It’s unofficial. It’ll void your warranty. But – that adds to the fun, right? Move-Extended gives you a companion website for Ableton Move that adds new features, including sample reverse, a Drum Rack Inspector, Macro editing for synths, kit slicing, chord kits, and MIDI import. It’s free, open source, and fully documented.
All of this is possible because Move is built on the Raspberry Pi CM4 platform, with a variant of Linux onboard.
I’m writing this on a scooter without a helmet, balancing my phone in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other, so maybe you shouldn’t look to me to be risk-averse. It’s a good idea to back up any projects regularly via Move Manager, and there is a restore procedure. Just don’t ask Ableton for help.
That disclaimer out of the way, the hack works really well and does a ton of fun stuff. It could also be a glimpse of future functionality for Move, either because the feature is on Ableton’s to-do list already, or as hacks like this inspire features. There’s some precedent for that: controller integrations in Ableton Live were contributed by intrepid users before they found an official Ableton-supported form, for instance.
Basically, you gain SSH access to your device — Move is a little Linux computer, after all — and then access the extra features via a web server. You’re not hacking the firmware on the device itself; you’re using the Web as an additional window into your Move sets.
In recent days, Charles has added transient slicing, time stretching, and MIDI import.
Demo:
Developer Charles Vesta writes us:
Move – Extended is a second web server that runs alongside the Move Manager on the device itself, giving you a suite of additional tools accessible from a browser (at move.local:909). This includes:
Restore Set: upload your archived .ablbundle Set files directly to your Move
Slice Kit: use a visual slicer to chop and adjust samples into a Drum Kit and download the preset or save directly to the Move
Chord Kit: upload a sample to generate a Drum Kit of chord hits, and download or save directly
Drum Rack Inspector: choose a custom Drum Kit to preview, download, or reverse its samples
Reverse WAV: choose any sample you’ve uploaded to generate a reversed version
This is of course all unofficial, and Ableton likely can’t support you if something goes wrong. We’ve tested and made sure that everythign we’re doing is as safe as possible, but if things to get crazy, Ableton has recently released instructions to restore your device to factory settings, available on Center Code.
It’s very cool, and a way to squeeze more power out of Ableton’s cute, compact box. Everything is on GitHub: