Ableton iPhone/iPad App: Pros & Cons + Beat Making & Sampling (Note)

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Ableton have released their first ever iOS app called Note. In this video I’ll explain what it’s all about, show the beat making workflow of the app, and share my first impressions of it and it’s pros and cons. It’s a great app but it does miss some important features that will hopefully be added at some point.
So what’s the deal with Note? Is it Ableton for your iPhone? Not quite - it’s more of a sketchpad app for quickly capturing musical ideas on the go and then using the new Ableton Cloud to transfer these creations to the mothership - the Ableton Live application on your computer - where you can develop your ideas further. The app has some nice features and even some of the sounds and devices from Live. This means that when you transfer your tracks to the computer they are not just audio but you have the actual devices in Live generating and processing sounds.
0:00 Intro
1:26 Making a Beat
3:40 Sampling
7:20 Adding Bass Line, Chords and Automation
10:40 Transferring Set To Computer
11:30 Pros & Cons
Gear I use:
➡️ Push 2
EU ► bit.ly/3jtubOx
➡️ Maschine MK3
EU ► bit.ly/ThomannMK3
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[@ed_ms]

It's a cool little toy. Adding a step sequencer and a chord mode would improve it a lot. I guess more features will be added as time goes by.

[@LowHeatBeats]

Maan, couldn't agree more about the chord mode! Playing chords on a touch screen keyboard isn't fun at all.

[@kostoglotow]

Totally missed this. The app is a master class in UX design, W for Ableton.

[@LowHeatBeats]

Yeah, it's a really good app indeed.

[@wise1beats]

My job's making me go back to the office, lol I'm gonna be using this alllll day 🤣 thx LowHeat!

[@LowHeatBeats]

Oh man, sorry to hear that lol But it' a great app to make a quick beat at work for sure!

[@dimitarpetrov8565]

Nice !

[@LowHeatBeats]

Yup!

[@pawelisecki6054]

Thanks

[@LowHeatBeats]

My pleasure

[@ChristopheTornieri]

I think it is a really well thought app. Extremely fast. The fact that it just detect your tempo is great. You just have to play and if you like it, press capture and it is done. I would love to see this kind of feature on audio apps. It’s always frustrating to me to always have to fix a tempo and then record on a click. I think this is really better. It is not perfect but that’s probably the fastest app to capture ideas.

[@LowHeatBeats]

True. I think several dekstop DAWs have something similar to the Capture feature. In Studio One it even captures audio like that, while in Live it only works with MIDI.

[@Noldy__]

Curious, do you use other iOS music-making apps such as Looper, Beatmaker 3, AUM, Cubasis...and such? If so, I would love to see you explore them more.

[@LowHeatBeats]

Yeah, I was thinking about making some more iOS videos, so your comment reaffirms that it's a good idea. The ones that I've used the most are Koala Sampler and Korg Gadget 2. I also have Beatmaker 3 and definitely want to do a video with it as well, I just need to spend some more time with it, as it's a bit more complex.

[@_grossy]

you don't have to hard quantize - you can see select any range of notes in the clip and open the quantize menu and nudge them to get the off beat feel you are looking for. now if you could just hook up the push 2 to the iPhone via the USB adapter, we would have standalone "Ableton Light" device :D

[@LowHeatBeats]

Hey, good point! I will definitely try doing that, although just hitting 30% quantise should be quicker and that's what I usually do on Ableton Live on the computer.

[@Blarm]

They should add control-all for adsr on Drum Rack

[@LowHeatBeats]

I usually use the one-shot mode for drums, at least in Live on desktop.

[@JC-pu3vl]

As you can't slice samples can you put a sample on a drum pad, trim the start and end to find your first chop then duplicate to another pad and do the same thing to find your second chop? Like the old school way.

[@LowHeatBeats]

Very good question. For now, I don't see a way to duplicate a sample to another pad. The only way to do it seems to be to load the same sample onto several pads and set different starting points. So it is doable, but we definitely need to at least be able to duplicate pads.

