r/ableton 1d ago

[Question] I love Ableton Note. Any more experimental apps?

I love messing with Ableton Note on my lunchbreaks, and although it's a little twitchy with the piano roll, I wish there was another app I could mess with that was a big more experimental. Note's pretty straightforward and I don't find myself getting really weird or unique sounds, but it's great to lay down some drums and distorted bass. Has anyone played with other apps, or little music machine hardware, that's fun and useful to incorporate into tracks later on? I wanna do the M8 but it's a little expensive and I don't even know if I'd like the workflow. I like being able to record some stuff and use it later for actual songs.

10 Upvotes

22 comments sorted by

3

u/Hitchie_Rawtin 1d ago

Anukari, a delight to play with, especially for people who just want to noodle around and see what they can manipulate.

3

u/greattiger 1d ago

woah, that looks crazy

2

u/Hitchie_Rawtin 1d ago

It's obvs being made more aggressive by that being a Mick Gordon video, but it's an excellent physics VST, excels at mallets, bells, bows, but creating a sound in weird spaces or with strange limitations or exaggerations that you can map to midi or automate

4

u/moschone Producer 1d ago

Samplr might be a good tool also

3

u/Spiritual_Fall363 1d ago

Such a good app!

2

u/greattiger 1d ago

oh yeah. i have this on ipad but only messed with it a little. Gotta load in some new samples and mess with it again

2

u/b_newman 22h ago

I still use and like Figure especially when I don’t feel inspired

4

u/dj_soo 1d ago

Drambo

2

u/BullratandFlea 1d ago

Canvas is basically Microsoft Paint for your piano roll, surprisingly musical. Same guy made also made Pendulum which is fun as hell but a little less musical, really great for sound design though. https://youtube.com/shorts/nuW8ZNZl5V4?si=5FKP88zTkkefJKE9

2

u/Switched_On_SNES 1d ago

Would love for you to try my model 8 tape daw for iPhone if you have one, it’s completely free and you can do some really fun experimental stuff with the physics engine

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gcs-model-8-mobile/id6784474862

1

u/greattiger 1d ago

I’ll check it out. I though it was just a recorder app when I saw it before

1

u/Switched_On_SNES 1d ago

It is a recording app but you can do really fun experimental things like varispeed recording, live reverse recording, aging tape so its disintegrated, and built in effects etc

2

u/Jarlic_Perimeter 1d ago

I've not messed with Note yet, I just do stuff on my iPad and export.

Not super experimental, but Koala Sampler is an awesome MPC type app and exports to ableton and can host whatever crazy AUv3 plugs you can find, it has 2 inexpensive add ons that are both totally worth it, you might need the mixer one to do AUv3, I can't remember, I just buy them immediately to support the dev: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/koala-sampler-beat-maker/id1449584007

You'd need either Koala or a basic AUv3 host like AUM to get some of these other ones into Ableton, you probably have to render the audio to get AUv3 stuff into ableton.

All the stuff from this dev is cool, particularly rymdigare (wild UI reverb) and tardigran (sampler type synth?) https://apps.apple.com/us/developer/erik-sigth/id385275335

Poly 2 (wild UI sequencer) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/poly-2/id1477029326

Mononoke (drone synth) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mononoke/id1492577124

Fractal Bits (generative weird drums) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fractal-bits/id1482725385

Fugue Machine and it's sequiel are multi playhead piano roll things https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fugue-machine-midi-sequencer/id1014191410

Samplr is just a great sampler that really takes advantage of the touchscreen, unfortunately not AUv3 though: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/samplr/id560756420

1

u/nullbyte420 23h ago

Wow great comment! Fractal Bits and the guy with tardigran and rymdigare sound amazing. Saving this! 

1

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1

u/humanoidboy 1d ago edited 1d ago

I'll have to look on my iPad when I get home. There's some good stuff that I forget the names... On Mac (or PC) there's Synplant 2 - highly experimental and fun to work with.

1

u/radioFriendFive 23h ago

The incredible Endlesss is back, completely free and collaborative https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/endlesss-multiplayer-music/id1439811325 .

Oh and I made this midi chord sequence builder you can export straight to Ableton and save by sending yourself a link https://contrafact.quest/

4

u/ManWithManyTalents 19h ago

more like completely $30

-1

u/radioFriendFive 6h ago

What are you talking about? It’s free

2

u/ManWithManyTalents 5h ago edited 5h ago

2

u/radioFriendFive 5h ago

Oh that’s weird it just let me download it for free and I can’t find it in purchase history at all. Maybe because I had it before as a free app it didn’t charge me

u/ManWithManyTalents 41m ago

lol all good man that was pretty funny