claude in

Ableton

build me 4 tracks: Kick, Snare, Bass and Pad, tempo 120

+↑

Class 3

Claude in Ableton Live. What works and what doesn't.

With a free MCP, Claude builds tracks, MIDI and sessions from your audio. I tested it in my own Live and I only tell you what worked, what failed and what I have not tested yet.

Ableton LiveTested on Live Suite 12.4.3, on an Apple Silicon Mac.
Claude CodeWith a Claude Pro plan or higher. The MCP is free and open source.
A test SetAlways a copy, never a client session.

See the MCP on GitHub ↗

ableton-mcp

Install the MCP

It is ahujasid/ableton-mcp: free, MIT license. Install it in an isolated environment, for example with uv venv, so it does not mix with anything of yours.

ahujasid/ableton-mcpFree, MIT license. The most used MCP for Live.

Restart Live

AbletonMCP

Copy the Remote Script and restart Live

Paste the script into ~/Music/Ableton/User Library/Remote Scripts/AbletonMCP/ and restart Live. If an old version was there, the new one does not load until you restart.

Live closedCopy the script and open Live.

Live openRestart Live: otherwise it does not load the new script.

Link, Tempo & MIDIControl Surface: AbletonMCPInput: NoneOutput: None

Pick it in Preferences

In Preferences › Link, Tempo & MIDI choose AbletonMCP as a Control Surface, with input and output set to None, as people who use it recommend.

Control Surface: AbletonMCPInput and output: NoneRestart if it does not show up

ABLETON_MCP_DISABLE_TELEMETRY=trueABLETON_MCP_DISABLE_DATASET=true

Turn telemetry off

The most used MCP sends anonymous telemetry by default and offers an optional dataset with your requests. In the project folder create a .mcp.json file with these two variables.

+Opus 5.5 ⌄↑

Ask for everything in one sentence

Open Claude Code in that folder. The clearer you say what you want, the better it comes out. To save, the Set has to be inside a Project folder.

Ableton Live with the Kick, Snare, Bass and Pad tracks created by Claude from a single sentence

What it built

The 4 named tracks, the drum pattern and the bass in C minor. I checked it by reading the Set file: tempo, names and notes match. The colors are Live's automatic ones, I did not ask for them. Nobody listened to the patterns.

Do you use REAPER? My own panel is free: Velador for REAPER on my GitHub.

Ableton Live with ten audio tracks with clean names created from a folder

And with your audio files

A folder with messy names ("Audio 3", "OH L", "kik_final2") became 10 audio tracks with clean names and a clip on each: 10 out of 10 right. The names were dictated by my request, Claude did not infer them from the audio.

Summary

What it builds on its own in Ableton

I only tell what I tested on my computer.

Ableton Live

Tracks
Names
MIDI
Session from audio
Colors
Locators
Export
Stems
Measuring

it builds ithalf waynot possible with this MCP or failed

What cannot be done

What stays manual

Exporting and separating stemsAbleton offers no public API for Export Audio/Video or for separating stems. It is only done through the interface (Cmd+Shift+R opens Export).

Colors and locatorsAbleton allows them in its Live Object Model, but the MCP I tested has no color tool, and locators failed with "Failed to create cue". Untested with AbletonOSC.

MeasuringThe MCP does not read audio and the API gives no LUFS. You measure outside, on the exported WAV files.

Safety

Before you let it run

TelemetryTurn it off with the two variables. It still created an identifier file; I did not verify whether any data left.

Port with no passwordThe script listens on 127.0.0.1:9877 with no authentication: any program on your Mac can send it commands.

AbletonOSCIt listens on the whole network: anyone on your Wi-Fi could talk to it, unless you change it to 127.0.0.1 or close the port.

Always work on a copy

The MCP does not ask for confirmation: whatever it can do, it does. Do not use forks that run arbitrary Python on valuable Sets.

A copy of the SetNever a client sessionCmd+Z undoes the changes

Untested: native stem separation in Live 12.3 and 12.4 (Suite), the official Extensions SDK (beta, needs Live 12.4.5 and mine is 12.4.3), AbletonOSC and Producer Pal.