Move Everything is a hack for Move that lets you run custom synths, effects, and controllers alongside stock Move functions. But the truly momentous development is that its creator has added screen reader support, which makes Move the first truly standalone groovebox open to blind and visually impaired users.
Move Everything maxes out your Move while voiding the warranty
Okay, first, Move Everything. If this sounds familiar, it’s the work of Charles Vestal, building on his original Move – Extended hack I wrote about last year. And it’s grown by leaps and bounds since then. Move Everything totally unofficial, totally unsupported hack for Ableton Move that lets you run custom synths, audio or MIDI effects, and MIDI controllers in “shadow mode” — running alongside the stock Move firmware, not replacing it.
Do backup your Move sets and device before you start, do research the restore method, and do not expect Ableton to support you if anything goes wrong. (That’s in the manual, but it bears repeating.) That said, backup and restore on Move is easy, and while Ableton won’t tell you to use this, I mean, I don’t work for Ableton. And unofficial hacks have a long history of inspiring official projects. The whole industry is built on respectful reverse engineering, back to the original circuits our synths and effects have evolved from.
Another cool twist: if you update your Move to 2.0 firmware, Audio Track support works, so you can route audio through these effects (via a traditional connection or the fancy schmancy new Link Audio).
So many toys
You get a bunch of new features:
Shadow Mode custom UI (via keyboard shortcuts)
New slots: four instrument slots, Master FX slot
Synths, audio effects, MIDI effects, and full-screen takover apps for MIDI Controllers, etc.
Display Mirror (stream to a browser — including for screen cap and development)
…and more
The module “store” (it’s free) includes ports of open projects like Mutable Instruments’ Braids, Dexed 6-op FM synth (with DX7 compatibility), an SF2 player, Mini-JV, OB-Xd, Hera (Juno-60 emulation), Hera, RaffoSynth Moog-ish monosynth, and the mighty Surge XT hybrid synth. There’s even Webstream (web audio search and streaming!), making Move your personal new radio. Effects include tape delay, reverbs, the AI-based Neural Amp Modeler, tape saturation, Junologue Juno-60 emulation, a MIDI-enabled ducker/sidechain, and my favorite, a reverb modeled on the vintage PlayStation ‘verb.
You also get controllers that let you work with Dirtywave M8 and SIDaster III, plus a four-track recorder.
So, basically the biggest danger of Move Everything is, you might not want to install it if you were suffering from paralysis from too many choices. (Avoid avoid avoid! Ha!)
This kind of flexibility is something we can also expect soon from other similar platforms.
But that brings us to the one killer app — and one that I hope inspires an official Ableton implementation (and similar support from other devices).
True standalone accessibility
Andre Louis, long-time champion of accessibility in music technology, writes on Mastodon:
One person, Charles Vestal has managed to slipstream a screen-reader directly onto Move using either Flight or ESpeak-NG, taking advantage of Ableton’s own Screen-Reader data and also made it so that the WiFi pin that their web-based offering doesn’t read, reads on-device. The guy is an actual genius. It does way more than I can begin to mention here, but for the first time ever, we have a groovebox with screen-reader that is 100% actually stand-alone, no need to be tied to a phone or computer of any kind.
Watch — especially for sighted readers who may not have a grasp of how this works:
Here are the details:
Move Everything includes an optional screen reader for accessibility, using text-to-speech to announce UI elements.
Toggle via Shadow UI > Settings > Screen Reader, or Shift+Menu when Shadow UI is disabled.
Settings:
Speed: 0.5x to 2.0x
Pitch: Low to high
Volume: 0-100
Can be enabled during installation with --enable-screen-reader.
The key here is standalone. Other solutions — like Native Instruments’ Accessibility Helper — require a companion software application running on a desktop computer (or at best, a phone).
We should really be seeing more of this. Apple has highlighted accessibility and even featured blind employees at WWDC, and even they can continue to expand what they provide. One of the concerns for the future of Native Instruments was likewise that people currently charged with accessibility survive any restructuring. And obviously any computer-like music platform should consider this in the future.
I have high hopes for truly open hardware to provide these capabilities, as well — which also makes these functions and community development independent of reliance on any one vendor.
For comparison, here’s Andre Louis’ earlier video showing how he had hacked accessibility with Move. But that requires being tethered to another device. What’s exciting about this development is, it allows complete standalone groove box functionality. And to my knowledge, that has never happened before in a full-functioning device like this. Let’s hope it’s the beginning of a trend.
And you know what? This is already having an impact. Just one example among others. And that isn’t just opening up Move to a new group of users. It’s opening up the experience of using a standalone drum machine. That matters so much more than if we add another LFO or make the case a bit bigger.
One in every twenty KOMPLETE KONTROL users take advantage of accessibility features for the visually impaired. Not one in 1,000, not one in 100, but one in 20. That just goes to show that accessibility isn’t a niche, but something integral to music making.
More cool Move Everything tricks
I mean, everything on Charles’ YouTube channel is fun, so let’s go!
Sidechain ducking — yeah, another feature that seems sure to inspire official Ableton support (or presumably something someone there had pondered already):
Radio sampling! And 404-style skipback!
Ableton Move is available from Thomann (international) and Sweetwater (US) as well as direct from Ableton.
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