Reviewed overview

MCP server overview

# Ableton Live MCP Server

📌 Overview

The **Ableton Live MCP Server** is a server implementing the [Model Context Protocol (MCP)](https://modelcontextprotocol.io) 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](https://github.com/ideoforms/AbletonOSC) implementation and exhaustively maps available OSC adresses to [**tools**](https://modelcontextprotocol.io/docs/concepts/tools) accessible to MCP clients.

[![ontrol Ableton Live with LLMs](https://img.youtube.com/vi/12MzsQ3V7cs/hqdefault.jpg)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12MzsQ3V7cs)

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](https://github.com/ideoforms/AbletonOSC).
Implements request-response handling for Ableton Live commands.

⚡ Installation

Requirements

Python 3.8+
`python-osc` (for OSC communication)
`fastmcp` (for MCP support)
[AbletonOSC](https://github.com/ideoforms/AbletonOSC) as a control surface

Installation Steps

Install `uv` ```bash pip install uv ```
Clone the repository: ```bash git clone https://github.com/your-username/mcp\_ableton\_server.git cd mcp_ableton_server ```
Install dependencies: ```bash uv install python-osc fastmcp ```
Install the MCP Server This assumes that you’re using [Claude Desktop](https://claude.ai/download) ```bash mcp install mcp_ableton_server.py ```
Install AbletonOSC Follow the instructions at [AbletonOSC](https://github.com/ideoforms/AbletonOSC)

🚀 Usage

Running the OSC Daemon

The OSC daemon will handle OSC communication between the MCP server and Ableton Live: ```bash 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**.

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`: ```python self.socket_host = ‘127.0.0.1’ self.socket_port = 65432 self.ableton_host = ‘127.0.0.1’ self.ableton_port = 11000 self.receive_port = 11001 ```

Claude Desktop Configurations

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

```json “mcpServers”: { “Ableton Live Controller”: { “command”: “uv”, “args”: [ “run”, “–with”, “mcp[cli]”, “–with”, “python-osc”, “mcp”, “run”, “/Users/simonkansara/Desktop/mcp-ableton-server/mcp-ableton-server.py” ] } } ```

Contributing

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

License

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

Acknowledgments

[Model Context Protocol (MCP)](https://modelcontextprotocol.io)
[python-osc](https://github.com/attwad/python-osc) for OSC handling
Daniel John Jones for OSC implementation with [AbletonOSC](https://github.com/ideoforms/AbletonOSC)
Ableton Third Party Remote Scripts
Julien Bayle @[Structure Void](https://structure-void.com/) for endless inspirations and resources.

TODO

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

Ableton Live Mcp Server