The Move definitely seems like a kind of sketchpad you can use to make great music on… but can you record a live performance similar to the Push/MPC where all your track/pad mutes, encoder twists etc are recorded onto a full song timeline? That’s how we do it on the MPC today: hit Over Dub, arm Automation and then jam away on a single sequence (converted via song mode). The resulting jam is then dropped into Ableton Live and if any of the automation needs further tweaking, we do that in controller mode. The same thing goes for the Push 3 Standalone, where knob twists and pad performances can be recorded so it’s all there in Live when the project is loaded there.
This is critical because it means we can record a nice live performance video of the jam while still retaining all the possibilities of tweaking things after the fact, including changing up sounds entirely if needed.
Can something similar be done with the Move, or is the live jamming only happening live and not actually saved to a Live Set?
Essentially the question is: can you chain up a set of clips/scenes and record automation over that entire song structure in real time, and then export all of that into Live?
BUt the Drum rack Converted from a Simpler ( assuming you want a drum rack with slices from a drum loop ) need an extra manual step which is ‘Crop’ every slice in the rack before use the Simpler > Drum Sampler command in order to have it work or that is my experience.
1 > Put a loop in the Simpler and Slice
2 > Convert to Drum Rack
3 > Crop every sliced made by Simpler in every Pad of the Drum rack manually ( that is the key )
4 > Convert with Simpler > Drum Sampler
I think this is where Move differs from Push. From what I understand, on Push you’re dealing with a giant physical session view where more or less anything in the software is possible on the hardware. But the concept of Move seems to be deliberately designed to force you to sketch and refine that sketch in Live.
It’s notable for example that the whole concept of Live and Push is based around scenes. While individual scene cells are all there on Move, there is no scene row launcher because of the horizontal layout. So I don’t think chaining scenes and automation would work. One other reason for this is I believe the capture button (which captures both notes and automation - the latter of which may be unique to Move/Note, not sure?) is restricted to a clip at a time to make capture work. However using that functionality, individual scene automation will work just fine when opened in Live.
Thanks. So it’s definitely more of a sketchpad and starting point for creativity, not something that can be brought to YouTube in the way I can on other hardware like the Syntakt or the MPC. I realize it might sound superficial but this is how we release our music and having a video where the real live performance was captured while retaining the ability to mix, process and produce after that point in time is important to me.
Hopefully they can add some rudimentary chaining with the ability to record automation over that full chain at some point.
Definitely a song starting device. The folks who did all the online presentations described it as “a sketchbook.”
I could see that if they did implement scene chaining (this works on Launchpad by holding down the pads you want to play in sequence) you’d create the scene chain, and then hit record and automate away. It doesn’t feel like this would take too much away from the immediacy of Move unless there is an issue with how that translates back into Live or Note.
Guessing from a YT perspective they might be hoping that people show it both on the couch having a jam and then controlling Live, since that’s a unique aspect of it.
If you remember, this makes me think back to your point about how much % of an idea you can get down. I’d say this is maybe a 25-50% device on first glance, but it’s also a 0-100% device on account of the fact that it’s also a baby Push, and somewhere between 25 and 50% you’ll jump on the computer to carry on jamming in a more traditional way in Live.
It absolutely is “just” a sketch pad. This is totally clear from the beginning and it makes it quite a unique device imo. People talking about specs and capability like it matters on this thing, I don’t think it does. It’s like when people criticise the Perkons because it “only” has 4 channels. Specs don’t matter, play the thing and you’ll see!
On this device you can absolutely capture the soul of a new track in 10 minutes flat, and that’s usually the hard part when making music. I’ve got like 4 or 5 great new ideas in about 2 hours of use. It’s going to really really speed things up. When the idea is good, the music writes itself, and this thing gives you great ideas again and again and again. It’s a hit!
Yeah so comparing it to the Tracker which is my main point of reference…. With the Tracker it’s possible via the song mode to sit for an evening and make a fairly well thought through tune.
I was thinking this last night when working up an idea on Move. Normally on the Tracker I’ll get an idea going then spend time fleshing it out on the device. Only then would I export the song to Ableton, usually to add VSTs, effects etc.
Move needs a different approach. Scenes are for capturing variations to assess later than to chain into a song on the device. The idea here I think is just to get that first core of an idea down then get off the device quick. You’re sat on an Ableton controller here, so the second an idea is any good you want that up into Ableton cloud and into Live to work on fully.
