AbletonOSC: Control Ableton Live 11 with OSC

AbletonOSC is a MIDI remote script that provides an Open Sound Control (OSC) interface to control Ableton Live 11. Building on ideas from the older LiveOSC scripts, its aim is to expose the entire Live Object Model API (full API docs), providing comprehensive control over Live's control interfaces using the same naming structure and object hierarchy as LOM.

AbletonOSC is currently (2023-01-07) a work-in-progress, and APIs may be subject to change. Many major APIs are now exposed.

NOTE: Since 2022-12-17, all getters have been modified to return the ID of the object being queried as well as the return value, for consistency with listeners. For example, /live/clip/get/name will return track_id, clip_id, name.

Installation

AbletonOSC requires Ableton Live 11, and does not support earlier versions.

To install the script:

• Download a zip of this repository, unzip its contents, and rename AbletonOSC-master to AbletonOSC
• Install it following the instructions on Ableton's Installing third-party remote scripts doc, by copying the AbletonOSC folder to:
  • Windows: \Users\[username]\Documents\Ableton\User Library\Remote Scripts
  • macOS: Macintosh HD/Users/[username]/Music/Ableton/User Library/Remote Scripts
• Restart Live
• In Preferences > Link / Tempo / MIDI, under the Control Surface dropdown, select the new "AbletonOSC" option. Live should display a message saying "AbletonOSC: Listening for OSC on port 11000"

Activity logs will be output to a logs subdirectory. Logging granularity can be controlled with /live/api/set/log_level (see Application API below).

Usage

AbletonOSC listens for OSC messages on port 11000, and sends replies on port 11001. Replies will be sent to the same IP as the originating message. When querying properties, OSC wildcard patterns can be used; for example, /live/clip/get/* 0 0 will query all the properties of track 0, clip 0.

Application API

Song API

Represents the top-level Song object. Used to start/stop playback, create/modify scenes, create/jump to cue points, and set global parameters (tempo, metronome).

/live/song/get/track_data 0 12 track.name clip.name clip.length

[track_0_name, clip_0_0_name,   clip_0_1_name,   ... clip_0_7_name,
               clip_1_0_length, clip_0_1_length, ... clip_0_7_length,
 track_1_name, clip_1_0_name,   clip_1_1_name,   ... clip_1_7_name, ...]

View API

Represents the view (user interface) of live

Track API

Represents an audio, MIDI, return or master track. Can be used to set track audio parameters (volume, panning, send, mute, solo), listen for the playing clip slot, query devices, etc. Can also be used to query clips in arrangement view.

To query the properties of multiple tracks, see Song: Properties of cue points, scenes and tracks.

Clip Slot API

A Clip Slot represents a container for a clip. It is used to create and delete clips, and query their existence.

Clip API

Represents an audio or MIDI clip. Can be used to start/stop clips, and query/modify their notes, name, gain, pitch, color, playing state/position, etc.

Device API

Represents an instrument or effect.

Utilities

Included with the framework is a command-line console utility run-console.py, which can be used as a quick and easy way to send OSC queries to AbletonOSC. Example:

(1653)(AbletonOSC)$ ./run-console.py
AbletonOSC command console
Usage: /live/osc/command [params]
>>> /live/song/set/tempo 123.0
>>> /live/song/get/tempo
(123.0,)
>>> /live/song/get/track_names
('1-MIDI', '2-MIDI', '3-Audio', '4-Audio')

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Stu Fisher (and other authors) for LiveOSC, the spiritual predecessor to this library. Thanks to Julien Bayle and NSUSpray for providing XML API docs, based on original work by Hanz Petrov.

For code contributions and feedback, many thanks to:

• Jörn Lengwenings (Coupe70)
• Bill Moser (billmoser)
• stevmills
• Marco Buongiorno Nardelli (marcobn) and Colin Stokes
• Mark Marijnissen (markmarijnissen)