Ableton Forum

Is there a way that I can control Ableton with a program I make?

Long story short, if I wanted to load song x at a certain time being run through a certain audio plugin, etc from an external program, would that be possible?


I know VirtualDJ has a way that I can control it (load track, get information, etc) through dll controls.
Is there a way to do that in Ableton? I really hope so because Ableton is so much more what I'm looking for in a program.

Thanks

anybody else have any experience on this?

scutheotaku wrote:I'm not sure if a .dll can directly "talk" to Live, but you could try setting up key maps or midi maps in Live, then have the dll send key or midi messages, respectively.

something like that wouldn't cover all the different commands I'd have a program send.
I'd end up with millions, probably billions of key maps for even a standard sized music library

but thanks for the response

Your best bet might be to investigate the way that controller scripts are implemented. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know they are written in Python and have full access to the Live API. If you could arrange for a python controller script to receive OS signals or network messages from another application you might be able to do what you want. It would depend on how the Python script engine is implemented - ie if it is sand-boxed or not.

Another option might be to use Max for Live which should be able to send and receive messages over an IP network.

I've not tried any of this, but iy's where I would start if I were trying to automate Live from another program.