First, could you provide some context and background on Move's development? You mentioned that it had been in development for more than five years?
Yeah, it's been many years. We've gone through many phases with this product, but the vision that we initially had is what we stayed true to. Of course, some things change, you learn new things, but Move is still the thing that we wanted to make from the beginning. One of the reasons it took quite a long time was that our team isn't very big. We had different phases where we planned to release this earlier but then Push 3 [Tape Op #157] came along, and we made an internal decision to allocate hardware engineering resources to Push.
People tend to forget that Ableton is still owned by the same musicians who started the company over 20 years ago. There are limited resources for development cycles, right? And building hardware is extraordinarily hard.
What added to the time it took is that we got ourselves into a lot of complexity with Move and Push. We were set on making something standalone from the outset, as we wanted that instrument quality – something that you can pick up and use unencumbered by wires, allowing you to get going quickly. That meant we had to solve things like building a standalone software stack and integrating Wi-Fi, which took us a really, really long time. Essentially, the company was getting into the business of building computers. It's a completely different type of engineering model, but this effort was worthwhile. I suppose everyone was also a bit naive about it, but it was simply something that required a great deal of patience.
As a standalone product, was Move conceived of and designed before Push 3?
They happened around the same time, but they are two different software platforms – the main difference really is that Push 3 runs Ableton Live inside. Both are Linux-based, running what we call "Ableton OS," but Push 3 runs on an Intel processor and for Move, we have an ARM processor. What's inside Move is actually the same software core that we have on Ableton Note, our iOS app. We've been developing this together, actually, from the start, so it's the same engine, same file formats, same sound structure, and same instruments, which is cool because now we have [that framework]. Basically, both products will benefit from additional development in the future. So, Move is like "Note in hardware," you could say, and Push 3 has Live inside. Two different ecosystems.
Was the retail price [USD $449] a factor in the early development of Move?
We always aimed to create something for under $500, which also meant making certain hardware choices, such as the processor inside. That's often the driving factor (which processor you choose). But also, we wanted to reach a different audience. I think it's still not an impulse purchase at that price point, but it's something we wanted to get into as many hands as possible. Plus, for people who are starting out or coming from different musical backgrounds, maybe they tried Live or Push and felt like, "This is maybe a little too much for me at this point in my music-making journey, but Move is something I can actually use," and later, grow into Live and Push.
Move's superpower, is its immediacy, right?
From a creative standpoint, yes, because Note has been designed to allow users to be creative quite quickly. Both excel at sketching rather than finishing.
I was talking to a friend who is a music educator who was saying, "I wish I had something that I could bring to the classroom, have all of the kids working on a piece of hardware that they can physically interface with rather than their laptops or phone screens so that they're using their ears." However, he wants their work to be able to sync to the cloud, much like a shared project that they are all iterating on. So, there's a tremendous amount of potential in the music education market for a device like this. Combined with Note, you have a powerful educational tool for harmonic theory and songwriting. Ableton Cloud and Note were released in parallel, right?
Yeah. At that stage, when Note came out alongside Ableton Cloud, we internally already knew we would have the same features set for Move and that we wanted this type of continuity. What happened is that they came out earlier than Move because we were able to move a bit faster on the mobile platform and had no hardware to engineer. So, from the ground up we had to make key decisions. As an example, how do we look at a drum rack and the effects [per track] – [on Note] we have a rack; you have the two effects, and it's the same for Move, one track, two effects. So, the way this simplified structure appears on Note was also actually informed by having Move around, much, much earlier – internally – and then we looked at things like, "What can we do, processor-wise?"
By that, do you mean the form factor or the software stack?
I mean the technology and, yes, understanding the limitations of the stack – the performance constraints. We made all these decisions on Move together with Note, like: It has to be like one instrument, two effects, so we can actually fit this into this package. I mean, as one key difference, Note can actually play back eight tracks (versus Move, which has four) – the iPhone processor is immensely powerful, more than what we have inside Move. So, this is something we ran into! We said, "Okay, we're not going to constrain Note," but it's one of these decisions we took a long time with to say, "Hey, should we do this, or should we just have four tracks on Note as well for full continuity?" But [the four-track "constraint"] is easy to work around. You can take the first four tracks of Note into Move, or you can change them around, so you can choose what you want to continue.
And there's a resampling function on Move as well. So, is there a future where a "bounce" shortcut could exist on Move, perhaps using one of the shift functions to resample the first three into the fourth without having to set up [full resampling]?
Yeah, right now, you have to set up resampling; you have to press record, then mute [the tracks you don't want to "bounce"]. I think where we want to go is a "bounce tracks" thing – we have this on the radar, actually. When you have this set of restrictions to work into, there are limits – you can creatively wrangle with them. You can still decide to bounce something, make a decision, and then you have it as a sample and move on with that. I think it is quite open in that regard, but it still has you committing to things, which I think is what we want people to do [with Move] – lean forward with that type of creativity here.
It's a big part of the Ableton [Live] workflow as well. Freeze and render is a [Live] creative workflow that folks are familiar with.
It can be used for CPU performance reasons, but [as on Move] this can be actually used for creative decision-making, and then you have a sample which you can treat totally differently with all the different envelopes, or like the playback effects and then start to work with that and see what you can come up with…
...add it to a Drum Rack and…
Yeah, I think the Drum Rack is kind of the centerpiece of this, because now we have the 16 pitches, which opens up so many options. Obviously, we're going to extend that, looking into things like sample capabilities, slicing, etc. [Move has since added sample slicing with the Move 1.5 beta software update. -ed.]
This does have some differences from the Push experience – even the layout of the session view – it's flipped.
That kind of magically fell into place. When we worked with the hardware stack that we had, we realized we'll be able to support four tracks in the (reliable) way that we wanted – we made sure [Move] never craps out. We wanted something that's constrained and always controlled so you can trust it. So, we had to decide on four tracks, and then (the "flipped" Session view) became a logical design conclusion. We tested those things quite a bit internally, and it was never seen as a problem. I know it's like a "holy" concept [the Live Session view, which works in rows of clips as opposed to Move's columns]. But it's actually quite fun – the motion is natural. We also decided to not have Scene launch buttons since we have this alternate session layout. You have the Session at the moment, but then there's a next step where you can structure a basic song, and that's something we are thinking about in the context of this.
Because right now you're technically limited to eight "scenes." Again, that's in the spirit of it being an idea or inspiration machine.
