Respectrable

Bidirectional communication with Ableton Live via Max for Live

Description

The first goal with this project is to create a system where any property of a Live set can be changed by sending an Open Sound Control (OSC) message to the Ableton Live.

The second goal is to create a system where Live sends an OSC message when any property of a set changes.

In this way a Live set can control -- or be controlled by -- anything that supports OSC messaging.

Respectrable is a Max for Live device that facilitates this.

In the rest of this README "respectrable" refers to the Max for Live device.

Tested On

• Windows
• Ableton Live 9
• Max for Live 8

To Use

• Add the folder containing this repo to Max's search path.

• Add respectrable.amxd (located in the max directory) to the master track on a Live set.

• Send OSC messages (formatted as described below) to the ports specified in the settings.json file.

Project Structure

• The max folder contains all of the Max for Live code and patches.
• The test folder contains an Ableton Live project and TouchDesigner project used for testing. To run tests open both projects and run the text_tests DAT operator in TouchDesigner.

Functionality

Max for Live can access an Ableton Live set in two different ways.

There is a Javascript API and there are also Max objects which can access properties of a Live set.

Using Max objects might perform better but multiple objects would have to be created for every instance of every class in Live.

To avoid frustration, respectrable creates objects for many -- but not every -- class in a Live set. Objects are created for many classes important for live performance.

Similarly, many (but not all) elements of a Live set are observed with live.observer objects.

The two different message types should be sent to the ports defined by the following keys in the networking section of the settings.json file.

• respectrable listens for native object messages: toMaxObject
• respectrable listens for Javascript messages: toMaxJs
• respectrable sends messages on: fromMax

Accessing and Controlling an Ableton Live Set

get, set, and call

• To set or get a property or to call a function send an OSC message in the following format:

  /canonical_path [messageType, property, (value)]

canonical_path is the OSC address (which is the same as the LOM Canonical path with spaces replaced by forward slashes.

messageType is the first OSC argument and is either set, get or call.

property is the second OSC argument and is either the name of the property that is being set or queried or the name of the function to call.

value is the third OSC argument and should only be included in a set message in which case it is the value to set.

Example Messages:

• /live_set/tracks/0 ["get", "color"]
• /live_set/tracks/0 ["set", "color", 3947580]
• /live_set/tracks/0 ["call", "stop_all_clips"]

Corresponding Responses:

• /live_set/tracks/0 ["color", 3217580]
• /live_set/tracks/0 ["color", 3947580]
• /live_set/tracks/0 ["stop_all_clips", "id", "0"]

Note: Certain properties are considered "LiveAPI" properties (i.e. id and path). These are different than other property (see the LOM documentation for details) and can only be reached by using Javascript messages with the format:

`/canonical_path ['property', ${LiveAPI Property}]`

Where ${LiveAPI Property}] is the name of the property (e.g. id).

Note: Some function calls may not have useful or any output.

Observed Property Values

The following properties or children are observed using live.observer objects.

This means that whenever values change (even if directly through the Live GUI) a message with the new property's value will be sent from respectrable with the new value.

• Song: tempo, clip_trigger_quantization, tracks
• Track: solo, color, playing_slot_index, fired_slot_index, devices, clip_slots
• MixerDevice DeviceParameter Values: volume, track_activator, panning
• Clip: color, name, pitch_coarse, playing_position
• Device: name, is_active
• Device DeviceParameter Values: name, value

After initialization the current value for each property that is observed will be sent.

Classes (and their children) only reachable through Javascript

• Song.View
• Track.View
• Clip.View
• RackDevice
• Drumpad
• Chain
• DrumChain
• ChainMixerDevice
• SimplerDevice
• Sample
• PluginDevice
• MaxDevice
• Scene
• CuePoint
• ControlSurface
• ThisDevice

Extra Notes

• Although adding and deleting tracks and clips is supported, doing so causes the Max for Live device to reinitialize and, becuase of a bug this can cause your set to perform poorly unless the device is deleted and re-added.

• Devices have only been thoroughly tested as part of Device Racks with parameters mapped to Macro knobs.

• Because of a port binding issue temp ports are used to keep ports working in Max during editing.

• Because Max doesn't support multicasting the hosts field is an array of the hosts to which messages will be sent. Hostnames and IP addresses both work.

Required Software

• Ableton Live
• Max for Live

References

• Live Object Model (This is essential to understand)

License

©️ Willy Nolan 2020

MIT License