#movuary — Public Fediverse posts

Lately, there has been some talk of the Franklin Language Master 6000 SE, a talking dictionary released around 1991, which holds some nostalgia for some of us blind and visually impaired folks.

In February of 2025, not long after I acquired one again, during a thing we called #Movuary, I sequenced a silly little song using noises and phrases generated by the LM6000SE, along with a couple of drum tracks, on my then relatively new Ableton Move. I ended up only using three tracks for this project, because it was so busy, I couldn't think of what to do with a fourth track. I called it 'Ya Got Me', which is a phrase from Keyboard Wizard, and coincidentally one of the few things it speaks without pausing at the end of each word, most likely because it was hard-coded as a single string of phonemes or something. The only other thing I know of like that is the start of the demo, when it says "Welcome to the special edition. Let me show you what I can do."

To this day, this is still one of my favorite things I've ever done on Move. It's just unnecessarily happy, unlike me.

Sorry for the transcoding. My instance seems to think that the FLAC version is unprocessable, so I had to convert it to mp3 first. YUCK! Of course, Mastodon transcodes that again, and the artifacts are quite noticeable with the pulse waves,
So I will also include a link to the flac.

http://www.borris.me/audio/movuary2025/11-Ya_Got_Me.flac

The second rlease for today is the stuff I did for #movuary . This is called Pocket Sessions, and for those who aren't in the loop, The challenge was to post a track made with Ableton Move, either something produced that very day, or something you been working on. I hope you enjoy. Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7Bq9BEORizSMhhTnOsqjzz?si=qY2krwgHQMKnIcB3oJAQ8A

@FreakyFwoof Yes I did. :) #Movuary really inspired me to keep going. And really brought out each piece of kit's intuitiveness in glaring contrast.

@izziegofficial So did you come up with #marschine? I like the idea following on directly from #Movuary.

after all the #movuary posts, I have questions about whether it makes sense for me to #MoveIntoMusic, or something. I have a birthday coming up and this seems intriguing. Here's my situation. I've played an instrument before but my skills are quite basic and I have almost no experience making multi-track things. Not looking to set the world on fire, just want a fun creative outlet. I'm playing with Ableton Note right now, and it's fun save for how difficult it is to play what I want using the on-screen pads. Questions: I have very little space, i.e. could I play this thing on my lap?
I don't have an external midi controller (see also lack of space) but given my current skill level, would the onboard pads likely be enough?
I'm fine with a learning curve, but am curious how much I could realistically do almost immediately.
Is something like this overkill for someone starting from my level? If so, what's a more sensible and accessible alternative?
What glaring thing have I not considered but should have?

I rolled both last year and this year's #Movuary into FreakyFwoof Tracks because why not?

#movuary was a lot of fun, who's up for #marschine ? Lol, unless that's already a hashtag I'm not aware of...

#Movuary 28: Gone

Well, that's Movuary done for another year. I managed to end it before the end of the month by making most of four sets in a single day, but that's how it goes.

This one could have done so much more, but I decided to keep it very simple.

HQ download:
http://www.borris.me/audio/movuary2026/28%20-%20Gone.flac

#movuary 28 The After Party. I'm gonna miss doing these. This was fun. I hope you guys enjoy this last one for the year.

#Movuary 27: 1987

This is a thing that started out as an 8 bar loop in June of 2025 for a recording I made about my own personal brand of synesthesia.

The sounds are not particularly 1987. They are all stock move sounds except for the drums, which came from a Magix Entertainment sample DVD released in 2001, but the style sort of is. I imagine this as something someone from 2067 might right having just read a book about 1987, never having actually experienced it themselves.

HQ download:
27 - 1987.flac

According to my Apple Watch, I have met my move goal. Obviously, my watch doesn't know about #Movuary, and how far behind on that I am.

The goal was to post one track made with Move every day in the month of February. I failed on that front. I posted two tracks today, and if I can write two more before the end of the day (I don't have a backlog), then I can finally be done with this thing and stop thinking about it.

Isn't it interesting how something that is supposed to be fun isn't after a while when you put pointless expectations on yourself that no one else cares about?

#Movuary 26: Take Me Home

In December, I, for some reason, wanted to re-create the instrumentation from Phil Collins 'Take Me Home' on Move, so I did the best I could using the included Roland TR-909 samples, a square wave with an envelope on it, and one of the stock e-piano sounds. Since move doesn't have gated reverb, not even in the new modules that I can find, I sampled the 909 clap sound with reverb, then just put an envelope on it to simulate the effect. Now that I can run Dext on Move, which emulates a Yamaha DX-7, I replaced the built-in e-piano sound with that, which is much closer to what Phil used when he recorded this in 1984. I don't think it's quite the right patch. His sparkles a little more.

Since the entire song is basically just Phil and friends singing over one bar of a square wave, two bars of TR-909 drums and a four bar e-piano sequence (there is also a bass and some other things, but that's primarily what you hear), I decided to make it more interesting for Movuary. Thus, I played around with chords, bass, and did things Phil never would have done with his 909.

