Ready Set: Ableton extension

Formerly tabridge; the code and command ids keep that name.

Build a song straight into the Live Set you have open: right-click a track/clip slot/scene → Ready Set: Import a song…, open a Guitar Pro or MusicXML file (or search online: Mutopia always, BitMidi/FreeMIDI only when you tick "Include fan-made MIDI (fine for practice, not for release)"), set a transpose, and the tracks, notes, and a per-track Pitch device appear in your project.

Built on the Ableton Extensions SDK (public beta, Live 12 Suite 12.4.5+). The parsing core is the tabridge Rust crate compiled to a Node-target WASM module (pkg/), so the extension host parses opened files and does the online fetches (no CORS) with the exact same parser as the website. The modal reads an opened file and hands its bytes to the host (the SDK has no file-picker API, so this relies on the webview's own file input and drag and drop).

What it does / doesn't

• Creates one MIDI track per instrument, names it, writes the notes, sets the tempo, and inserts a Pitch device on every melodic track (drums excluded) set to your chosen transpose: the "one control per track" idea, Model A.
• The Live note API writes discrete notes only, so bends / slides / vibrato flatten here. For full-fidelity articulations, use the website's .als export instead (same engine, different output).

Local source modules

You can add your own search source without changing the extension. At startup the host loads every CommonJS module (*.js or *.cjs) it finds in:

1. <storage directory>/sources/, where the storage directory is the one Live gives the extension (the SDK's environment.storageDirectory; the host logs the exact folder at startup), then
2. ~/.ready-set/sources/ (useful for npm start dev runs, which have no storage directory).

A module exports:

module.exports = {
  id: "my-source",          // stable, unique
  label: "My source",       // shown on result rows, filters and the Sources list
  async search(query) {     // up to 25 hits
    return [{ id: "42", title: "Song", artist: "Artist", tracks: 3 }];  // artist, tracks optional
  },
  async load(id) {          // one of:
    return { midi: bytes };            // Standard MIDI File bytes (Uint8Array or Buffer)
    // return { notesJson: json };     // Ready Set notes-JSON, see below
  },
};

notesJson is the same shape the core's midi_build_notes_json returns: { tempo, tracks: [{ name, isDrums, notes: [{ pitch, start, dur, velocity }] }], sections?: [{ name, start, length }] }, with start, dur and length in beats. A module's results appear in search next to the built-in sources (always searched, not tied to the fan-made MIDI checkbox), get the same inline intro, preview and Build, and are labelled with its label. A module that fails to load or has the wrong shape is skipped and logged. With no modules installed, nothing changes. Modules run inside the extension host with full Node access, so only install code you trust. Restart the extension (or Live) after adding one.

Develop

The Ableton Extensions SDK isn't included in this repo (its licence doesn't allow redistribution). Get ableton-extensions-sdk-1.0.0-beta.0.tgz and ableton-extensions-cli-1.0.0-beta.0.tgz from Ableton and place them in vendor/ before installing.

npm install                 # installs the SDK + CLI from vendor/ + build tools
npm run wasm                # (re)build the Rust core -> pkg/ (needs wasm-pack)
npm run build               # typecheck + bundle -> dist/extension.js (+ wasm)
npm test                    # local source module hook (needs pkg/)
npm start                   # build, then run in a connected Live via the CLI
npm run package             # produce a distributable .ablx

Shares its look with the website via the design system in ../shared/vendor/design/ (tokens, with the fonts inlined as data URLs) and ../shared/roll.js, both injected into the modal at build time (see build.ts).