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Ableton Extensions SDK

ableton.com

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Re: Ableton Extensions SDK

#101

Post by brookst »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #95
brookst wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should talk - I’m building a Claude Code plugin for music composition and analysis, which currently integrates with Ableton using MCP and Ableton control surface (basically LOM) and an M4L patch. But it could easily work with any DAW that has the right primitives.

https://github.com/Ardour/ardour/blob/master/libs/surfaces/m...

Yeah, also https://github.com/ahujasid/ableton-mcp

But the MCP server isn’t the interesting part. It’s the round trip of composition and mixing. “Set up a calypso beat and baseline; add distortion to the bass; set up filters to protect the kick from the bass”

Re: Ableton Extensions SDK

#102

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

brookst wrote: post #101
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/Ardour/ardour/blob/master/libs/surfaces/m...

Yeah, also https://github.com/ahujasid/ableton-mcp But the MCP server isn’t the interesting part. It’s the round trip of composition and mixing. “Set up a calypso beat and baseline; add distortion to the bass; set up filters to protect the kick from the bass”

> It’s the round trip of composition and mixing.

That's a very personal thing. A lot of musicians are extremely, extremely resistant to using LLMs to assist with composition. Obviously, too, some are not.

Re: Ableton Extensions SDK

#103

Post by brookst »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #102
brookst wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, also https://github.com/ahujasid/ableton-mcp But the MCP server isn’t the interesting part. It’s the round trip of composition and mixing. “Set up a calypso beat and baseline; add distortion to the bass; set up filters to protect the kick from the bass”

> It’s the round trip of composition and mixing. That's a very personal thing. A lot of musicians are extremely, extremely resistant to using LLMs to assist with composition. Obviously, too, some are not.

For sure. I'm just making a circular saw because I see value. If someone else wants to stick to hand tools, no complaints.

Note that "assist with composition" covers a lot of ground. There's Suno, and there's "let's experiment with chords changes to get from F Phrygian to C major"

Re: Ableton Extensions SDK

#104

Post by jmole »

windowliker wrote: post #63
jmole wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is zero "secret sauce" in max for live. Ableton and Max are totally separate codebases, and "Max for Live" is just a ~VST interface between them. I do agree that "scriptable Ableton" would be far better for production and sound design than Max, because they make all the hard parts easy: MIDI, sequencing, mixing, etc. In Max, you have to build everything from scratch, every time.

>Ableton and Max are totally separate codebases, and "Max for Live" is just a ~VST interface between them. This is not strictly true, and Max for Live (M4L) is much more than a pseudo-VST. In the context of Live, the Max runtime is controlled by the DAW, which itself then exposes part of its interface to Max. So there's realtime bi-directional communication going on, more akin to how Propellerhead Software's (now dep…

thanks for the correction - my assumption was that VST APIs had largely the same set of functionality.
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