I've been reverse engineering Ableton Live's internals

[xterminatorapps]

super cool!

I thought I'd share this vaguely-parallel project I've been working on.
https://github.com/ben-juodvalkis/ablet ... nd-palette
it's copying the beautiful idea of the vs code command palette to ableton

Really appreciate all the ideas everyone, keep them coming.

To give you the bigger picture of where this is heading: the end goal isn't just a collection of hacks. I want to build an actual add-on framework so anyone could create their own extensions for Live. Think of it like browser extensions but for Ableton.

People would be able to browse and install add-ons directly inside Live itself. Want ghost clips? Install an add-on. Better automation tools? There's an add-on for that. Custom piano roll features? Someone in the community built one.

The whole point is to open this up so it's not just me tinkering, but a whole community building the features Ableton won't. Still early days but that's the vision.

Oh that's really cool. The Remote Scripts / M4L approach makes sense for staying within official territory. On my end since I can see the full internal function table there's potential to expose every command Live has, including ones that aren't in any menu. Would be cool to compare notes at some point.

[xterminatorapps]

Be careful, those guys dont mess around when it comes to messing with Ableton. Playing with fire bro....

Appreciate the concern. I'm not distributing any of Ableton's code or bypassing license checks. Everything is my own code that talks to the running app. In the EU, reverse engineering for interoperability is explicitly protected under the Software Directive. That said I'm keeping things clean, no redistribution of their binaries, just my own tool.

[xterminatorapps]

When I saw this topic my first thought was that maybe you could propose some patches to make it easier for Ableton to come out with a Linux-native version of Live; however, after skimming through and getting the idea that you might be proposing some kind of interface to enable third-party tweaks to the DAW (and sorry if I misunderstood), but isn't that what M4L is already for?

Good question. M4L is great for what it covers but Ableton limits what it exposes. You can't create custom windows, modify the UI layout, access browser internals, change how automation works, add toolbar buttons, fix LED feedback, or implement ghost clips through M4L. The scripting API covers maybe 30% of what Live actually does internally. The rest is locked behind native code that no script can reach. That's the gap am trying to fill.

[xterminatorapps]

I love ableton live but here goes:
Nitpicks and Qol:

The automation/cc64 pedal/ keyswitches not always resetting properly if you stop restart transport in random places, not behaving as intended. Very buggy behaviour, and very annoying to work with kontakt sometimes.

M4l devices has cluncky interface with low framerate and a lot of noticeable stepping, compared with "native" devices.

Better/more color palettes for tracks. The ability to gradient color several tracks within a group.

Piano roll notes (the left side) that i could color or rename like the drumrack, would make it easier to work with third party libraries, for the keyswitches or drum elements.

Let me edit automation curves as takes lanes or when several tracks are selected.

Make midi shaper with a better grid and patterns selection^^ basically shaperbox.

No dynamic eq, lack of oscilloscopes, lufs measurments, and the current tools cannot be detached from the fx bar, so matching eqs beetween several instruments is a lot of back and forth, and i end up using third party tools. The spectrum analyser is useless because undockable. Span FTW

Solid list. The automation and CC reset bugs on transport stop are fixable at the native level since I can see the reset logic in the playback controller. M4L feeling clunky is a rendering pipeline thing that's hard to fix but the extension framework I'm building uses native rendering so custom tools would be smooth. Better colors, piano roll note naming like drum rack, undockable analyzers, all of that is reachable. The floating analyzer especially is a perfect use case since I already got independent windows working from inside Live's process.

[audiojunkie]

I'd like it available on Linux, and I'd love it to be loadable as a plugin, so that I can use it in my current DAW.

[Ben.juodvalkis]

I'd be happy to.

super cool!

I thought I'd share this vaguely-parallel project I've been working on.
https://github.com/ben-juodvalkis/ablet ... nd-palette
it's copying the beautiful idea of the vs code command palette to ableton

Really appreciate all the ideas everyone, keep them coming.

