Thanks mate
yes
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This Move is one of my favorite piece of gear over the last 15 years.
I sold every h/w i owned since I have it (DT2/DN2/SP-404MKII and Wavestate) and bought an Ableton suite license and some Fors Max for live for the Elektron feeling. I don’t regret.
I would even say that the Move brings me more and more to a 100% Ableton environment. I am now considering buying a Push 3 controller (not the stand alone one… I already have the Move). The Move to play and create on the couch or by the pool and the Push 3 and labtop to finish the songs or create more complex ones.
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I’m sure the evil Ableton people intended this. Since I bought Move, I’m also all in with Ableton now. It’s probably also going to be a gateway drug for others not yet fully on board the Ableton Live train.
On the Push 3 front, FORS and Iftah really delivered on making Push and expressive instrument and it looks like Ableton is also working down that path too now with xyz control and rhythm generation in the new beta.
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It’s definitely got me working back within Live more too, but that’s been a significant improvement for me in terms of workflow and focus.
I also love that the Move is the exact same size as a 75% keyboard - mouse/keyboard with the right hand, Move as controller with the left.
It hasn’t pushed me to Push though.
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One year later I’m still a big fan, although I’ve had some ups and downs.
The good:
- Live integration. You can drag individual tracks or devices out of Ableton Cloud, so it’s surprisingly easy to use Move Standalone as a module within your set. I’m not explaining it super well so let me know if you have any questions.
- Randomized presets with every new set — I really, really like this. If you get a bad roll, just delete the set and start over!
- Portability.
- Quick sampling. Especially compared to Push, where you have to record an audio clip and convert it to a new sampler track.
- The step sequencer. Even though Push has basically the same capabilities (and more), it’s nice having the dedicated buttons.
- The Undo function actually tells you what you undid!
- Capture works heads and tails better than it does in Live.
- With full access to Drift in beta 1.7, this is a surprisingly powerful synth and sampler.
- Generous storage (50 GB) and RAM (2 GB). You really don’t need to think about it.
The maybe-bad (YMMV):
- Over time, the workflow has moved further away from both Note and Push. This won’t bother everybody, and in fairness a lot of the changes are better for the form factor, but I hoped that Move would at least maintain the same muscle memory as Push. It’s not miles away, but I make mistakes when I switch back and forth.
- Some of the new Shift functions have become unintuitive and less discoverable. Shift+Track to access MIDI makes perfect sense, but I’m not a fan of the submenus you access via the jogwheel (Drum Sampler pg 2, sample slice/reverse, Drift banks in beta 1.7).
- Most of the preset macros are relatively consistent, but I still spend a fair bit of time tapping the tops of the knobs, looking for a certain parameter.
- Controller Mode is good to have, but very different from both Move Standalone and Push. I find it very hard to move back and forth.
All in all I think it’s excellent value and I’m very happy with it. Given the choice between Move and Push, I’d take Push hands-down — but that’s an extremely unfair comparison given the huge differences in price, size, and general intent.
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if I slice a sample and add slices to a an empty track and there are pads free, can one add slices from a new different sample to the empty pads in that track?
(ideally like sp404mk2 where you can assign some slices to some pads put not all)
Tracks still generate audio when they’re sending MIDI, so you can stack sounds pretty easily. I’ve had fun adding heft to my basslines with a Volca Kick!
But yes, there is a maximum of four MIDI tracks.
Edit: muting a track cuts the audio, but MIDI keeps playing. So you can use Move as “just” a MIDI controller by muting your tracks, but you’ll need to keep an empty clip if you want to stop MIDI.
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Slicing on the Move is… generally confusing. I’m not familiar with the 404, but I’m pretty sure I understand what you’re asking.
The short answer is: kind of. The dedicated Slice feature always overwrites your whole Drum Rack, even if you only assign a few slices. It always takes the current sample, clears out all the pads, and starts setting chops from the bottom left. I can’t find a way to change it.
However, after running Slice, you can freely swap samples, record new samples, and overwrite recorded pads. You can “lazy chop” during recording, and you can copy a pad and adjust the start point. But if you run the Slice feature again, it will overwrite the entire Drum Rack — even if there are empty pads available.
FWIW I prefer copying pads and adjusting the start point. It’s quick and easy, plus it reminds me of early Koala. The Slice feature is kind of a blunt instrument; it’s nice to have, but not as flexible as you might hope.
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This is really my only complaint, and it’s unavoidable really given the sparser number of controls and buttons on it. Otherwise it’s one of my favorite bits for coming up with new ideas.
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I agree. It might have been better if slicing/chopping worked on the right-hand 16-level pads and allowed copying to the left.
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In terms of seamlessness, I don’t think there’s much that competes. You open your Move project exactly as it is in Ableton, and you just… carry on. No cables! I’d say of the relatively small list of portable HW I’ve gotten it’s absolutely up there with my favourite pieces. If I have a spare 30 minutes, Move is the one that gets turned on.
The auto loading of sounds is a great feature, and if you want to sample on it, it’s very direct, where Push just isn’t. The additional features have been coming fast and are genuinley great, the only downside of this could be if it becomes a menu diving situation, but for now it’s advantage Move. If I had to keep only one of Push or Move, it would be Move. I like that formfactor especially, it just feels right for on the go/desk use.
Yep 100%. So I got into Ableton on v11, and I noticed that most people were in the arrangment view when I was doing tutorials. But I gravitated to it, in part because of Circuits and Launchpads etc. Feels logical to me that the Session View is basically an arranger/song mode that you can jam on. For my workflow I liked the flexibility of creating a few ideas and then moving those jigsaw pieces around on the grid, almost like a vertical arrangement.
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For me the wireless sample management from my iPhone is da bizniss!
I wish when you hold Shift and Hold to adjust length of sample to be able to see the sample instead of the percentage
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Out of the Move developments/improvements, the slicing feature is the only one, for me, that is a complete miss. I just never use it as the only way I can find to use it, is by having a complete drum rack free. Which means one of the four tracks needs to be reserved. I just therefore never use it.
I’d be much happier if they would have implemented a simpler Simpler, so that I could swap out a drum sampler for a simpler and have (up to) 16 slices in the 16 pitches location.
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Also being able to fine tune sequencing and arranging in Note on the bigger screen, and then kick it back to Move if you want more hands on control.
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never thought about doing this, great tip.
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What kind of devices can you drag from Ableton Cloud? Even max devices?
Can you have for example instrument (for example operator) with audio effects like reverb after? There’s probably a video that explains the features a bit better
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Move integration is one-way only, unfortunately. But if you’re working on a set on Move and have it synced to Ableton Cloud, you can pull individual components out. Dragging a track gives you the devices and scenes, or you can drop individual clips.
One use case for this is to sync Move Standalone with a Live session via Link, and put your Move set into the cloud. You can take advantage of Move’s better capture and faster sampling, and when you’re done with a track you can just drag it into your Live session and start something new on Move. It’s an easy way to get around the four -track limit, and I find it a bit more fluid than taking the set as far as you can on Move then picking the whole thing up in Live.
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I see now that there’s no operator on it. But I can get any drift or wavetable patch I made in Live 12 over to it?
Drift yes (and you can access all of the parameter banks as of the 1.7 beta). The process is still a bit janky, but IMO it’s fine once you get used to it: https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/articles/15616909965596-Presets-on-Move-and-Note
Apparently Wavetable can use massively different amounts of CPU depending on how you program it, so they don’t allow you to upload your own presets.
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