Song to ableton

Skill PerIPan/music-workflow-skills/song-to-ableton

Use when taking an existing song end-to-end — analyze a recording (bars, key, chords, lyrics, drum logic) and rebuild or reinterpret it in Ableton Live. Orchestrates the song-analysis, ableton-mcp, ableton-arrangement, and bass-transcribe skills. Ask first whether the user wants analysis, Ableton building, or both.From its SKILL.md

Install

npx -y skills add PerIPan/music-workflow-skills --skill song-to-ableton

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

3 things to look at

24 days oldThe repository was created 24 days ago. New is not bad, but a brand new repository carrying a familiar-sounding name is the shape a typosquat arrives in, and there has been no time for anyone else to find a problem with it.
no licenseNo license file was found in the repository. Code published without one is not open source by default, so using it at work is a question for whoever answers licensing questions where you are.
0 stars0 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.

SKILL.md

3.6 KB, 886 tokens by cl100k_base, as published. Nobody here has run it

Song → Ableton (end-to-end orchestrator)

  existing audio ──▶  A. ANALYSIS                      ──▶  C. HANDOFF      ──▶  B. ABLETON (MCP)
                      stems · bars/BPM/key · chords          bars + chords +      build/reinterpret:
                      · bass MIDI · lyrics · drum read        drum logic           tempo · clips · MIDI
                                                                                   · devices · scenes · mix

ASK FIRST: "Do you want song analysis, Ableton building, or both?" Then route only to what's needed.

GOLDEN RULE: reason in BARS, never seconds. Every length and position is a bar count (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32…). Convert any "first 16 seconds" to bars and stay in bars.

Routing

Need	Skill
Analyze the recording (tempo/bars, stems, chords, lyrics, drum read, chart)	`song-analysis`
Drive Live — tracks, clips, notes, devices, mixing; connection issues	`ableton-mcp`
Arrangement craft — sections, bass/drum patterns, FX chains, dynamics	`ableton-arrangement`
The user plays bass (or another mono instrument) and wants it as MIDI	`bass-transcribe`

The handoff (analysis output → Ableton input)

Analysis output	Use in Ableton
BPM + `num_bars`	`set_tempo`; size clips in bars (32-bar song = 128 beats)
`chord_proposal` per bar/half	chord clips on a synth/keys track, or a chart for a live band
bass MIDI (root line)	reference clip — or leave the bass slot empty for a live bassist
drum-pattern read	match the original's kick/snare logic (or `generate_drum_pattern`); never impose a rock backbeat on a non-rock song
key/mode	scale + voicings (mind major-triads-under-minor-melody — Trap 2 in `song-analysis`)
section map	scenes (jam) or arrangement sections; mirror parallel sections

Reinterpreting in a new genre: keep the harmonic + rhythmic skeleton (chords per bar, original drum logic, section lengths) from analysis; change instrumentation and energy in Ableton. Analysis says what the song is; the build decides how it sounds.

Quickstart

Drop <song>.mp3 + lyrics.txt in a song folder.
Run the song-analysis pipeline: stems (htdemucs_ft) → foundation (bars/BPM/key) → bass via CREPE → chords via chroma+bass-root → Whisper on the vocals stem.
Open Ableton; verify the MCP connection (health_check — see ableton-mcp).
Build, e.g.: "At <BPM> in <key>, build a Session scene with these chords per bar <chord_proposal>, a drum pattern matching <kick/snare logic>, and leave the bass slot empty for me to play."

Troubleshooting (route, don't debug here)

Noisy bass MIDI → CREPE not basic-pitch; bass bleed → htdemucs_ft + suppress pre-bass-entry bars; too few snares detected → delta≈0.15, un-normalized envelope (all in song-analysis).
Can't connect / tools missing / device errors → ableton-mcp references/troubleshooting.md.

Local environment (this machine)

Analysis tooling + venvs: /Users/peripan/dev/abletonAI/audio-analysis/ (.venv-bp, .venv-demucs); song folders live next to it in /Users/peripan/dev/abletonAI/.
Ableton MCP configured via that project's .mcp.json.

What ships with it

Read from the repository

Just SKILL.md. No reference files, no scripts.