SPARTITO [m4l - free download]

The sheet music inside Ableton Live

Ableton Live is an amazing tool for composing, but it has always missed one thing: you can only see notes in the piano roll, never on a musical staff. SPARTITO is a Max for Live device that fixes this problem. It shows your MIDI clip as sheet music and lets you write directly on the staff.

The sheet music and the clip are the same thing. Every note you write, move, or delete on the staff goes to the clip immediately. Also, every change you make in Ableton's piano roll shows up right away on the staff. There are no buttons to press and nothing to save.

FEATURES

Grand staff for piano, harmonic and melodic instruments, or treble clef only, or bass clef only

Rhythm staff for drums, with classic two-voice notation

Real-time two-way sync with the MIDI clip

Follows the selected clip: switch between clips and the sheet music changes with you

Shows the notes you play in real time while recording in Arrangement mode

Ties, triplets, trills, and grace notes (acciaccatura) that Ableton Live actually plays

Key signatures, accidentals, beams, and note values drawn like real sheet music

Export to MIDI, PDF, PNG, and MusicXML (for MuseScore, Sibelius, Finale, and Dorico)

REQUIREMENTS

Tested with Ableton 10.1. and Ableton 12.4.5

INSTALLATION

1. Unzip the ZIP file and keep all files in the same folder.

2. Drag Spartito.amxd onto a MIDI track, before the instrument. The notes you play will still reach the instrument as usual.

example: https://youtu.be/-w_w5Iw6XeU

The concept behind Frankenstein is as simple as it is fascinating.
The idea is to generate a “monster” whose body is made by sewing together limbs
that come from different places.
In this case, our monster is nothing more than a sample made from fragments of different samples,
creating a waveform that did not exist before.
We can load up to 30 samples and generate a result made from small fragments of this loaded archive.
Thanks to the editor, we can modify the samples and the waveform in real time,
put the slices in reverse,
or lock them in the same position so that they do not move if we decide to generate a new random waveform.
In the editor window, each sample has its own dedicated slot.
This allows us to edit the samples individually and therefore create generations that slowly change over time.
This is a very good thing for creating connections between generations and progressions
towards other musical situations.
We have different types of generation in the main menu
and the possibility to create waves with from 12 to 64 slices.
It is a MIDI instrument, so we can play this resulting Frankenstein waveform through notes,
which makes it perfect for creating textures and clusters of stellar sound.
The GRID version is very powerful.
You have to click under Cut and change from Monster to Grid.
The sample will then play in a grid, and you can choose the time division.
This is really useful for creating interesting rhythms,
especially with an unexpected timbral character.
Think about how incredible it is to divide 30 samples
into fragments and create a resulting waveform from these fragments,
either randomly or in a more controlled way.
I think John Cage would have enjoyed this instrument.

free download: https://www.remodevicocomposer.eu/maxforlive/frankenstein/

The concept behind Frankenstein is as simple as it is fascinating.
The idea is to generate a “monster” whose body is made by sewing together limbs
that come from different places.
In this case, our monster is nothing more than a sample made from fragments of different samples,
creating a waveform that did not exist before.
We can load up to 30 samples and generate a result made from small fragments of this loaded archive.
Thanks to the editor, we can modify the samples and the waveform in real time,
put the slices in reverse,
or lock them in the same position so that they do not move if we decide to generate a new random waveform.
In the editor window, each sample has its own dedicated slot.
This allows us to edit the samples individually and therefore create generations that slowly change over time.
This is a very good thing for creating connections between generations and progressions
towards other musical situations.
We have different types of generation in the main menu
and the possibility to create waves with from 12 to 64 slices.
It is a MIDI instrument, so we can play this resulting Frankenstein waveform through notes,
which makes it perfect for creating textures and clusters of stellar sound.
The GRID version is very powerful.
You have to click under Cut and change from Monster to Grid.
The sample will then play in a grid, and you can choose the time division.
This is really useful for creating interesting rhythms,
especially with an unexpected timbral character.
Think about how incredible it is to divide 30 samples
into fragments and create a resulting waveform from these fragments,
either randomly or in a more controlled way.
I think John Cage would have enjoyed this instrument.

