When I reviewed Ableton’s compact hardware sketchpad Move last year, I wrote that ‘for some, Move might prove to be a gamechanger, but others will likely struggle to fit it into their creative workflow’. I must admit that, initially at least, I fell into the latter category.
On the (increasingly rare) occasions I get to play around with Live for non-work purposes, it tends to involve processing simple sounds with Live’s more sound design-focused devices, such as its Hybrid Reverb, the pair of Spectral effects or Roar’s multi-stage distortion/delay. Move, which is more geared towards composing than sound design, doesn’t necessarily fit into that way of working.
I’ve always been impressed by Move’s capabilities when it comes to sketching out rough ideas, and I appreciate how it can be used to quickly rough out the basic elements of a track. It just doesn’t necessarily lend itself to the type of music I like to make.
In recent weeks, however, I’ve picked Move back up, and something has finally clicked. This is, in part, thanks to a run of firmware updates that have added a handful of intriguing new features since Move was first launched. (Updating our original review in light of these was my initial reason for revisiting the hardware).
It’s also a result of embracing an altogether looser and more haphazard way of using the device, which has helped to find a genuinely useful and inspiring way to fit it into my creative workflow. But more on that later…
On the Move
When Ableton Move was revealed in 2024, it excited plenty of Live users but confounded others. On the surface Ableton’s new hardware device looked a lot like a micro version of Push, but those expecting a straightforward compact controller were likely left confused by the various things Move both could and couldn’t do.
Move is simultaneously more capable and more niche than one might expect from first glance. Although it has the look of a simple controller or sequencer, Move’s onboard processor and bespoke OS allow it to act as a self-contained groovebox, stocked with synths, drum kits and sampled instruments, complete with a variety of effects and capable of both sampling and resampling.
For all that it can do, however, there are a number of limitations on what Move is capable of compared to Push 3. Whereas Push, in both controller and standalone modes, aims to offer as full a recreation of the desktop Live experience as possible, Move makes use of just a small selection of Live’s instrument and effect devices and in most cases limits these to using presets and a selection of pre-configured macro controls.
For the most part, these limitations are intentional and kind of the whole point of Move. As an instrument, it’s pitched as a sketchpad more than anything else – a tool designed to create beats and patterns that can be further developed in its companion DAW. It purposely foregoes the bells and whistles required to create finished arrangements or build live performances.
In practice, working around these limitations can be one of the most creative and inspiring aspects of Move’s workflow. The limited track count, for example, encourages the use of the instrument’s resampling functionality. By bouncing synth or bass riffs down to slots in a Drum Rack, it's possible to simultaneously free up tracks for additional melodic layers as well as open up new ways to manipulate your resampled loops via the effects in Move’s Drum Sampler.
Drum Sampler is one of a handful of new or upgraded Live devices that have emerged since Move was first unveiled that have clearly been designed with its workflow in mind. It’s more simplistic than Live’s Simpler and Sampler devices, which makes it ideal for Move’s control surface, but also opens up new creative tools with its multifunctional effect slot, which offers on-the-fly looping, stretching, ring modulation and other interesting ways to process one-shot samples.
Similarly well suited is the updated Auto Filter, which adds new creative modes including comb and vowel filters along with a revamped control layout. Auto Filter’s introduction to Move’s toolkit is very welcome as its multifunctional LFO helps to address the instrument’s slight lack of modulation sources by providing a quick and easy solution for keeping sounds moving.
It bodes well for Move owners that Ableton is showing an ongoing dedication to unifying the workflow between Move, Note, Push and Live. Both Drum Sampler and Auto Filter are Device highlights across all of these platforms, and their inclusion helps Move feel less like a ‘light’ version of the Live toolset, and more like one specifically targeted at the DAW’s most immediate creative tools.
Thanks to a regular flow of firmware updates, Move itself has also been improved in a number of ways since it first hit the market. Move’s latest firmware is version 1.6, with v1.7 in beta, and each ‘point’ upgrade has brought improvements that make the hardware slightly more useful in a day-to-day studio context.
