Ableton Live MCP Server

📌 Overview

The Ableton Live MCP Server is a server implementing the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to facilitate communication between LLMs and Ableton Live. It uses OSC (Open Sound Control) to send and receive messages to/from Ableton Live. It is based on AbletonOSC implementation and exhaustively maps available OSC adresses to tools accessible to MCP clients.

This project consists of two main components:

• mcp_ableton_server.py: The MCP server handling the communication between clients and the OSC daemon.
• osc_daemon.py: The OSC daemon responsible for relaying commands to Ableton Live and processing responses.

✨ Features

• Provides an MCP-compatible API for controlling Ableton Live from MCP clients.
• Uses python-osc for sending and receiving OSC messages.
• Based on the OSC implementation from AbletonOSC.
• Implements request-response handling for Ableton Live commands.

⚡ Installation

Option 1: Install with UV (Recommended)

1. Install UV if you don't have it already:

   pip install uv
   

2. Install directly from PyPI:

   uv install ableton-live-mcp-server
   

3. Or install from GitHub:

   uv install git+https://github.com/yourusername/ableton-live-mcp-server.git
   

Option 2: Manual Installation

1. Install uv

   pip install uv
   

2. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/your-username/mcp_ableton_server.git
   cd mcp_ableton_server
   

3. Install dependencies:

   uv install python-osc fastmcp
   

4. Install the MCP Server This assumes that you're using Claude Desktop

   mcp install mcp_ableton_server.py
   

5. Install AbletonOSC Follow the instructions at AbletonOSC

🚀 Usage

Running the OSC Daemon

The OSC daemon will handle OSC communication between the MCP server and Ableton Live:

# If installed via UV:
ableton-osc-daemon

# Or if running from source:
python osc_daemon.py

This will:

• Listen for MCP client connections on port 65432.
• Forward messages to Ableton Live via OSC on port 11000.
• Receive OSC responses from Ableton on port 11001.

Running the MCP Server

Start the MCP server to enable LLMs to control Ableton:

# If installed via UV:
ableton-mcp-server

# Or if running from source:
python mcp_ableton_server.py

Example Usage

In Claude desktop, ask Claude: Prepare a set to record a rock band Set the input routing channel of all tracks that have "voice" in their name to Ext. In 2

⚙️ Configuration

By default, the server and daemon run on localhost (127.0.0.1) with the following ports:

• MCP Server Socket: 65432
• Ableton Live OSC Port (Send): 11000
• Ableton Live OSC Port (Receive): 11001

To modify these, edit the AbletonOSCDaemon class in osc_daemon.py or use command-line parameters:

ableton-osc-daemon --socket-port 65432 --ableton-port 11000 --receive-port 11001

Claude Desktop Configurations

• macOS: ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

"mcpServers": {
"Ableton Live Controller": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "ableton-mcp-server"
      ]
    }
  }

Contributing

Feel free to submit issues, feature requests, or pull requests to improve this project.

Publishing Updates

To publish new versions using UV:

1. Update the version in pyproject.toml
2. Build the package:

   uv build
   

3. Publish to PyPI:

   uv publish
   

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgments

• Model Context Protocol (MCP)
• python-osc for OSC handling
• Daniel John Jones for OSC implementation with AbletonOSC
• Ableton Third Party Remote Scripts
• Julien Bayle @Structure Void for endless inspirations and resources.

TODO

• Explore resources and prompts primitives opportunities.
• Build a standalone Ableton Live MCP client.

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