Probably the biggest challenge Ableton will have is to resist feature creep and additions. They will get a lot of pressure to do so, but I hope they stick to their guns and avoid a menu diving hot mess.
Just would love Ableton to try and solve for a hardware tool that actually aims at finishing, not starting tracks. There are so many idea starting grooveboxes. I’m sure Move is very quick to get going but it’s not that unique apart from ability to open set in Ableton.
Korg Gadget and Koala allow you to export to live sets pretty well. Gadget has way more instruments, a clip mode, lots of effects, and super quick at piecing ideas in pretty much the same workflow as Ableton Move. Far less money and more powerful. Get its not hardware per se, but I don’t see USP on Move yet.
I love the sketch pad workflow. I’m releasing an album in December and I use Ableton Note and now Move to give me riffs which I then turn into the skeleton of a track. I then bounce everything to audio and move to Logic where I add real instruments, higher tier plugins etc.
For me the fact that I can get ideas down in minutes is great, especially as the only time I have to do that is on the train or the bus.
mine arrived yesterday, despite shipping saying it should arrive tomorrow. nice surprise!
man this thing is pretty amazing. the capture button is insanely fun, this alone sets this apart from anything else i’ve had so far.
sampling and resampling is a breeze, and the sound engine is of course incredible.
love the playback fx in the drum sampler, especially the granular stretching & looping.
all that being said i can’t get super intricate with the sound design& editing on here like i would on an octatrack, but i that brings me to the next point:
the fact that you can only get to a certain point with stuff is a really cool thing about using this thing.
it kind of forces me to move on past a certain point where normally i would fine-tune stuff endlessly for hours. here it’s just bam, next idea - and i know nothing is wasted because i know i can just pick up the best ones later on in the laptop. it just makes sense to me, idk.
it also puts my mind in a more playful & less judgemental state when trying out ideas because the stakes are lower. i’ve made a ton of sketches last night and today, and none of them are even in the kind of style/genre i ususally work in, but some of them are really good already!
one thing that’s unfortunate though is how clicky the buttons are, makes using it quite annoying for people sitting next to you on the couch.
It won’t work for everyone. That said, in a way what I’d say here is that the ability to seamlessley take a device and work on it as a sketch pad, plus control Live in one device. This makes it feel like both an “everything box” and a sketchpad in one. This might look like a small detail on the outside, but it’s in the zone of “why did no-one think of this before!” when it comes to practical workflow.
Yep this is the key selling point apart from the above. Extra features would increase the congnitive load when using the device, which would take it out of that happy zone.
yeah i feel the same way. i hope they won’t add too much stuff to it, or at least make sure that whatever they add stays simple rather than veering into complexity - if someone wants a DAW in a box it already exists in form of the Push 3.
it seems like the most requested feature is some kind of slicing/chopping mode besides what is already there. with the main pain point being that once you slice a sample onto different drum pads it’s hard to edit them all at once (filter, pitch etc) - so for example i’d prefer if they added a way to affect a parameter of all drum rack cells at once rather than adding an entirely new slicing mode. that would be a simple solution without too much extra complexity.
Got to say, this has been the best £400 I’ve spent in ages. Great fun and capable enough for me to get done what I want with the little time I have at the moment. Not taken anything into Ableton yet, but looking forward to that as it seems like it’s a breeze.
Love the fact holding shift zooms in on the start point of the sample
Only thing that took me a while was finding Pan settings for a sample. And not found a way to pan a track oddly.
Everything seems pretty well thought out and implemented.
Well done Ableton! Far better experience for me personally than the Push 3 was (sold that on ages ago).
Yeah that’s a fair gripe and something that wouldn’t take much effort to resolve. The other thought would be a Circuit Rhtyhm style method of chopping that would allow lazy chop on existing samples, almost like a live version of slice to drum rack in Live.
Side note: I didn’t realise how cool the live input lazy chop is. I assumed it would cut off the pads, so each one captures a set piece of audio. But actually it captures the whole loop as a single chunk and just places chop markers that you can move freely back and forwards.
i mean you could do this with resampling though, right?
just add an empty extra measure to your pattern, loop that, place a note trig for your sample you want to chop on there & mute the other tracks, resample onto as many pads as you want using the existing lazy chop.
it’s a few steps involved, but nothing too crazy.