Recommended workflow to sync Ableton Live and TD

I want to sync Ableton Live and TouchDesigner for a live show of my band. For every song that we play I usually load a different Ableton Live set, which runs in arrangement mode, not in session mode. TD shall create different visuals for every song. How can I achieve that, what would be the recommended workflow? I have installed TDAbleton now, would that be the best tool for this? Must a different .toe file be loaded for every Ableton Live set?

In the past I used VDMX (I switched from Mac OS to Windows now): At the beginning of the song, an OSC signal was sent from Live to VDMX to trigger a preset for that song which contains a set of movies, effects etc… Then more OSC and audio signals (from Live or from the playing musicians) were sent to control parameters in VDMX.

I’m new to TD and I have only one week to set this up for our next live show, so for a start I would just set up a very simple workflow: Every Ableton Live set should send a signal which loads and plays a movie in TD. In the next step I would add effects to that movie and control their parameters with Ableton Live, but this will not be possible in such short time I think, maybe for the next show…

I’ve started looking all the tutorial videos now, but it is a bit overwhelming… :open_mouth:

I did a DVJ set recently with Ableton + TD + TDAbleton.

Basically, I laid out my mix in the Arrangement view. I used TDAbleton to create a midi track with the max for live device via TDAbleton(See documentation for this). I sent midi notes via that midi track to my TD, and I wrote a little python script to trigger the various movie clips in TD based on which note was sent over(the midi info is being brought in via TDAbleton). My movie file would play for the length of the note that I am sending. I am sure there are better way of doing this, but I was running out of time, so, this is what I ran with.

You can use the Live and TD project that came with TDAbleton as a base. If that works, then your set should work just fine.

Lastly, I do not recommend you load diff sets for each song, you really should put them in one set. This would avoid re-linking the Link connections, and avoid any possible issues.

I ran with 0.9 version of TDAbleton, had one brief problem that required me to reboot my computer entirely, coz TD just refused to see the Link connection from Live.

Hope that helps.

Thank you for your answer! I will try it the way you described, although “writing a little Python script” will not part of it now, I don’t know Python.
What puzzles me is that there is no pre-configured plug-in (component) in TD to load and trigger movies, like the media bin in VDMX. Do I have to built this myself? Or am I missing something?

(Sorry for the late answer, I don’t get notifications, although I subscribed this topic.)

Hi p8guitar and mouren,

Great to know that you are using TDAbleton, sorry I didn’t notice this thread sooner. I’m working on some powerful new features for TDAbleton that will be coming out soon, and will help at least with having a different configuration per set.

I’m also very interested in bugs and usability feedback, so now that I’m following this thread do keep it coming!