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
Work with Audio
• Add audio clips from the library
• Warp tempo or adjust pitch of your clips
• Record audio directly using your phone’s built-in microphone
• Connect an audio interface to record external sources
• Combine recorded and imported audio with your beats and melodies
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
The best app for quick creativity — would love MIDI sync support for live use
Alt.Face
Ableton Note is hands down one of the best apps for creativity and fast music sketching. It’s perfect for quickly building ideas, starting tracks, creating loops, sequences, drum patterns, and melodies on the go. The workflow feels smooth, inspiring, and fun — it makes writing music feel effortless.I’d also love to use it during live performances, especially on iPad, because it would be an incredibly convenient tool on stage.The only thing that currently holds me back is that the app doesn’t seem to support incoming MIDI. Maybe I’m missing something, but I couldn’t get it to work. It would be amazing to have the ability to receive an external MIDI clock from a DAW, so Ableton Note could stay perfectly synced with other devices and setups.
A must have for every Live user
Remedydeath
Amazing thing, and a poor man’s Ableton Move (which even has more features). Highly recommended.
Developer Response
Hi - Thanks for the good review! If you have a Move, you can even work on the same set across the devices! Thanks - Ableton
Please, Audio clips
Roman Che
Hi. This is the amazing app. Please add “audio clips” or any other possibility to quickly add vocal ideas, or guitar ideas using microphone. “Drum Rack” way is not too intuitive and fast for tasks like that.
The best music app on iPhone
Maksty
100% the most handy music app for creating ideas or even full tracks!
Developer Response
Hi - Thank you for the 5-star review. We're glad you're enjoying Note! - Ableton
• Introducing Audio Tracks and Ableton Link Audio
• Record audio directly into your sessions
• Transfer audio in real time to Ableton Live with Ableton Link Audio
• New FX devices: Erosion and Auto Shift
• Updated Auto Pan with real-time visualisation
Version 2.0.1
The developer, Ableton AG, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
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Information
Provider
Ableton AG
Size
1 GB
Category
Music
Compatibility
Requires iOS 15.0 or later.
iPhone Requires iOS 15.0 or later.
iPad Requires iPadOS 15.0 or later.
iPod touch Requires iOS 15.0 or later.
Languages
English and 4 more
English, French, German, Japanese, Simplified Chinese