jeebustrain
06-12-2007, 01:18 PM
I love Ableton Live. It's a very useful software tool for my music production/performance. It's been the centerpiece of my gear rig as long as I've been with my current band (both as a keyboardist and now as a drummer) It's very powerful and intuitive. It just got a lot more powerful.
A group has released an open source SDK which gives a user direct access to a Python based API for Live, basically giving you programmatic control of almost every aspect of the application. As of now it's Windows only, but OSX support is expected in the future.
http://www.liveapi.org/
All you basically do is install their app, select it as a control surface in the preferences, then open up a telnet box to localhost and hack away. You can then use this as a base to script Python apps to do whatever you want. You can do things like open files, change tempos, change midi parameters, automate clip changes, etc.
The first (and easiest) implementation of this I can think of is to handle one of the things I've wanted for a long time from live - the ability to build playlists. With this, you could script out an entire set of different Live project files and have each one load, then play, all in succession, completely automated. Hell, I don't see why you couldn't use wxPython and actually build a completely graphically driven playlist generator. It also interacts with midi, so you could trigger file loads from any midi gear too. If this is the case, I could run an entire set (loading and launching songs) straight from my gear without even touching my laptop.
more info here:
http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=66118&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
This is awesome. In that thread, there's already talk about projects like step sequencers, more complete external midi device control. Hell, I don't see why you couldn't use a Python serial interface and use different non-musical USB devices to interact with Live.
A group has released an open source SDK which gives a user direct access to a Python based API for Live, basically giving you programmatic control of almost every aspect of the application. As of now it's Windows only, but OSX support is expected in the future.
http://www.liveapi.org/
All you basically do is install their app, select it as a control surface in the preferences, then open up a telnet box to localhost and hack away. You can then use this as a base to script Python apps to do whatever you want. You can do things like open files, change tempos, change midi parameters, automate clip changes, etc.
The first (and easiest) implementation of this I can think of is to handle one of the things I've wanted for a long time from live - the ability to build playlists. With this, you could script out an entire set of different Live project files and have each one load, then play, all in succession, completely automated. Hell, I don't see why you couldn't use wxPython and actually build a completely graphically driven playlist generator. It also interacts with midi, so you could trigger file loads from any midi gear too. If this is the case, I could run an entire set (loading and launching songs) straight from my gear without even touching my laptop.
more info here:
http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=66118&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
This is awesome. In that thread, there's already talk about projects like step sequencers, more complete external midi device control. Hell, I don't see why you couldn't use a Python serial interface and use different non-musical USB devices to interact with Live.