I don’t understand cause you can move the start point, maybe it’s coming, like the visualiser of the end point of the wave
I don’t use a ton of audio clips when jamming on Move, so it hasn’t changed much. If I need to add anything more long-form in audio format, I’ll do that when I move things over to Live. Otherwise I can just use either the drum rack or the sampler inside of Move.
I’ve already filled up all 32 sets inside of Move and have had to start backing them up on my computer. I find it very fun for just jamming with on the couch. It’s also one of the few pieces of gear that I’ve actually brought to a coffee shop and been able to make music on, which is one of my favorite things to do.
Yeah, I’ll stick with my piano sessions in Logic until something more obvious comes along.
2 Likes
Yeah I think the appeal is much greater if you’re already heavily invested in the Ableton ecosystem. Now with Live 12.4 and Link Audio, the functionality presented in the new Outbox8 is already available with Move. So there are several ways to work (standalone Move, streaming audio directly into Live from each track, or transferring sets over via the Cloud/ Move Manager). If you’re using Logic, you only have the first option available to you, so much less appeal.
But like I said, Move has already become indispensable for me. It’s my favorite groovebox of the past ten years and I have tried ALL of them (both for work and for my own music) and nothing has been as fun / easy to just pick up and go as Move. They got a lot of things right with it. I have been tempted to get a second one already and do sets alternating between the two units.
I think if you want a fun idea machine for asynchronous loops, I’d look into the SP404mk2. I’ve written about that one many times here already but it’s really fun for a lot of different reasons. Feels like an audio sketchpad.
2 Likes
Most people rave about the move here. I’ll give some different perspective. I’ve had the move twice and sort of wish that I’d kept it.
That being said, Push3 is so much more powerful than the price upgrade that it costs. Completely open ended and with the addition of Max for live, it is unrivaled IMO.
That being said: It can be harder to get things going quickly on it compared to the move due to it’s sheer flexibility.
I will never part with my Push, but I really don’t understand a couple of things, one being fixable, the other not so much.
-
Why can’t we sample directly to a pad like you can on move. That would be a “game changer” (pardon my french) for me. Definitely doable with a firmware update. When move came out, you could play chromatically with a sound in a drum rack, but not push, and they’ve since added that.
-
Stiff buttons that are not really a joy to use. This may seem shallow, but I much prefer the cheaper clicky style that move has. Obviously this one is not fixable.
6 Likes
Yeah, I tried that one too. Taking a step back, these boxes are all the same, aren’t they? Just a selection of features which might or might not make sense from a vague product promise point of view, juggling the same features between each other with no one really doing something new.
I guess after my years with the blackbox, that’s why I now gravitate towards Logic. The blackbox for all it was (is) and isn’t, it had an open-ended approach to its design. It had no imposed workflow, just a set of tools and clear boundaries. Then you made do with those. With daws, I could never exist in such a context because there were no boundaries. And that has never worked for me.
Now, however, being more in touch with what I like, it’s easier to ignore what’s within reach because I am not as lost in what I want anymore.
But I miss the tactile touch of a proper instrument, except for my piano. This is why I return on and off to see what’s happened. And I notice, if you’re lookin at this from a distance, nothing’s happened.
2 Likes
The buttons on the Move are a joy to use. I really enjoy clicking around the device really quickly.
The buttons on the Push are a completely different story. The workflow on Push has to be more deliberate and that actually makes a difference with the way I make music and that weirdly actually translates into the music that comes out of both devices.
For the Push though, I have used some very stiff foam underneath it, to raise it up, and that has at least meant that there is some give when I press down on the buttons.