Aside from the introduction of Auto Filter, the majority of these improvements have focused on ways in which Move can sample from or interact with other devices. Move can now, for example, sample audio via its USB-C input, which is great for recording directly from a laptop or mobile device (although you’ll still need an adapter if you’re using a Lightning-equipped iPhone).
Ableton has also significantly upgraded Move’s MIDI options, allowing each of its four tracks to both input and output MIDI simultaneously on a selected channel. Move can also now receive MIDI clock from an external source, as well as output MIDI clock at the same time as receiving MIDI notes.
The other major improvement, introduced this summer, is the ability to slice a sampled loop into up-to 16 sections. This is a manual process, which slices a loop in equal chunks by default and requires the users to manually move slice points to adjust those divisions, as opposed to automatically placing slice points on transients, as in Live itself.
Neither sample slicing or the MIDI upgrades radically overhaul what Move is capable of, and in both cases there are competitors on the market that are more capable. For dedicated sampling, for instance, Move isn’t a patch on Roland’s similarly-priced SP-404.
Similarly, as much as Move’s MIDI capabilities are handy, it still lacks dedicated MIDI ports. This means all MIDI communication needs to come through the USB port, which in some cases will require use of an adapter or hub.
The point, however, is that Move is not a dedicated sampler or a hardware sequencer – it’s an accessory for Ableton Live, one designed to generate ideas and complement the workflow of the DAW. And each of these upgrades makes it a little more useful on that front.
Rediscovering Move
Move’s greatest asset, by far, is the simplicity of transferring sounds and ideas created with the hardware to Live. By using Ableton Cloud or the Move Manager, it takes seconds to wirelessly move Sets from one place to the other.
It’s embracing this aspect of Move that has finally made me see how useful it can be. When I’ve tried to create complete-sounding beats or loops, I tend to end up with things that I’m not particularly inspired by, but as a conduit for simply collecting ‘things’ to transfer to Ableton Live, it’s endlessly useful.
For example, in the process of reviewing new gear, I’m lucky enough to get my hands on an ever revolving line-up of new synths and drum machines. I’ll now regularly use Move to sample short snatches of sound from whatever I have to hand.
I might build a Drum Rack with my favourite one shots from a drum machine, or record synth arps and sequences as loops, perhaps slicing these to a Drum Rack too in order to resequence them later. I have an entire Move Set dedicated to sampled chord stabs from various hardware synths.
Sounds, not music
In the past, when I’ve sat down with Move, I’ve always felt inclined to try to make proper music with it. Not necessarily an attempt at a finished track, but a fully fledged beat complete with bassline and melodic elements, and it's in doing this that it inevitably leads me in a direction that I’m less interested in.
Now, I rarely use Move itself to edit or arrange things – beyond, perhaps, throwing a simple kick drum under a synth riff or creating a quick rhythm from one-shot samples. But capturing those raw sounds and simple motifs quickly creates a rich pool of inspiration that’s readily available the next time I sit down at Live itself.
Essentially, by stopping attempting to make proper music with Move, I’ve come to fully appreciate its potential as a platform for half-formed ideas and barely-there sketches. Move is now, for me at least, a fantastic platform for collecting ‘things’ completely detached from musical context – random chords I like the sound of, simple rhythmic patterns, odd percussive sounds captured via the onboard mic.
While none of Move’s recent updates have exactly altered its ability to be used in this way – it’s been possible to sample and store sounds since day one – each iteration adds a little more flexibility, should you want to, say, sequence a quick riff on an external synth, sample a sound from YouTube via USB-C, slice a synth sequence or reverse one-shot sounds in a drum kit.
Move’s latest update, currently in beta, opens up full access to Live’s Drift synth, which adds more routes to potential inspiration. Now, Move can be used to design synth sounds from scratch on the go. What’s more though, thanks to its lovely expressive pads, it makes the device an effective compact instrument in its own right – a mini synth that it’s possible to play with surprising expressivity.
One year on, Ableton’s commitment to opening up new ways that Move can be used has, for me at least, helped turn the device from a neat curiosity into the genuinely useful accessory it was always pitched as.
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