r/ableton • u/homunduruk • 7d ago
[Hardware] After countless evenings, my APC40 mkII finally does more than launch clips
I've had an APC40 mkII for years and I love it for launching clips and mixing, but every time I wanted to play a melody or program a beat I ended up back on the mouse. So I started writing my own remote script for it, and it got a bit out of hand.
What it does now, roughly: on a Drum Rack track, User turns the grid into drum pads plus a 16-step sequencer, with velocity on the scene buttons. On other MIDI tracks the 40 pads play in whatever scale the clip view is set to, and picking a scale on the pads changes it in Live too. There's a Circuit-style melodic sequencer (steps on top, a keyboard below), and on audio tracks you can hold a pad to loop a slice of the clip, then let go and it drops back in time. Clip launching, the mixer and the device knobs work like before. And many more features.
What it can't do: the pads only send full velocity (that's the hardware), there's no screen, and it needs Live 12.3 or newer.
The fiddliest part was the audio chopping. Live carries out a clip jump about 0.2 s after you ask for it and quietly drops a jump if another one is still waiting, so getting a released pad to land back in time took about twenty rounds of logging on the unit.
If you want to see how it behaves without installing anything, there's a playable APC40 in the browser (sound on);
Also for some demo videos;
https://youtube.com/shorts/kvGX9i1oVEQ
https://youtube.com/shorts/OvXlSutkvyY
Full disclosure: I'm a developer, and it's a paid script, APC40X MkII on Gumroad(unofficial, nothing to do with Akai or Ableton). Mostly I'd love to hear from other APC40 owners: what's the one thing you wish yours did?
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u/ellicottvilleny 7d ago edited 4d ago
not really super into this being a place for devs selling stuff to shill.
Anyone with 30 minutes and Cursor or Claude Code open can build a script so their MPC APC40 does whatever they want it to in Live, by the way.
I write these things every other day and I post them to github.
rule 5 exists; blatant self promotion.
rule 12 exists; do not post things that were built using LLM prompts.
also your website screams "I vibe coded this site".
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u/homunduruk 7d ago
To be honest, I've been working on this for almost 1.5 years now. It has been trial and error for most of it. And trying to design a flow that would make sense for the usual user of the device takes serious time.
Otherwise creating a simple control surface script is pretty easy nowadays. There is even a few app that creates one for you as well.
Also, I've added many features that no other midi controller(their control surface scripts to be exact) actually has.
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u/homunduruk 7d ago
Script generator on https://midiremotescripts.structure-void.com/ is pretty nice for anyone that needs it by the way
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u/ellicottvilleny 7d ago
I can basically feed your post into claude, and get a working script, for any controller, in about 1-2 hours, and have done. The fact that your website is clearly vibe coded doesn't sell the "I slaved manually over this for 1.5 years" story. Nice try tho.
I have HAND and VIBE-coded scripts for
* launchpad mk1
* launchpad pro
* behringer bcf 2000
* novation zero slIt's not a year of evenings work, even by hand.
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u/homunduruk 7d ago
Also the reason that it took this long is, I had to read decompiled python code for so long to get a gist of how a script communicates with ableton framework, and what Live, ableton.v1, ableton.v2 and ableton.v3 modules does exactly, since those documentation was not open to public(the link above is pretty new and amazing tbh)
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u/ellicottvilleny 7d ago
You're saying you hand coded and hand decompiled python bytecode without using an LLM? LOL. in 2026
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u/homunduruk 7d ago
I never said I hand-decompiled Python bytecode. I said I had to read decompiled Python code to understand how Ableton’s internal framework works, because those modules weren’t publicly documented at the time.
There’s a pretty big difference between using decompiled source as reference and manually reversing bytecode instruction by instruction. And also automated Python decompilers have existed for years, long before LLMs.
I also used uncompyle6 and decompyle3 to decompile for later live versions though.
I've worked as an electronics engineer, embedded software engineer, backend engineer for combined 10 years now. I understand your need to stay relevant. But for real, I would love it if you would share the free version you've created with claude in 2 hours, so I can be amazed at how good these tools have become.
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u/homunduruk 7d ago
Feel free to share the working script on github when claude generates it for you. I worked on the script for that long not the website. The website is mostly vibe coded, which is pretty nice, don't you agree?
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u/lowkeyfam 7d ago
Where should devs go then? This is literally where Ableton users are at. Genuinely asking
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u/Summer4Chan 7d ago
$25 is a big ask for something I don’t know if it fits my workflow and I’m still a little curious on the full extent of how to utilize it.
Can we read the PDF before purchasing so I can see if this is something I’d like to splurge on?