3 Likes
I would say they are similar the way a piano and synthesizer are similar, ie they use similar tools to get to different places. I wouldn’t say the 404 and the Move are that closely related. The 404, first of all, is entirely sampled based except for a very rudimentary waveform generator that I’ve never used. It has a sequencer but it encourages resampling and jamming on the pads much more than using the sequencer. It also doesn’t have clips or separate tracks of any kind. Everything is involved all the time, so to speak. And then the effects are much more accessible so it really encourages being playful and twisting knobs and making sounds you wouldn’t normally make. The Move, on the other hand, is very dependent on the sequencer and has both Drift and Wavetable built in, so it has a much broader range of sounds available. It has effects but they aren’t nearly as front and center (literally) as on the 404. I think they lead you to very different places. It’s worth getting your hands on them and seeing how the interfaces feel, as they are quite yin and yang, IMO (edit, just saw that you tried the 404 already, @circuitghost. leaving this up for other users regardless). That’s also why I like having both, as opposed to two similar Elektron boxes. They tickle different parts of the brain.
2 Likes
I’ve had mine since launch and I generally love it. There’s not really a single feature I’m missing, but I have a hard time getting properly weird with Move.
Right now, it feels very… stable? Like, Drift sounds very good, but it also runs on a pretty “normal” virtual analogue engine. The Wavetable presets skew towards usable, crowd-pleasing sounds. The effects all sound great, but again, they’re bread-and-butter for the most part. The keyboard sampler is extremely bare-bones, and Drum Sampler has some nice quirks but also some hard limits (case in point: sample looping).
I wish there was SOMETHING to help you take a mediocre idea into outer space. Maybe they could bring some of Live’s MIDI Transform and Probability tools over, or port Grain Delay. Maybe give us Looper, or build something akin to the OP-Z’s Tape track. Assignable LFOs or non-destructive slicing in Drum Sampler? Heck, even non-destructive reverse would be a good start.
I’m optimistic that Drum Sampler will see a major update alongside Live 13, but that’s pure speculation.
5 Likes
Just a reminder about the Schwung firmware. It know it has a drum slicer plugin, Braids, Virus emulation, etc.
Sometime recently confirmed midi cc could control the Virus emulation, so there is a path to some weirdness in there
https://schwung.dev/catalog.html
https://www.elektronauts.com/t/ableton-move-schwung-custom-synths-and-fx/
6 Likes
A random preset generator - toasty bread and butter, to pure madness, in the settings. The madness part would be fun with resampling.
In general I believe the form factor should push toward maximum random fun, then doing the heavy lifting in Live.
But “maximum fun” is to have access to all the synth’s parameters to a lot of people.
The analogy is a parallel I can make with a random name generator. Only then I realized how much brain power I would waste thinking about a cool name for my beats, presets… Those seconds accumulate.
3 Likes
? How and where?
To be clear, Move will physically receive midi CC just fine, but the Move Binary doesn’t do anything with it. This means that Move synths don’t respond to it, nor do messages get auto-routed with the “Auto” MIDI in assignment.
What does work is sending CC to Schwung synths, though not all of them have consistent implementation. If the Schwung slot is receiving on the same channel the CC is sent, the module can respond, so you can, for instance, edit Virus patches, or use a sustain pedal for JV-880.
Not quite the native CC support I think Move deserves!
4 Likes
How is the move as an Ableton live controller?
1 Like
Pretty amazing! It’s very well-integrated. My Move has been put away for months but I had originally picked it up to control Ableton. I don’t even really know how to use it standalone. 
5 Likes
Echoing what @d4ydream said, I think it’s a great Ableton controller. Very easy to use, super intuitive, great form factor. I like it better than the Push, even though the Push can do way more. The fact that it takes up very little space on my desk is super appealing. A big part of the appeal for me was the fact that it can do both.
3 Likes
I use a Push 3 at work and the Move holds its weight as an integrated Live controller all day. I have zero desire to “upgrade” to a Push at home because the Move is so well thought out.
*Only thing that I find weird is pitches in drum rack. The Move has pitches in drum rack in standalone but not in controller mode which is odd (because Push has it)
3 Likes
If I recall Move also cannot access all 8 Macros, but hopefully they changed that. When I had it my impression was the same as @maymind_trax ‘s - better than Push!
1 Like
They changed that— the issue was that you couldn’t access more than 8 parameters on the Move, but you can now page left and right between sets of 8 parameters in plugins/devices/macros.
4 Likes