[@JC-pu3vl]

@@LowHeatBeats cheers for answering. Shame it's not an easy thing to do yet, hopefully either slicing or duplicating gets added at some point. It does look like a very interesting app, lots of potential!

[@eFiddle]

I don't own ableton Live, do you think I can still transfer the ios set to Live Lite? Thank you.

[@LowHeatBeats]

Good question. On the Ableton website they say Ableton Cloud is compatible with every version of Live 11.2.5. So it should be possible, but I can't say for sure.

[@eduardocampos8176]

I miss a pallete of odd meters, How to produce a 5/4 track or even 3/4?

[@LowHeatBeats]

Maybe they will add this later on too? It's a 1.0 app, so plenty of stuff isn't included.

[@wise1beats]

does Ableton Cloud let you send stuff from your computer to mobile or does it only work mobile to computer?

[@LowHeatBeats]

I think it's just for transferring projects from mobile device to computer. It allows you to sync only up to 5 projects at a time. Projects you made in Ableton Live wouldn't open on Note anyway.

[@walt-live6210]

with getting your drums a little looser you can drag them on and of the grid

[@LowHeatBeats]

For sure, it's good option, although not my preferred way of working.

[@theo2oo4]

Are you able to sample from importing a yt video or something from voice memos?

[@LowHeatBeats]

YT video - no, not sure about voice memos. But the idea of this app is that it is sort of like voice memos for musical ideas and you record right into it.

[@theo2oo4]

@@LowHeatBeats ah okay. Do you know any app where you can import a yt video or voice memo? Would be really helpful

[@LowHeatBeats]

@@theo2oo4 Actually, yes, you can import voice memos or any audio file you have on your iOS device. What I meant was you can skip the voice memos altogether and record straight into Note. As for videos - I'd recommend Koala Sampler which can import screen recordings, so that's an easy way to get a YT video in there.

[@keith3069]

Able to import samples from iPhone file apps? I only can sample with microphone😢

[@LowHeatBeats]

Yeah, in the Files app hit "Share" and you can share it to Note.

[@AT-eh2eo]

Has a lot of potential. I like to practice before I record, so it’s kind of annoying that it records as soon as you press a key. even if you don’t press capture, this is way too clunky for me.. I do hope it can compare to koala or beatmaker some day!

[@LowHeatBeats]

I agree, even though it's not exactly recording, the fact that I see the notes is distracting. And yeah, it would be great if it could match Koala's sampling features. Beatmaker is a bit more complex though.

[@Farmatique]

Not really impressed me much, TBH. I'd rather use my good old Korg Gadget 2 on iPad, it's waaay more powerful. By the way, can you edit notes in clips, like remove, add, transpose them? Or there's no editing mode available at the moment?

[@LowHeatBeats]

Absolutely, Gadget is my favourite too! I've been using it a lot lately. Yes, you can edit the notes in Note - delete, transpose, nudge, etc.

[@MentPlus]

Good ….. but needs more features in future updates

[@LowHeatBeats]

Couldn't agree more.

[@gcgb2186]

We neeeeed Reason to do an App like this !!

[@LowHeatBeats]

They've had one for a while, it's called Figure. It's a bit more limited/simple than Note though.

[@rokko_hates_japan]

@@LowHeatBeats figure was awesome. it just needed a song mode to flesh things out. they also made reason compact which has some nice sounds again but is very limited. it's annoying that these companies keep purposefully making their apps so limiting. keep the workflow simple and intuitive, but at least give piano roll/ editing of sound, and song modes. i have 1000x more fun on touchscreen devices than slogging away at the desk with a full daw.

[@bloodcell6282]

the app is a cool little tool for Ableton owners. I purchased it day one and started playing. it definitely has potential but for people like us on this channel I feel it's all about koala sampler...by miles

[@LowHeatBeats]

For sure!

[@rokko_hates_japan]

just got Koala and liking it.... but, there is no lo/hi-pass filter. i need to be able to filter and automate filtering