free download: https://www.remodevicocomposer.eu/maxforlive/frankenstein/

The concept behind Frankenstein is as simple as it is fascinating.
The idea is to generate a “monster” whose body is made by sewing together limbs
that come from different places.
In this case, our monster is nothing more than a sample made from fragments of different samples,
creating a waveform that did not exist before.
We can load up to 30 samples and generate a result made from small fragments of this loaded archive.
Thanks to the editor, we can modify the samples and the waveform in real time,
put the slices in reverse,
or lock them in the same position so that they do not move if we decide to generate a new random waveform.
In the editor window, each sample has its own dedicated slot.
This allows us to edit the samples individually and therefore create generations that slowly change over time.
This is a very good thing for creating connections between generations and progressions
towards other musical situations.
We have different types of generation in the main menu
and the possibility to create waves with from 12 to 64 slices.
It is a MIDI instrument, so we can play this resulting Frankenstein waveform through notes,
which makes it perfect for creating textures and clusters of stellar sound.
The GRID version is very powerful.
You have to click under Cut and change from Monster to Grid.
The sample will then play in a grid, and you can choose the time division.
This is really useful for creating interesting rhythms,
especially with an unexpected timbral character.
Think about how incredible it is to divide 30 samples
into fragments and create a resulting waveform from these fragments,
either randomly or in a more controlled way.
I think John Cage would have enjoyed this instrument.

example: https://youtu.be/_1urQwtfDh4

GREAT UPDATE :)

SHATTER is now an Ableton instrument too.

Everything the standalone does is here: the same slicing at rising zero-crossings, the same granular pitch-preserving stretch, the same field you drag fragments across, the same per-fragment pitch, reverse and step patterns. It reads WAV and AIFF.

And it goes further in two ways.

Every fragment you play gets its own stereo output in Live, the first on 3/4, the next on 5/6, up to 33/34, while 1/2 carries the full mix.

That changes what the instrument is for: each fragment can have its own effect chain, its own track, its own processing, and be recorded on its own. Each output also carries that fragment's position on the field, so the spatial gesture survives all the way to the mixer.

And it remembers.

Sample, slices, positions, pitch, stretch, step patterns — close the Set, reopen it, and everything is where you left it, with the fragments that were playing still playing.

Spatialization inside Ableton is rendered with equal-power panning, distance attenuation and air-absorption filtering rather than the browser version's binaural HRTF.

Requires Ableton Live 10 or later.

Included in the download are the standalone version (highly powerful for use with a tablet) and a PDF manual.

example: https://youtu.be/w-gE_nj8mRo

AURAL MIRROR [free download]
An instrument that turns a painting into sound.
It reads the picture as if it were a spectrogram and plays what it finds.
First run

1. Open the file
   Double-click auralmirror.html. Chrome, Edge and Firefox all work. Nothing is installed and nothing is sent anywhere.
2. Drop in a painting
   Drag an image onto the page, or press load image…, or paste with Ctrl + V.
3. Press RENDER
   The sound is built in advance, not live. A short piece takes a few seconds. The bar shows how far it has got.
4. Press play
   Use the ▶ button or the space bar. A line moves across the painting to show where you are.
   The two windows
   The first window is your painting.
   Circles mark the events the machine found, and their colour tells you what kind of event it is. The moving line is the reading head.
   The second window is the proof: a picture of the sound that came out.
   If the fidelity number is high, this window looks like your painting.
   That is how you know the sound really follows the image.
   Both are always in view, side by side with the controls.
   Click anywhere on the painting and the piece jumps to that moment.
   The four layers
   Four different machines read the same painting at the same time. Each has a level slider.
   Turn one up, turn the others down, and the same picture becomes a different piece of music.
   Spectral
   Treats the picture as a spectrogram and turns it back into sound.
   This is the layer that makes the sound resemble the image.
   Events
   Looks for edges, brush strokes and directions,
   then plays each one as a separate sound with its own attack and decay.
   Additive
   A bank of tuned oscillators, one per frequency band, following the ink as the head passes.
   Tuned to the musical scale you choose.
   Granular
   Scatters thousands of tiny grains.
   Their sound is built from the average colour range of your painting,
   so each picture has its own grain.
   The mixer
   After a render, the four layers stay separate.
   You can raise and lower them while the piece is playing — no need to render again.
   Press solo under a layer to hear only that one, and all to bring them back.
   Mic, room, preamp and volume are also live.
   Move them and you hear the change at once.
   Moving around
   Click anywhere on the painting.
   The piece jumps to that moment: click on the left side to go near the start,
   on the right side to go near the end.
   With a circular or spiral reading path,
   the angle decides the moment, so clicking works there too.
   Saving your piece
   Press WAV The file is rebuilt with the mixer levels you are using right now, so what you save is what you hear.
   It goes to your downloads folder.
   Four minutes of stereo sound is about 45 MB.
   You can also save a preset of your settings.
   Included in the download you'll find HTML Instruments,
   a Max for Live device that lets you open AURAL MIRROR directly inside Ableton Live. It requires Ableton 12 and Max 9.
   Alternatively, you can run it standalone (just double click on html file) and route your computer or tablet output to your audio interface, just like any ordinary instrument.
   example: https://youtu.be/O-u1EDVn0qE

