from Hacker News

Ableton Note – A playable iOS app for forming musical ideas

by alphadelphi on 10/18/22, 9:22 AM with 107 comments

• by mandmandam on 10/19/22, 11:26 AM

  I'm loving this.

  No one has pointed out how cool it is that you get random instruments at the start.

  It's a looot of fun to be able to 'doodle' songs based on a cool thing you made inspired by a drum sound, or a hot synth line. The equivalent would be having a magic art supplies drawer that gives you a few coloured crayons, or watercolours, or charcoal etc at random, paired with different types of paper and scales. And if you don't like your random set, you can make another in 3 seconds.

  The 'quick start' aspect with the touch of randomness is just so cool. I don't know how many times I've opened Ableton, then gotten bored before I could pair an instrument with a drum track and a bass. This leapfrogs that pain point beautifully.

  I also really like how intuitive it is for an Ableton user. To be fair the learning curve for Ableton was pretty steep - but so, so worth it.

  One area that I think needs improvement: there are many finicky little problems about setting and correcting the length of your loops. For example, I love that it auto-guesses your tempo and loop length, but it can be very wrong sometimes and I'd like to be able to change it without going into Ableton Proper. I hope they can solve that.

  I'm also struggling to figure out how to lengthen notes once they're put down - maybe it's not possible? This results in some rough edges, but nothing not very easily fixed in desktop Ableton.

  Overall, this is really fun. I made about 15 little song seeds yesterday, and it was enjoyable.

• by can16358p on 10/19/22, 9:57 AM

  Just tried it. As someone who has never used Live, I didn't understand anything (I know Logic though, and I'm generally good with figuring how apps work as a dev myself) even after the tour.

  I believe the onboarding should be interactive and telling the user how things work instead of just putting a sample video which doesn't teach much.

  That said, from what I see from the results it can be a great tool... if one can figure how things work.

• by gernb on 10/19/22, 8:31 AM

  There's a ton of music apps on iOS including Garageband that comes with it.

  https://www.reasonstudios.com/mobile-apps

  https://ampifymusic.com/groovebox/

  https://www.bandlab.com/

  I'm too lazy to look up more but I feel I've seen more than 20.

  Anything special about one over another?

• by ngcazz on 10/19/22, 12:52 PM

  Love it, but the latency with a Bluetooth headset is a sore point. Probably an inevitability of iOS...

• by an_aparallel on 10/19/22, 11:51 PM

  FL Studio Mobile has been around for 11 years at this point. Specifically as a launchpad for ideas which are then finished in FL Studio.

  Not the best place for this...but i just cant help but sigh at the near shunning of FL as a major DAW player by the industry by and large. the amount of third party VST houses which list support for all major DAWs and consistently leave out FL is just laughable at this point. How can one of the most forward thinking DAWs with some of the most industry leading features, abd year on year reported most popular DAW by marketshare continue to be ignored in this way?

  I understand a common excuse is "FL Studio is highly pirated". So what? Adobe and scores of other software is...

• by hit8run on 10/19/22, 3:12 PM

  I love Ableton. They simply offer the best workflow. I use it for more than 10 years and I can reproduce almost every sound I hear in a song and quickly compose anything that comes to my mind. I also bought Logic but it just didn't click for me.

• by liquidify on 10/19/22, 2:38 PM

  All I want is a remote transport with the ability to place my start markers. The ability to create tracks, arm them and assign inputs would be secondary but awesome.

  I need to be able to sit at my drums and control basic recording / playback features in ableton.

• by mkr-hn on 10/19/22, 3:59 PM

  I had hoped to use it to draft ideas on the go, but I don't play an instrument, so I lack the timing practice to use it the way it's made to be used (live). I really need the note editor and sequencer from the big desktop program to be productive in it. However, it's fun to poke around in, and I'm sure they'll add missing features over time.

• by ivanvanderbyl on 10/19/22, 7:25 AM

  This looks so promising, but there's no volume control and it seems to bypass the system volume. I didn't even know that was possible.

• by aecorredor on 10/19/22, 1:56 PM

  The app also works great on iPad btw. I think ableton missed advertising for it since there’s now iOS and iPadOS.

• by _def on 10/19/22, 9:32 AM

  I think the selling point of this app is that this is the only way you can start an idea on the go and then easily bring that into Ableton Live. Don't know if it works the other way around too but I'd be surprised. But it's interesting to see Ableton dipping their toe in mobile water.

• by chaosprint on 10/19/22, 10:52 AM

  I don't what's the motivation for making it iOS only. It makes more sense to choose web platform like another of their products learnsynth (https://learningsynths.ableton.com/).

• by simonebrunozzi on 10/19/22, 4:56 PM

  What's the easiest to "play" with Ableton, but with software only?

• by MrTrvp on 10/20/22, 11:10 AM

  If only FL Studio Mobile exported as a Ableton desktop project file..

• by aa-jv on 10/19/22, 8:43 AM

  Seems like a cheap ripoff of Endlesss, which is far more mature and allows very easy live jamming without fuss:

  http://endlesss.fm/

• by koinedad on 10/19/22, 3:25 PM

  Looks really cool and packed with features

• by jkellermann on 10/19/22, 11:32 AM

  hmmmhmm, nice... is there something similar for Android devices?