To give you the bigger picture of where this is heading: the end goal isn't just a collection of hacks. I want to build an actual add-on framework so anyone could create their own extensions for Live. Think of it like browser extensions but for Ableton.

People would be able to browse and install add-ons directly inside Live itself. Want ghost clips? Install an add-on. Better automation tools? There's an add-on for that. Custom piano roll features? Someone in the community built one.

The whole point is to open this up so it's not just me tinkering, but a whole community building the features Ableton won't. Still early days but that's the vision.

Oh that's really cool. The Remote Scripts / M4L approach makes sense for staying within official territory. On my end since I can see the full internal function table there's potential to expose every command Live has, including ones that aren't in any menu. Would be cool to compare notes at some point.

[ericzang]

Amazing!
Any possibility for more than 12 return tracks?
Remote Mapping parameters to OSC?

[sQeetz]

Now that is really awesome! Would it be possible to make Live able to load two instruments in serial in a way that the first one receives the MIDI messages, does something to them and then passes them to the second one?
Enabling Live to be able to use MIDI plugins like Scaler, for example, without having to use 2 channels?

Second wish is a simple keyboard shortcut to open the instrument plugin in the selected channel

[Karbon L. Forms]

Wrap your MIDI plugin in a M4L MIDI Device.

1. Create new MIDI Device
2. Drag in your VST
3. Hook up midi-ins and outs
4. Add a button to MIDI Device that hooks to the "open ui" input on the VST's M4L thingie.

riffer_wrap.png

[Ben.juodvalkis]

@xtrrminatorapps I sent you a pm

I'd be happy to.

super cool!

I thought I'd share this vaguely-parallel project I've been working on.
https://github.com/ben-juodvalkis/ablet ... nd-palette
it's copying the beautiful idea of the vs code command palette to ableton

Really appreciate all the ideas everyone, keep them coming.

To give you the bigger picture of where this is heading: the end goal isn't just a collection of hacks. I want to build an actual add-on framework so anyone could create their own extensions for Live. Think of it like browser extensions but for Ableton.

People would be able to browse and install add-ons directly inside Live itself. Want ghost clips? Install an add-on. Better automation tools? There's an add-on for that. Custom piano roll features? Someone in the community built one.

The whole point is to open this up so it's not just me tinkering, but a whole community building the features Ableton won't. Still early days but that's the vision.

Oh that's really cool. The Remote Scripts / M4L approach makes sense for staying within official territory. On my end since I can see the full internal function table there's potential to expose every command Live has, including ones that aren't in any menu. Would be cool to compare notes at some point.

[qtheerearranger]

Could one potentially remove ableton lives license scanner with this?

[sQeetz]

Wrap your MIDI plugin in a M4L MIDI Device.

1. Create new MIDI Device
2. Drag in your VST
3. Hook up midi-ins and outs
4. Add a button to MIDI Device that hooks to the "open ui" input on the VST's M4L thingie.

Thanks, it works... kinda... I had a real problem finding out how to make the plugin within M4L accept incoming MIDI notes. Then I found a ready to use version here and that problem was gone.
New problem now is, that plugins inside M4L don't seem to save the state of the plugin after closing and reopening the song. Now I'm done fiddling with it. back to two MIDI tracks again it is

[zorkertorker]

1. Having the “auto join regions” function in Ableton live would be like dream come true!

It’s one of basic functions which every daw has but ableton’s team will never take it into consideration.
Now you need to hit cmd+j every time when you start your recording from the end of midi region.
It’s really annoying behaviour, every daw has this auto join function.

2. Ability to resize all tracks at once like in studio one or cubase or basically any other daw.


You doing the thing I dreaming for so long! I really hope you will succeed with this project and you will be able to share it as soon as possible. So hyped!

[eclipxe]

Alias clips!

Any thoughts on having this work on Mac? Updates on github? Sounds very interesting