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Better Ableton MCP documentation

Better Ableton MCP is a local MCP server and Ableton Remote Script for inspecting and controlling Ableton Live. This documentation covers installation, connection setup, the available tools, their behavior, and current limitations.

Installation Tool reference Usage examples

Capabilities

Session and transport control

Inspect sets, tracks, Session clips, Arrangement clips, devices, and transport state. Tools can create tracks and clips, add notes, browse and load devices, control playback, and copy Session material into Arrangement View.

Session organization

Preview or apply deterministic track and clip naming and color rules. Applied organization runs as a single Ableton Undo step and does not stack prefixes on repeated runs.

MIDI analysis and generation

Analyze selected Session or Arrangement MIDI clips for key, pitch-class emphasis, and bar-level chord symbols, then generate seeded melody or chord clips from the result. Optional THIRI integration can enrich detected chords, create alternate progressions, and supply advanced MIDI voicings.

Harmonize selected vocals

Analyze a warped, monophonic Arrangement vocal phrase directly from local audio and create a meter-aware MIDI chord progression aligned with its changing pitch content. The workflow does not create an intermediate MIDI transcription.

Converted-MIDI cleanup

Preview or remove common audio-to-MIDI conversion artifacts using separate handling for monophonic melody and polyphonic harmony.

Request examples

Show me the tracks and clips in this set.
Preview how you would organize everything, but do not change it yet.
Clean the converted melody MIDI on track 4 conservatively.
Create an 8-bar melody that fits tracks 2 and 3, using seed 17.
Make a chord progression that goes with the selected vocal clip.
Copy the new clip into Arrangement View at beat 32.

Designed around Ableton's actual API

Track reordering and grouping existing tracks are not automated because the documented Live Object Model does not expose those operations.

Requirements

  • Ableton Live 11 or 12
  • Python 3.10 or newer
  • An MCP client that can launch a local stdio server
  • The optional audio dependencies for selected-audio chord generation
  • Ableton Live 12.0.5 or newer only when using create_audio_clip

The project is MIT licensed and sends no analytics or usage telemetry. All features work locally except explicitly optional THIRI theory, reharmonization, and voicing requests.