garrensmith / abletonpush

A library for working with the Ableton Push in the browser

Ableton Push

abletonpush is a library for working with the Ableton Push in the browser. A working example can be found here. It is designed to allow a user to play notes and chords in the Isomorphic pad layout on the Push. The pad is setup in C Major scale and each pad pressed will be relative to that. The pads will be coloured to show the layout and pads will change colour when pressed.

Installation

The abletonpush module is distributed through npm and is compatible with webpack and browserify. You can install it:

npm install --save @garrensmith/abletonpush

Table Of Contents

• Installation
• Usage
  • Configuration
  • Events
  • SetColourButtons
• Logging
• License

Usage

abletonpush is only designed to run in the browser. It uses the webmidi library underneath. Currently only Google Chrome supports webmidi. With Google Chrome, web midi will work with http on a localhost port but for a production site it will require https.

import AbletonPush from 'abletonpush'

const abletonpush = new AbletonPush();

abletonpush.on('note:on', ({note, octave}) => {
  console.log(`note ${note}:${octave}` was pressed);
});

Once the library has connected to an Ableton Push it will colour the pads on the Push so that can be used as an Isomorphic keyboard.

Events

abletonpush is an eventemitter at its core. It sends events for any interaction with the Push device.

Event	Description
push:connected	A push deviced is connected
push:disconnected	A push deviced is disconnected.
push:failed	Failed to access the push's inputs and outputs
push:encoder:${name}	A push encoder with the name has togged in a direction
push:encoder:${number}	A push encoder with the number has togged in a direction
note:on	A pad has been pressed
note:off	A pad has been released
push:chord	A major/minor chord was played (this is very experimental)

SetColourButtons

This sets the colours for the buttons just below the encoders. This can be used along with the buttonColours variable.

import AbletonPush from 'abletonpush';
import { buttonColors } from 'abletonpush';

const push = new AbletonPush();
push.setColourButtons(102, buttonColors.red);

Take a look at Ableton Push Midi interface for the correct button numbers

Logging

Passing logging: true when creating the AbletonPush object will enable logging.

const push = new AbletonPush({logging: true})

License

Apache license 2.0

abletonpush's Issues

Work in Node.js

I'm not sure how much effort this would take but it would be nice to explore the idea and see if it is possible to get this library working in Node.js.

Add jsdoc comments for api

Add jsdoc style comments for all functions. This makes it easier to work with the library specially if someone is using vscode or atom.

Add more tests for midi interfacing

I think we can either mock out the midi library and do some testing of the Ableton push library behaviour to make sure it does what we want it to do.

Add drum display

Currently this library automatically sets the push into an isomorphic layout for playing notes. It would be nice to also get the pads to layout for playing a drum rack.