Not bad for a plant. And a small pot of Rosemary from the supermarket at that. This track uses a Playtronic Biotron for the main “melody” line. Which is a really interesting piece of kit that I sort of assumed wouldn’t actually work. But it does. The sounds (and bass and drums) are from within Logic. With a touch of auto-mastering.

These are a few random tracks put together over the first few months of 2025.

Messing about with U-dio . Sounds a bit like Whipping Boy. A bit too much like them.

This is a track produced on the Synthstrom Deluge.

Deluge of Piano

no mains power

The track was made with 1 bar of music. The basic idea is using the lane sequencer on the Deluge to set varying patterns of single notes (on a scale) over the course of 1 bar, have the bar play on “ping-pong” i.e. back and forth and then reduce the length for some note lanes. Then recorded to audio with different note lanes being muted over time (and a very basic drum beat). Manages to be very simple to set up and really quite generative (random). And at some points has more notes being played than a single piano player could easily manage (ie more than 10).

Update : July 2025. Both the negative issues discussed below – the patch name scrolling and, crucially, the midi implementation, have now been fixed with firmware updates.

Well a quick summary is – I like it. A lot. And I have or have had, many other similar devices over the years – Original Novation Circuit, Circuit Tracks and Samples, OP1, OPz, Ko II, Roland SP404 Mk 2, Korg Electribes, Yamaha Seqtrack, Sonicware Smpltrek, Polyend Tracker (and Mini) and Play, a Yamaha QY-70! and a WooveBox. And in a different but related category an AKAI MPC Live II, Force and Maschine 3 (and Jam) and a Synthstrom Deluge (which I upgraded the screen on).

They all have their advantages and disadvantages to various extents. The Circuits are simple and intuitive and battery powered but limited by a lack of screen, the SP404 is incredibly powerful but I find the user interface baffling, the WooveBox fits in a shirt pocket and sounds amazing but is also utterly baffling and the Play and the Tracker are amazing but hit early obsolesce (to some degree) and don’t have batteries and whilst the Mini is very powerful, I really dislike the build quality and the interface (compared with the Tracker OG). The Electribes and the QY-70 were amazing for their time which leaves the MPC and Force which are fantastic but not exactly portable (although shoutout for the speakers on the Live II), the Yamaha and Sonicware (no comment) and finally the Deluge. Which is probably the overall sweet spot in terms of portability, ease of use (with the upgraded screen) and features but is starting to become a bit too complicated. And the Maschine requires a laptop so doesn’t really count (I have so far resisted the Maschine+). If I could only have 1 of them, it might be the Deluge or it might be one of the Akais.

Which brings us to the Move. The first thing to discuss is the fact that it “only” has 4 tracks. This seems like a huge limit until you clock that each of the 4 tracks can be either the Drum Sampler, a Synth (with either 4 or 8 note polyphony) or a Sampler but that crucially that the Drum Sampler has 16 samples that can be played chromatically. The track below was a test to see what could be done using a single track. It is very unoptimised and is just an export of the bits of the session without any performance stuff or time spent on sound choice or design. But is a single track of the 4 available and doesn’t even max that out.

So going to say the 4 track limit is not an issue. Especially as you can adjust the effect sends and crucially the volume in real time on a per pad basis (so you can for example fade the bassline in with little difficulty) and save the automation.

Next up – build quality, size and ergonomics. Which can be summed up as “really nice” on all 3 counts. I find the pads actually to be amongst the best I have ever used. OK there is no MPE but the aftertouch is fine. The overall size is pretty perfect in terms of portability vs enough stuff and the screen, whilst small, is fine for what it needs to do (with the minor caveat that it would be really nice if the patch names scrolled, after a short pause, rather than being truncated) and it can’t be stressed enough how it positively impacts on the usability compared with the Novations.

The sound quality is lovely and whilst the sound design possibilities might be a bit limited that is more than offset by the quality of the large number of presets and the sampling side of things. The web based interface for adding samples and backing up is utterly brilliant as it is based on the machine itself and this means it will continue to exist and work forever (or technically I suppose as long as the code is supported by web browsers) rather than relying on an App or the company maintaining a web page. And the battery life is fine at 4 hours or so (with a really useful %age indicator) and you can charge from a power bank. It also comes with a lovely but massively over engineered USB-C power supply.

The user interface and workflow is also really good and incredibly intuitive with even some of the more complicated things being fairly simple to remember. The built in microphone is useful and the resampling is really powerful. The capture function (where it remembers what you just did without having to have pressed record) is absolute genius although not completely perfect. If you have something running and jam over the top it seems to capture from when you press something to the end of the max bars and then repeats. So you have to be slightly careful but when you think about it, it would be really difficult for it to be cleverer than that.

The fact that it has a USB-host port that will power external devices is also great. Which sort of brings us to the main issue with it at the moment. Which is the MIDI implementation which is “limited”. To be really rather polite. Awful might be a better description. Either Midi In or Midi Out but not both simultaneously and a really limited implementation of both. All on Midi Channel 1 and with Midi In it just relates to the selected track and with Midi Out it is one of the 4 tracks only. So, for me, the MIDI In limitation is worse and the result that you can’t use something like the Torso T1, the MidiCake arp or the NDLR is a real disappointment but it would also be nice if you could run more than 1 external synth simultaneously.

I’d hope that the MIDI thing will be fixed with an update as I would assume it isn’t baked in to the hardware but even without that it probably has hit the top of the list for which gadget out of all of them would I keep (excluding probably the MPC, FORCE and Deluge).

Or the End of Music. Been playing about with UDIO, an AI song generator. So the tracks below are basically curated rather than created. But that is sort of the point being made – they have come a lot closer to the “sound in my head” than anything else I have managed. [Although clearly the “sound in my head” is a selection of what used to be called “indie” from the 80s,90s and early 2000s.]

The “album” cover is real. It is a photo taken of a photo on my Aunt’s stairs of her friend invading a stage whilst a certain band were playing a long time ago. Happy to remove it if anyone has a problem with it being used.

Download as a ZIP file here.

In terms of the creative process, not much to say…type a prompt into Udio.com, play about with extending the clip – they generate at about 30 seconds long and each time you get 2 choices, and then a little bit of editing in Logic. This was mainly splitting into stems and lowering the vocal volume and a bit of mastering and the odd effect. For the first track I did repeat one of the vocal lines at the end. And in terms of the vocals/lyrics, I let the AI generate them (you can type in your own) as that was also part of the whole “just how good is this” thing. Clearly a bit variable (without editing) but was very impressed by what “Song about losing your keys” came up with. Twice.

I think it is all really quite depressing. But the technology is pretty amazing.

This is a track by the Penguin Cafe Orchestra originally. There is an interesting story to the track (and some fairly literal naming as well as Dall-E cover art creation.).

The four versions are basically the same except for tempo changes and different drums in the final version and were a “creative challenge” to produce something based on the original.

This is the final version with the original drums replaced with KVLT Drums by Ugritone.

The files below are the evolution of the track (they don’t change that much TBH), with a slower version (One), a faster version (Faster!) and the initial tempo change version before the drums were changed.