MIDI Sculptor for Ableton Live

The MIDI Sculptor is a Max for Live device for Ableton Live that makes it easy to create variations of MIDI clips with tools to modify pitch, velocity, and timing.

Installation and Usage

1. Download Sculptor.amxd v2.0 beta 2 for Live 11
   • Or Download Sculptor.amxd v1.1 for Live 10
2. Drag the Sculptor.amxd device onto any MIDI track
3. Click the "Sculpting Tools" button to open the main UI in a window
4. Adjust the zoom level as desired
5. Open Live's Info View and hover over any control for documentation

Features

Some of the things you can do with this device:

• Randomize the timing and velocity of notes within a controllable range.
• Strum chords by making simultaneous notes play in quick succession.
• Compress velocity ranges to tame wild recordings with notes that are too quiet or too loud, or spread the velocities farther apart for more dynamic range.
• Reverse all the pitches without changing timing or velocity.
• Randomly swap notes in a drum rack clip for sonic variations with the same timing as the original.
• Randomly delete notes to "thin out" a clip to create lower energy variations.
• Randomize in all sorts of ways to experiment and overcome writer's block.

Device Panel

• The "Sculpting Tools" button opens the main UI in a floating window (always on top of Live), so you can jump between different clips and keep editing.
• The UI is zoomable for high resolution monitors.
• Sculpting operations apply to the selected notes of the clip, so you can control what's affected.
  • Note: If nothing is happening, it's probably because you only have one note selected.

There are 3 sculpting tools.

Slide Tool

• Operate on the pitch, velocity, start time, or duration of the selected notes.
• Set a maximum range of the operation.
• Shift moves the chosen note property in the positive or negative direction
• Randomize moves the chosen note property in a random direction by a random amount (within the chosen range)
  • Every time you use the randomize X-Y pad, a new random value is chosen for each corner. You can "scrub" around looking for sweet spots. Once you let go of the mouse, new random values will be chosen.
• Spread spreads the chosen note properties closer together or farther apart.
• Edge behavior (the 4 buttons in the lower left) determines what happens when a note hits the minimum or maximum value:
  • Clamp holds the note property at its minimum/maximum value
  • Reflect "bounces" off the edge and moves in the opposite direction
  • Wrap wraps around from the minimum to maximum value and vice versa
  • The "keep going" option lets notes move off the edge of the clip and removes notes with negative velocities or invalid pitches
• Spread anchor behavior (the 3 buttons in the lower right) controls the spread operation:
  • Lowest: don't move the note with the lowest value
  • Middle: don't move the note with the average value. In other words, spread away from / towards the center.
  • Highest: don't move the note with the highest value

New in version 1.1

A Strum option in the Slide Tool moves notes based on their relative pitch.

• Strum the start or end time of notes.
• Lock the duration or end position.
• Anchor to the lowest or highest note, or strum around the middle.
• Change the tension to accelerate or decelerate the strum.

Swap Tool

• Operate on a combination of pitch, velocity, and duration. Start times do not change.
• Rotate copies the chosen note properties from one note to the next while keeping the start times the same. The rotation wraps around the end of the clip.
• Randomly swap the chosen note properties while keeping the start times the same
  • Every time you use the randomize X-Y pad, new random swap targets are chosen for each corner. You can "scrub" around looking for sweet spots. Once you let go of the mouse, new random targets will be chosen.
• Swap the chosen note properties between consecutive pairs of notes.
• Reverse the chosen note properties across the notes (e.g. the last note gets the first note's pitch and vice versa)
• "Zip" the chosen note properties by splitting the list of notes into two halves and interleaving the halves.

Set Tool

• Randomly delete, mute, or unmute notes for "thinning out" a busy clip
• Set the chosen pitch, velocity, start time, or duration on a random set of notes
• Set the chosen note property to the chosen value value on all the selected notes

Feature Requests and Bug Reports

Please file a github issue: https://github.com/adamjmurray/ableton-midi-sculptor/issues

Support this Project

About

Designed and developed by Adam Murray.

Released under the GNU General Public License v3.0. This device is free to use and does not impose royalties on music created with it. You may not sell this device as part of a closed source commercial product. If you use this device or a modified form of this device in another software project, the project must be open source and include this license.

Built with Max and JavaScript.