Lesson 1

Tour of the hardware

Find every group of buttons, knobs and pads on Move, so you know where things are before you make a sound.

You’ll need:

Your Move (it can be on or off for this lesson)

The idea

Move is a complete little music studio in one box. It has its own battery, its own speaker and its own sounds, so you don’t need a computer, a phone or cables to make music with it. Everything you make lives on Move itself.

All that power sits behind a lot of buttons. Don’t worry about what each one does yet. In this lesson you just learn where things are, the way you’d learn where the pedals are before driving a car. Later lessons use each group for real.

For each step, the drawing lights up the part to find. Find it on your Move and rest a finger on it. You don’t need to press anything, and nothing needs to happen. If your Move is already switched on, a few steps show you a small bonus you can notice.

Find the big block of pads in the middle. This is where you play: drums, notes and chords. The pads feel how hard you hit them, so a soft tap plays quietly and a firm hit plays loudly.
You should see: Four rows of eight soft, square pads: 32 in total.
Find the long row of 16 step buttons. Each one stands for a small slice of time in a pattern. The little lines under Steps 1, 5, 9 and 13 mark where each beat begins, so the row splits into four beats of four steps.
What's a beat?
A beat is the steady pulse you’d tap your foot to. You’ll use the step buttons to build beats in a later lesson.
You should see: A row of 16 small buttons, with a short line under Steps 1, 5, 9 and 13.
Find the four track buttons just to the left of the pads. A song on Move has four tracks, like four band members, and these buttons choose which one you’re playing.
You should see: Four buttons just to the left of the pads.
Find the eight knobs above the pads, then the Volume knob in the top right corner. The eight knobs shape the sound (the manual calls them encoders). The Volume knob sets how loud Move is. Just touch the knobs for now; don’t turn them.
Is Move switched on?
The knobs sense your touch. If Move is on, resting a finger on one shows on the display which setting it controls. Turning is what changes a setting, so keep your fingers still.
You should see: Eight knobs in a row, plus one more knob on its own in the top right corner.
Find the display, then the wheel. The display tells you what’s going on. The wheel is how you move through lists and menus: turn it to scroll, press it to choose.
You should see: A small screen, and a round wheel that turns and can be pressed down like a button.
Find Shift and hold it down for a moment. Shift gives many buttons a second job. While you hold it, small icons show up beneath several step buttons. Each icon marks a menu or feature you can open by holding Shift and pressing that step. You’ll use the one under Step 2 in the next lesson.
You should see: If Move is on, small icons appear under several of the step buttons while you hold Shift.
Find Back and Note/Session. Back gets you out of menus and lists, so it’s your escape hatch when you feel lost. Note/Session flips Move between its two main views: one for building a single track, and one for seeing your whole song at once.
You should see: You've found the two buttons, one for going back and one for switching views.
Find Play and Record, but don’t press them yet. Play starts and stops your music. Record captures what you play so Move can repeat it.
You should see: You've found the Play button and the Record button.
Find the function buttons, one by one, as the drawing numbers them: Capture, Sampling, Loop, Mute, Delete, Copy and Undo. The numbers only help you find them; you don’t need to press any of these.
Worried about pressing the wrong thing?
Undo takes back your last action, so most mistakes are easy to fix. Knowing where it is makes the rest of the course less scary.
You should see: You've found all seven function buttons.
Find the Left arrow, Right arrow, Plus (+) and Minus (−) buttons. The arrows step through the sections of a longer pattern. Plus and minus shift the pads to higher or lower notes when you play a melody.
You should see: You've found two arrow buttons, a plus button and a minus button.
Turn Move around and look at the back edge. Find the yellow Power button, the Audio out socket for headphones or speakers, the Audio in socket for recording another sound source, the USB-A port for a MIDI keyboard, and the USB-C port for charging.
You should see: Five things on the back edge: the yellow power button and four sockets.

Try it yourself

Close your eyes (or look away from the screen) and try to point to each of these on your Move: Shift, Back, Undo, the Volume knob, the wheel and the power button. Those six are the ones you’ll reach for most in the next few lessons.

Good to know

Move also has a built-in microphone and speaker, so it can record and play sound with nothing plugged in.
You don’t need to memorise the whole panel. The controls page lets you tap any part of Move to see what it does, whenever you need a reminder.