Smart Ableton Live Integration / Scripts

I am also very into this. but I think a remote controller script needs to be written in python.

-GitHub - gluon/AbletonLive11_MIDIRemoteScripts
Docs

Electra One to:

  • control the Ableton mixer and sends
  • When you click a plugin it will populate the One with controls
  • Page back and forth button to get more controls

I would like to attend this sometime but it will take me very long I think.
Currently I am spending most time to get my hardware on the electra one.

1 Like

I tried to tackle this a few times but as I am not a real Ableton user it was a bit hard for me to know what to do. @joris.roling works on the Bitwig integration and it goes really well, see Bitwig Integration

I would say that we will be able to reuse most of the Bitwig work for the Ableton at some point.

1 Like

I /we managed to get it to work properly and even add some functionality, so now I have at least some experience.
I talked to Martin about this at superbooth and strongly recommended to either get an sdk from Ableton or convince them that they provide a midi remote script for Electra (they do that for a lot of controllers).
The reason is that there are three ways of writing a MIDI remote script for Ableton, one is doing everything by hand, second is using the Version 1 framework which take some lifting of your shoulders and the last one is using the version 2 framework of the stuff that ableton provides. Unfortunately there’s not that much documentation out there with regards to to the more intricate stuff that needs to be done to utilise the version 2 framework.

1 Like

what sdk do you mean? I found only a reference to the sdk for, link, ios and liveset exports.

If anyone starts working on a remote script I am happy to test it.

Probably I am not skilled to fully implement this but nevertheless I want to try it.

1 Like

It is an assumption that there exists a private sdk. Because there’s not much documentation if you want to develop a v2 framework based remote control script.

1 Like

Has any progress been made on this? It would be absolutely brilliant if such integration with Ableton Live would allow the Electra One to control the currently selected Ableton Live device and automatically show all the device parameters (without necessarily setting up any template).

3 Likes

I am willing to work on this if others will join. As i really need assistance.
I think it really sucks that no midi remote script is present. The VST mapping as written in the Docs just sucks big time. Its to manual and controls are bound so locked to 1 thing…
A script will just auto map whatever,

Setup a git and create a midi remote python script.

fase 1, to get Ableton to send 3 rows of 12 controls to the E.one upon select devices in Ableton.

@martin Why is there zero progress on this? There seem to be a high demand.
What if we arrange some kind of crowed funding for this?

4 Likes

I spend some time investigating.

Today I was able to snoop the Midiox monitor between Ableton and my Zero SL controller on winDOS.
If someone is interested I can share how.

I could see the CC data and as well the sysex messages that update the display with the controller names and its displayed values.
These Sysex messages contain a block with 8 controller names and display values.
While the actual value is handled by the CC’s.
the displayed values contain a lot of value. like a scale in db or the actual names of options. LFO rates etc.
8 as that is what is defined in the remote python script.
So that could as well be 3x 12 controllers and its values. 2 places should be used for selecting the banks of controller if there are more.

The controller itself just has a bunch of CC’s assigned in it template to the knobs and buttons.
Ableton then sends by sysex key/value pairs to update the display and the displayed values.
While the actual value is handled by CC in a bidirectional way.

With the current implementation on the Electra one you have to create a controller and its name using sysex.
This implementation does not make it possible to handle, min, max values and type.
In the Vst world there are a lot booleans. And it sucks if the bolean switches have to be controlled with a full range of 14bit CC’s.

So ideally to make Abeton work nicely with E.one we need to be able to create rows of controls by sysex, incl lists. min/max value
Updating the whole diplay with all 48 controls.

Edit: Is a better approach to handle it by swapping lists, and set min/max using lua?

1 Like

Check out my github which I mentioned earlier, lots of links to resources about midi remote scripting.

1 Like

Also pretty stoked that this is not worked on with high priority. Until then I won’t use my Electra. Since everything else is also just too complicated / impossible for me.

I started a different thread under the Instruments topic, announcing an Ableton Live control script that dumps an ElectraOne JSON patch for the currently selected device in Live

3 Likes

wow will check that out. That will be a great solution I guess.