Ableton Move instrument/controller

Since the release of Ableton’s Move in early October, there’s been an outpouring of commentary about the German company’s new standalone hardware device, with many complaining it fell below their sky-high expectations. It’s true the Move is much smaller and more portable compared to their flagship Push 3 device which is nearly four times the price of the Move. However, the Push 3 is aimed at heavy users of Ableton’s market-leading Live music production software, and is complex and feature packed. The Move is the opposite: with just four tracks to work with, it’s stripped down and ready to go whenever you feel the urge to jam some ideas and get sketching out the start of a track, importantly, away from a computer.

Roughly the width of a computer keyboard, or a 13-inch MacBook Pro, Move sits comfortably on your desktop or lap. It also feels substantial, the matt black plastic upper and metal chassis weighted by its internal battery. The eight touch-sensitive controllers, jog wheel and volume knob also feel premium and the many buttons click satisfyingly – and the 32 pads are also extremely responsive and feel great under your fingers. The small OLED screen offers none of the colourful visual feedback that a Push does, but does quickly provide enough information for every pad or controller you touch. Some users may find it useful to download Ableton’s IOS Note app, as this gives you a much better visual representation of some of the synths and drum machines that come pre-loaded– and directly mirrors Move’s operating system – in fact, I’d recommend you try that before buying a Move as it’s a great app and is also integrated into Ableton’s cloud system for importing sets directly into Live.

The one thing Move has that the Push doesn’t is the step sequencer that runs along the bottom edge of the device, its 16 buttons also double as function select buttons when combined with the shift button on the right. Four of these are currently blank, suggesting future updates will bring these into use along with additional functionality. Unlike the Push, the ‘Session’ view – which has Live’s clips in a horizontal grid – is flipped on its side, with the channel select buttons on the far left of the grid – which does take a bit of getting used to – and ‘scenes’ can be triggered by swiping your finger downwards across the pads. Touching the track select button opens up either a sampler, drum machine or synth across all 32 pads, with the different parameters selected by moving the jog wheel, pressing it down to select an instrument’s various controls, or those of two effects that are possible per track.

Drum Racks now come with 16 pitches alongside the drum rack/sampler pads – each pad can then be played chromatically – further expanding the melodic possibilities of the Move. The restriction of four tracks is another source of dissatisfaction for some commentators, yet other devices such as Elektron’s Digitone have been much loved despite only having four tracks – with many finding work arounds and inventive sound design ideas to create very full sounding tracks.

In use the Move is fast and responsive – and unlike some of its rivals, avoids excessive menu diving (anyone who uses Elektron boxes will know what I mean) – fast tracking music making over finessed sound design. That said, it does sound fantastic when plugged in to external speakers or headphones – less so over the built in speakers, but no surprise there. Sampling is easy too: open up a drum rack and hit the record button and either record from the built in mic or run a line in via the 3mm jack socket. Editing samples is quite basic at the moment – there’s no ‘chop’ function similar to Live’s Sampler rack device (which quickly slices rhythmic samples by transients) – so any editing of individual drum rack pads done by hand. There are better samplers out there but Move works perfectly well – and the speed of workflow is a big plus here. One of the best features is the ‘Capture’ mode: play an idea with no set tempo or bar length, and as soon as you come to the end of say four bars, hit the capture button and Move plays it back with a tempo assigned. This alone can initiate so many ideas, personally speaking, it’s something that will keep me coming back to the Move.

And thanks to their simple cloud set up, opening sets on your desktop is very straightforward – importing your own samples to the cloud and then on to the Move is also well implemented.

Ultimately, the Move is intentionally limited – its MIDI integration to control other devices is limited to a single USB 2 port – so unlike a Digitakt or even a Circuit Tracks – it's unlikely be the ‘brain’ of your DAW-less set up. Yet, it does work well as a controller for Live and, while not a replacement for a Push, does provide enough control that it could be used in a live performance for a very compact and portable performance set up. Ableton no doubt want those buying a Move – and in turn getting a free license to their Live Lite software – to step into the Live ecosystem but it doesn’t need to be used with Live, and sets and samples can be downloaded from the cloud to be used in any software you want.

The market is saturated with hardware devices that all offer so many possibilities – from sketch pads like the Move to Akai’s all-singing-all-dancing MPC X or the Elektron Octatrack – yet finishing a track on a piece of hardware is problematic – and it usually ends up being recorded into a DAW for mixing and mastering. With the Move, Ableton are bridging the gap between the immediacy (and fun) of hardware and their own highly flexible software – and while there are more fully featured and even enjoyable multi-track devices out there – few of them work so seamlessly with Live and remove that barrier between real world spontaneity and digital sound sculpting and production.  

For more info visit www.ableton.com