Loop Paradox captures the incoming audio into a 1-second buffer and keeps replaying it while the loop points drift at a rate you choose. Drop it on any track, play into it, and it turns a passing phrase into a mutating loop.

on — arms capture and playback.
sync — when lit, loop points move on rhythmic scansions;
when off, on a free time in ms.

interval / time — how often the loop points jump.
Shows note values when synced, milliseconds when free.

DRY — level of the unprocessed input sitting under the loop.

Shape
Sets how the buffer is read. This is the main sound-design control:

Circle — forward, normal speed. The clean reference.
Triangle — half speed, ping-pong: plays forward then backward. Sits an octave down.
Square — reverse.
Seq
Turns the 16-step slicer on. The captured buffer is cut into 16 slices and one is played per step, so you hear your own loop rebuilt piece by piece; the main loop mutes while it runs. Lit steps play their slice, dark steps stay silent — draw the pattern on the grid. Rate sets step length, 1/4 down to 1/32.

The sequencer follows Live's transport: it only steps while the set is playing.
Also included in the download is the first version of the instrument, which offers good expressive potential.

example: https://youtu.be/JAvl-vz4zac

Noise Map is a Max for Live device

for sculpting samples into evolving, shifting soundscapes.

Instead of turning lots of knobs, you explore a simple field of points:

as you move across it, the sound shifts and blends smoothly between them,

so every position gives you a different texture.

Under the hood it mixes four sound sources:

white noise, pink noise, soft tones, and a looping sample

into one atmosphere you can shape by ear.

Because your position on the map can be automated in Live,

the sound can drift and transform over time on its own.

Great for drones, ambient beds, and cinematic backgrounds.

TIP:

As you can see from the first video example you find on the download page, you will notice that the sample inside Noise Map changes. Let me explain how I did it:

I assigned two LFOs to the knobs that control the coordinates. I set a random waveform so that I would constantly get random values, and I increased the smoothness to the maximum, in order to make the transition from one value to another more organic. This way, I had the possibility of loading different samples while the machine continued to run algorithmically.

I recommend using these techniques during live performances; it can be an interesting moment. I also recommend recording these improvisations onto a new audio track, as they can be useful when composing new pieces.

Imagine how interesting a quartet set up with these characteristics could be.

example: https://youtu.be/ef-apbOIkcg

Rhythmic Crazy Slicer

Slice Any Sample into Unexpected Rhythms.

A Max for Live device for rhythmic sample slicing.

Drop a sample, press play, and the device re-triggers slices in sync with your Live set.

Controls:

PITCH — transposes the sliced material; use it to find the register that fits the rhythmic section.

SLICE — activates slicing of the loaded sample.

NOISE — FM synthesis stage, for noisy transitions and textural fills.

MULTISLIDER — defines the start point of each slice across the sample. Editable manually, or driven by RANDOM for non-repeating patterns.

Works great in series with granulators and other samplers [check out free devices on my website]

Also included in the download is a PDF on how to use the tool.

Works from Ableton 10.1

free download https://www.remodevicocomposer.eu/maxforlive/rhythmic-crazy-slicer/

POINTILLISME is a free, browser-based generative instrument built on integral serialism — the compositional technique developed at Darmstadt in the 1950s by Stockhausen, Boulez, and Berio, where not just pitch but every musical parameter (duration, dynamics, envelope, register, space, ornament) follows its own independent series.

