Start new musical ideas with a curated selection of sounds and effects. Create beats and melodic parts, sample your world, and continue your tracks in Ableton Live.
Note is a place to form ideas, explore new sounds and find direction. Get your ideas out or just experiment until inspiration hits, using a selection of Ableton Live’s drum kits, synths and melodic instruments. Create your own sound palette by sampling with your phone’s built-in microphone. And use Note’s built-in MIDI Editor to sequence notes, beats and chords or make tweaks as you listen back
Follow your ideas wherever they lead by sending your projects to Live without leaving the app with the help of Ableton Cloud. Open projects from Live’s browser and keep working – you can edit all your MIDI notes, and all your samples and sounds from Note are exactly the same. Ableton Note users get a free license for Ableton Live Lite – simple, intuitive software used by musicians, producers and DJs around the world to write, record, and perform. For Ableton Move users, Note also offers the chance to keep working on a Set from your phone.
Begin with a beat:
• Choose from 76 Drum Sampler kits
• Tap out a beat using the 16-pad grid, or sequence one with the MIDI Editor
• Play each drum hit melodically using 16 Pitches mode
• Quantize your beat or nudge notes to fix loose timing or mistakes
• Add more layers of rhythm
• Create beat repetitions with Note Repeat
• Change parameters to shape your sound
• Experiment with effects or apply swing for variations
Start with a melody:
• Choose from 317 synth sounds and 60 Melodic Sampler instruments
• Play or program your melody or chord progression with the 25-pad grid, piano roll or MIDI Editor
• Set a key and scale to get instantly harmonic results
• Add more layers of harmony
• Change parameters to shape your sound
• Add effects to experiment with sound design
Sample your environment:
• Create your own kits by recording percussive sounds into Note’s Drum Sampler
• Record tonal sounds to create your own Melodic Sampler instruments
• Manipulate your samples by cutting, filtering or repitching them
• Sequence samples into beats, melodies and chords using the MIDI Editor
• Shape or transform your sounds with effects
• Import your own samples or audio directly from videos
Capture improvisations:
• Play something, then tap the Capture button to keep it
• Play at a tempo that feels comfortable and Note will detect it
• Note will recognize the length of the phrase and create a loop
• Quantize it, add to it, or change the sound
• Connect MIDI hardware to play keys and change the sound of your instruments
Create variations:
• Note features a grid-based Session View layout
• Double your loops to create variation within clips
• Duplicate your clips and create different versions of your ideas
• Add, delete or adjust multiple notes at once with the MIDI Editor
• Create eight tracks with up to eight clips on eight scenes
• Try different clip combinations and song structures
• Export your work as an audio file to listen and share
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Ableton Note FAQ
Is Ableton Note free?
Yes, Ableton Note is completely free and it doesn't have any in-app purchases or subscriptions.
Is Ableton Note legit?
🤔 The Ableton Note app's quality is mixed. Some users are satisfied, while others report issues. Consider reading individual reviews for more context.
Note is a great tool for making music when you’re bored or sketching ideas. Unfortunately it’s basically impossible to record any vocals apart from short samples to use in a pad. Having some audio tracks would make this so many times better.
Missing Audio channel
I really miss the ability to record voice.
Not being able to do so really limits the songwriting possibility such as sketching top-line. It should be a key function.
Good, but VERY basic
It's great for a simple and very basic idea skretching, but way too simple and trivial in terms of sound design and audio/midi manipulation.
FX section is very limited (EQ, Chorus, Delay, Reverb, Redux, Saturation), would be great if developers would add some Compressor, Limiter, Grain Delay, Vocoder etc. I'd be gladly willing to pay more for a proper pocket Ableton version.
Also a bit buggy so far (FX selection doesnt react or pad screen freezes), but I'm sure it will be tuned soon.
Not good
Bad just use garage band
title
Experienced ableton user. Absolutely love this app. Needs more support for ableton effects, specifically I need a comprehensive compressor with sidechaining. Support for operator and wavetable would be cool also.
Cool, but can be better.
It’s a cool app with great sounds installed. I just wish I could just manually program the midi how I want it right away like on my computer. It really slows down my workflow and kinda makes things more tedious than it should be.
I hope they implement this ability in future updates.
Love this thing and the move too
I purchased the move after using note and both have helped me think musically significantly! I hope features continue to come to the note - thank you for making this!
So close bruh
Was looking for a app that I could jot down quick ideas and it’s the best option for that for sure. I do really love the link between ableton & being able to start things on my phone and flesh them out in the daw !!
However I would truly love to see a proper piano roll option for the love of god.
It would make things feel so seamless. But other than that it cool. Please do that tho thanks and stuff
No Audio
I’m sure it’s a great app but I wouldn’t really know as I have not been able to get it to play audio a single time since downloading it. I tried headphones, portable speakers, volume setting in and out of the app, phone updates, resets, downloading and reinstalling the app. Nothing works and but I will still give 4 stars since this should, in theory, be fixed with the next update.
This is great
Anyone complaining about this doesn’t understand the beauty of false self limitation. For $8 the sounds library and synths are a deal …but this offers nearly the same amount of core functionality of an mpc for $8….and its 1 for 1 right into Ableton live. The note editing needs touch editing support but otherwise I’m happy with its current state
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