Ableton Move

If you can increase your budget, the Ableton Move is on sale for $400. It's a four-track groove box. You can do a drums and percussion track with multiple different samples. You can do melodic content on tracks.

While you said you didn't want a groovebox, with the recent firmware update, Ableton Move just added in the parameter controls for Ableton's Drift synthesizer. So you have quite a few knobs to twist to do that.

I'd say Ableton Move is a good idea. However I wouldn't expect to make any songs dawless. Backing loops (maybe some chained patterns but definitely not "tracks") - sure, easy. Sketching ideas - the same.

I have a minifreak(love this thing), a keystep pro, and an ableton move. I can pretty much all my bases with these

Move is what I wanted SP404mk2 to be and more (though doesn't have all the features, the ones it has are much better implemented).

Parent context: That’s interesting! Feels easy to navigate through it? Do you need Ableton open to use it everytime? Reply: I only use Ableton to apply effects on my mono synth controlled by Move. But I can jam on my couch, on airplane, in the park. It’s quite small and light.

I love my Ableton Move. It has the simplicity of Tracks but far more powerful. It’s limited to 4 tracks, but single track can play 16 instruments simultaneously (and chromatically)

thank you very much. I now got a used Ableton move