HQ download:
http://www.borris.me/audio/movuary2026/26%20-%20Take%20Me%20Home.flac

#Movuary 25: Polygark

This is another one of those sets where I only used the sounds it gave me. No overdubbing or extra modules.

This one plays fast and loose with timing. Polyrhythms and weird turn-arounds galore.

HQ download:
http://www.borris.me/audio/movuary2026/25-%20Polygark.flac

#Movuary download links, offering both last year and this year's offerings in flac.
2025: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/3nuij36hg6nwvi8f6vcq2/AHpNyeLApU5nmbqLEWVm4qM?rlkey=lyzwbjr5n7crss4an7ibus1v7&dl=0
2026: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/rf17divmut7pgvb62aegr/ADd8bblfEh0yHytrWjsql_M?rlkey=q5xv5rbrs34y4xijwa9fiee3i&dl=0

#Movuary Day 28: 'Time To Say Goodbye' as it's the last day of Movuary for the year.
This started life with the interesting pad sound I'd never played before. It gave me the idea to write this track in a very slow and measured cadence. We also have a relaxed drum beat, a nice sub-bass and a bell-like melody over the top.

#movuary 27 A Field of Stars. This is the first thing I created with my Move when I got it in August of 2025. Then I just extended it for Movuary.

#Movuary 24: the Man Machine

Getting further and further behind. The last couple of days, I have just not been in the headspace for playing with musical things. I'm still not, really. Lots of frustration with life.

This is a partial cover of Kraftwerk's 'the Man Machine' from 1978. I wanted to see how close I could get to the sound of the original using stock synth sounds. I didn't sample from the original for anything. Kraftwerk really doesn't like it when you do that.

I re-created the little percussive click at the beginning with Drift, did a layer/resample for the snare sound, and used a truncated Roland TR-707 kick. Yes, I know, it's not period accurate. Sue me.

I then used the vocoder module from Move Everything for the vocal parts.

There is a lot wrong with this thing. The lowpass filter of drift isn't quite right, the vocoder lacks the resolution of the one Kraftwerk used, and so much more, but it was fun trying to get somewhat close to a sound produced in a studio full of analog gear with a tiny device on my lap while sitting on the couch.

HQ download:
http://www.borris.me/audio/movuary2026/24%20-%20the%20Man%20Machine.flac

#Movuary Day 27: 'House Move' which came into existence because I was browsing a sound from Roland's JV House expansion and found this drums +Rhodes mix I quite liked.

#movuary 26 The Very Busy Mouse. No, I didn't palm the pads for this one, I promise. I did for a take, but then just figured I'd make it orderly chaos instead.

#Movuary Day 26: 'Kaoss On The Move' so named because it consists of a bunch of different tracks made with the Korg iKaossilator app for iOS that I had so much fun with back in around 2010. Still a fun app to this day.
Since it supports export of it's 5 tracks to wave file and they make perfect loops, it's a great candidate for being loaded up onto Move in the new audio track mode and messed with.
I've got various loops from different projects over the years and I can seamlessly switch between them, and then jump back to a synth sound and have a bit of fun.
Recorded with the Move Everything quantize sampler option which is probably one of my new favourite things.

#movuary 25 Freezing Cold

#Movuary 23: Disconnected

I'm two full days behind now. Oh well, so it goes.

This is a track that features two SurgeXG patches, a sort of e-piano sound from a Juno 60 emulator, two drum kits and a bass, all of which are stock Move sounds. I called it disconnected because one of the SurgeXT patches I used keeps saying "disconnected" at me, onomotapoetically..

HQ download:
http://www.borris.me/audio/movuary2026/23%20-%20Disconnected.flac

#Movuary Day 25: 'Wednesday Weirdness' which is a sort of but not quite, Reggae thing with a time-stretched drum loop made soon after Move 2.0 Beta firmware came out with the ability to tempo-sync audio.

#movuary 24 Too Many Wires

#Movuary Day 24: 'Radio Garden' so named after the place I got the sample from. I used Move Everything to find a station in The Congo, worked out the tempo of the song they were playing, set Move Everything's quantize sampler to record for 8 bars, put it on an audio track, sped it up, transposed it, brought in a drum loop from the Korg M1 plugin and some stock Move loops and called it a day.
All that for that, i know.

#Movuary 22: Dumb

Yeah, at this point, I'm not even trying anymore.

One of the new features of Move 2.0 beta is audio tracks, which you can import loops or just record on. A feature of Move Everything is the inclusion of a vocoder module. So, I combined these things to do something totally stupid and dumb.

HQ download:
http://www.borris.me/audio/movuary2026/22%20-%20Dumb.flac

#movuary 23 A Run at Midnight

#movuary 22 Surfing on Neptune

#movuary 21 The Frantic Robot

#movuary 20 Party on the moon