Ableton Move : User Thread

Move is just Note in hardware I thought

Hard to say. I have a very toxic relation with Ableton (but it’s my fault). I have Ableton 12 Suite, the Move and Note, I love the concept, I see tons of possibilities, but am still waiting for all of it to click with me like the Elektrons do.

Move is a great piece of kit (build quality is very premium for what it is) with a surfaced 16 step sequencer (in my book, that’s a big advantage when compared to note/Ableton Live). Yet, while I feel like I want to possess it, I rarely use it. When I do sketch on it, it’s fun. A lot more fun than Note (which, despite being the same I cannot make sound good in my hands). But then it never turns into anything material. You get my point.

If I were to bet, I’d say that if you like Note, you will love the Move. If you only tolerate Note, then you’ll perhaps only like the Move.

Buy Note, and see how you vibe with it first. One step at a time ;).

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Personally, I can’t stand using Note. I’ve tried a few times over the years and something about it just bugs me. I thought Move would make me use Note more, and it hasn’t done so at all. I love using Move, though - if I had used my feelings about Note to make my decision to buy Move, I never would have bought it. The tactility and step sequencer make it so much better in my opinion.

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Ha! Very similar vibes, I see :wink:

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Ok seems note as an app won’t bring me further, to self contained to make my iPad somewhat of a centerpiece, to software to give a true taste of move. So look somewhere als and check in on moves progress in another 2-3 months then :wink:

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I have been using iPad music apps for years and I don’t get on with Note at all. But I absolutely love the Move, and prefer it to the OP-XY in many ways.

If anything, it shows what a difference an interface can make for what is essentially the same software.

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Same here. Note has the same features and workflow but doesn’t inspire me like the Move does.

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I really dig the Move, it sounds fantastic, I like the instruments provided and also addition of adding presets from users. However, love the step sequencer, the fact I can play a chord and the input it on a step is nice.

Only negatives which is the limited 4 tracks. However, this could be fixed if they implement and extend the resampling feature. So you can resample perfect loops which I can then forgo the 4 track limit. At the moment resampling is good for one shots for me, resampling the tracks is hit or miss. More misses.

Also end point which would be nicer.

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hmmm lackluster resampling is a huge miss. that’s why i don’t have an sp-404 (i imagine it’s possible but tis convoluted).

also i couldn’t google this easily; what’s moves max pattern length?

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Yeah I miss the SP since you can resample loops so easily, albeit it was limited to certain number of bars?. But the fact is I cannot get perfect loops most of the times on the Move. If they improve the resampling then it make me forget the 4 track limit.

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Resampling is actually one of the easier things on the SP404Mk2.

This is one thing I like about the SP404Mk2 as well, it is easy to get loops. For fixed length resampling you can go up to 32 measures. If you don’t want fixed length, you can basically go for the max recording of the pad, which I think is around 16 minutes.

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It’s 16 bars.

When resampling, if you begin with the transport stopped, then tapping an “armed” pad to record will also start the transport. So you can get perfectly-timed loop starts, and the end doesn’t really matter.

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Regarding the 4 track limit, right now Move only uses the first four if a project contains more. Couldn’t Ableton implement something that lets you shuffle them around without cloudsyncing to Note? I guess this would only further open the door to people who must have more than 4 tracks, but if you’re only choosing which tracks are active (up to four) you could resample like hell. I’m gonna suggest that feature

Ecosystem! But yeah I’d agree. I mostly use Note as a utility here and there. I’ll use it to randomly check in on my list of ideas, show them to mates if I’m out and about (and veeeeeeery occcasionally edit something, or mess around if I have 2 minutes and can’t be bothered doing a fully fledged session.) But that is rare, and as others have said the Move interface surfaces so much useful stuff that I’d always choose that. I think if you’re outside Ableton completely it’s a nice path in, but mainly to test the waters in a Note & Live Lite kinda way. I’m still glad it’s there, but it feels good mostly for when in a pinch and on the go.

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One neat use for Note is to rename songs. It also lets you have 8 tracks, so you can swap any of those into the tracks synced to the Move (tracks 1-4). If you combine this with resampled loops, so you can still hear a mixdown of tracks 5-8, it’s a pretty handy companion for the Move.

You also have access to the piano roll in the beta version, for quicker edits.

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Yeah, seems that note could come in handy as an utility to check you’re move work while on commute, do slight adjustments in a more “comfortable” space (some minging/parameter changes while listening to it on a hammock) do some renaming and project organising, when one has a move.

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Unfortunately without incoming audio.

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This got a bit rambly, but here are my thoughts:

In theory, Note plus a 2i2o audio interface should be 210% of Move AT LEAST: eight tracks instead of four, full-size input and output jacks, and much more visual feedback (e.g. you can see the Capture buffer, you can see the parameters without needing to tap the knobs, you get a much larger waveform display on samples, you get a nice XY pad for the Drum Sampler effects, you get more control over individual notes plus the public beta’s MIDI editor is coming along nicely, etc.). Aside from the hardware design, I’m not aware of anything Move has that Note doesn’t.

In practice, like most others here, Note just hasn’t clicked with me. Even when I set it up with my old Apogee Duet and a MIDI controller, I find myself wanting to use Koala instead. A lot of it comes down to the UI — there’s quite a bit of functionality hidden in context menus but I don’t use it often enough to remember how to find what I need (although that’s admittedly an improvement over earlier versions; see below). And I generally just don’t like playing notes on a glass screen, whereas I’ve gotten pretty good with pad controllers.

To Ableton’s credit, the app is changing for the better. For instance, early on there were some oddball swipe gestures that have since moved to context menus — it’s a bit slower but MUCH more discoverable. And the MIDI editor in the public beta is much better than it was even a few months ago. But as it stands, I mostly use Note to grab samples when I’m out and about, or make smaller edits that might be overly fiddly on the Move. Having Cloud projects makes both of those tasks super easy to integrate with Move and Live.

Move offers a really solid user experience. The hardware feels great, the workflow is easy to learn, and the shortcuts are easy to remember. And even though it’s more limited than Note, I’ve yet to find any of its limitations unacceptable (with the caveat that I don’t need Move to sync with or control external MIDI gear, and I have a Push 3 for whenever I want to go deeper than Move can handle).

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Actually works, thanks.

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