Four oscillators run as a quartet. Each voice advances through seven independent series with coprime lengths, producing textures that never repeat. Ten ornament types — trill, mordent, glissando, tremolo, cluster, appoggiatura, acciaccatura, gruppetto, arpeggio — are serialized alongside the other parameters. The graphic score scrolls in real time, drawing each event as a coloured envelope shape in the style of Stockhausen's Studie II.

Hit record, then export:
— Audio (WAV or AIFF, up to 24-bit) for immediate use in any project.
— MIDI (Standard MIDI File, Type 1) with four separate tracks, one per voice. Drop it into your DAW and every voice lands on its own track, ready to be reassigned, edited, or used as a compositional skeleton for your own music.

The freeze function stops time and turns the score into a clickable instrument — tap any visible event to trigger it. Alternate between generative flow and manual triggering for live performance.

Included in the download you'll find HTML Instruments, a Max for Live device that lets you open POINTILLISME directly inside Ableton Live (requires Ableton 12 and Max 9). Alternatively, just double-click the HTML file to run it standalone in any browser and route your output to your audio interface, like any ordinary instrument.

Single file. No installation. No dependencies. Free.

example: https://youtu.be/SWXDIbbUoE4

LOOM is a browser instrument that stretches a sound in time to build textures, pads and drones. It can make a short sample last for minutes without changing its pitch. It runs as a single HTML file, works offline, and needs no installation.

How to use it

1. Load a sample. Click + sample. WAV, AIFF / AIF, MP3 and FLAC are supported.
2. Choose a region (optional). Drag on the source waveform to select part of the sound. This is useful, because a very large stretch of a long file produces very long output. Click once to set a start point; double-click to clear the selection.
3. Listen first. Press Audition to hear the whole sample, or only the selected region.
4. Set the controls (see below) and press Render. The work runs in the background with a progress bar, and you can Cancel.
5. Play and check. Press Play. You can click anywhere on the rendered waveform to start playback from that point — useful when you want to hear only the end of a long texture.
6. Export. Choose WAV or AIFF, choose the bit depth, and press Download.

The controls

• Stretch — how much longer the sound becomes (time only). The slider goes very far; the number box accepts even larger values.
• Pitch — transposition in semitones, fully separate from stretch. The range is very wide, several octaves up or down.
• Weave — how many grains overlap at each moment (1 to 16). Low values sound rough and pulsing, and broken at 1. Higher values sound smooth and glassy. The strongest change is between 1 and 4.
• Scatter — how much the phase is invented (0 to 100%). At 0 the real phase is kept, so the stretch stays coherent and attacks survive. At 100% it is the full texture effect.
• Drift — the reading position wanders. Each grain reads from a slightly different, moving point in the sample. At 0 it is off. Higher values make the texture breathe and change over time, and make the higher Weave values meaningful.
• Reverb and Size — an internal reverb (amount and decay length) added after the stretch.
• Gain — output level.
• Normalize — brings the level up to a safe maximum.
• Mono → stereo — from a mono sample, builds a wide stereo texture using two independent phase passes.
• Reverse — plays the stretched sound backwards.

Stretch, pitch, weave, scatter and drift are part of the engine, so a change needs a new Render. Reverb, size, gain, normalize and reverse are applied afterwards, so you hear them at once.

Notes

Included in the download you'll find HTML INSTRUMENTS

a Max for Live device that lets you open LOOM directly inside Ableton Live.

It requires Ableton 12 and Max 9.

Alternatively, you can run it standalone (just double click on html file) and route your computer or tablet output to your audio interface, just like any ordinary instrument.

example: https://youtu.be/s3CxrT4kJ8A

Stretch Quartet is an audio effect for Ableton Live

dedicated to time-stretching techniques.

It provides four independent buffers where you can record audio sequences ranging from 2 to 60 seconds, simply by clicking the Off / Rec button.

Each recorded sequence becomes an autonomous temporal layer with its own set of controls.

For every buffer you can adjust:

Pitch, from –48 to +48 semitones

Time-stretch playback speed, with negative values playing in reverse and positive values preserving forward time

Gain, allowing precise control over the balance between the four sequences

Stretch Quartet features five stereo outputs:

one master output containing the full mix,

and four dedicated outputs, one for each buffer.

This routing system allows you to build custom effect chains per sequence and to manage spatialization with great precision.

Stretch Quartet is a powerful tool for transforming a single sound into evolving textures

example: https://youtu.be/KS_pFiy7wKA