thanks for the feedback! It felt like a bit of an ego trip writing that, but I felt compelled to share my perspective as it was a bit of a journey for me! Actually started feeling guilty for not embracing the use of the Move, which was weird.
I have a very specific setup in my studio which works for me, and at this point, anything that doesn’t enhance the workflow only serves to hinder. I love Ableton and Live but even I don’t have the Push - I find it slows me down! It’s unusual but it’s just how my mind works. So I guess the point is, nurture the way of working that works for you and be kind to yourself. <3
Bang on; the positive sentiment is strong with this one despite having a very ‘meh’ response at reveal I feel like.
It’s fun and immediate, but I also feel like it will not help me finish more tracks as the problem for me is not in finding an idea, but in actually finishing one.
I’m selling it off to someone else. DT2 is still my language (and they will add slicing eventually, I can feel it) and with OB it’s super easy to get it into Ableton.
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned is that the sound seems to cutoff between sets (or whatever the nomenclature is). I especially noticed this on the Dataline video. Any Move users have an opinion about this? Seems like a kind of vibe killer for a live set with continuous music.
I’ve been using Live for almost 12 years, most of which I spent with the Push 1, and I upgraded to the Push 3 last July and it’s been the centrepiece of my (admittedly compact) setup ever since. Move fits my needs in some big, practical ways and a few nice-but-inessential ways.
Practical:
Portability. I’ve flown to Western Canada with the Push 3 six times now, and it’s doable but not especially pleasant. Move is “throw it in your bag” portable in Standalone mode and, while I’m a big fan of Push’s MPE pads and deeper Live control, Move is a very good controller for when I want to sit in front of my computer.
Familiarity. My music is pretty basic but I know Push and Live well, and even though I regularly watch EZBOT and Ricky Tinez shred on Elektron gear, I’ve accepted that it will be years before I have enough time to learn another workflow to the same proficiency. Move builds on the same muscle memory as Push and uses the same Set structure as Live, so it only took me about an hour to commit the differences to muscle memory.
The nice-to-haves:
Instant sampling with tons of RAM and storage. I really liked the OP-Z but it couldn’t sample while the sequencer was running and only had 24mb of RAM. I currently have an Electribe ESX-1 and ES-2 that share the same limitations, and while I’ll go to my grave insisting that 24mb is still a lot of RAM for audio, it’s the kind of thing you need to manage quite frequently over the life of your device. Digitakt I’s 64mb of RAM was more than i ever needed in a project, but the 1gb +Drive became something I needed to manage surprisingly quickly and was a big part of my decision to sell it. Move has 2gb of RAM and ~50gb of user storage so even if you’re resampling 16 bar loops, it’ll be a looooong time before you need to worry about it. Also, Push and Simpler are 100x more powerful, but sampling is a minimum-three step process and, for me, usually closer to a seven-step process. Move, meanwhile, has a mic and lets you record straight to Drum Rack pads.
Ableton Link. My iPad wasn’t getting much love since I upgraded my laptop a couple years back, but it’s become an absolute treasure trove of tempo-synced samples. And when I’m working in Live, I can use Push as an outboard mic / sampler / drum machine / synth module just by running a single audio cable to Push.
Ableton Cloud and Move Manager. I never quite got on with Overbridge and I CERTAINLY never had the patience to stem out OP-Z tracks, so 100% of my output on those devices was recorded live to a stereo audio track. I’ve also done Live Set export on the Electribe 2S and in Koala and Patterning, and it’s fine, but boy is it ever nice to have projects come over perfectly 1:1 with zero effort.
Right now, Move’s limited MIDI capabilities make it less than ideal for a lot of setups. But it’s definitely more than just a sketchpad or a Live magnet for beginners.
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