Gibberwocky

This repo is for a plugin to live code Ableton Live using browser-based editor. It is implemented using Max4Live, Max/MSP/Jitter, and JavaScript, and draws significantly from the Gibber browser-based live coding platform.

More recent (10/2016) demo performance.
A screen capture / demo of an early version.

This project is jointly developed by Graham Wakefield and Charlie Roberts.

If you're interested in creating your own front-end using a different language (gibberwocky uses JavaScript), please see the communication spec which outlines how to send messages to the max4live plugin using websockets. Theoretically you should be able to use a language of your choice (as long as it has a websocket library...)

Installing

Follow the instructions for installing the Max Worldmaking Package: https://github.com/worldmaking/Max_Worldmaking_Package. This will install a websocket external for Max that the code editor will use to communicate with Max4Live and Max/MSP.
Download the most recent release of the plugin
In Ableton Live, place the gibberwocky_master.amxd M4L object on the Master track in your Live set. For each MIDI instrument track, place an instance of the gibberwocky_midi.amxd on the track and add an instrument/fx of your choice.

Using

In the master instance, click the Edit button to open the browser-based code editor. You can send note/duration/velocity messages to all instrument tracks with an instance of the gibberwocky_midi.amxd plugin. If an instrument track does not have a plugin, you won't be able to send it these messages. You can also target all fx parameters, volume controls, track sends, mute and solo functions from this single editor.
Execute code by selecting it and hitting Ctrl+Enter. Alt+Enter will select and execute an entire block of code (blocks are delimited by empty lines)
Read through the example code. Click on the "demos" button in the right sidebar to view other examples / explanations.
This is beta software... there is no documentation outside of the (heavily commented) demos. We're working on it!

Development

Max for Live device

Remember to unfreeze the device to edit it, and freeze it again afterward.

Also, watch out to not edit the .amxd directly in Max, but only launch the editor from within Live. I don't know why this makes a difference, but it caused all kinds of headaches.

Browser-based client editor

First, install all packages with:

cd client
npm install

After making changes to any javascript, use gulp build from within root directory to rebuild the primary index.js file. After the build is complete, run node munge.js (we'll streamline this in the future). You can also simply use gulp to launch a watcher that will recompile the main .js file whenever you make changes to any of the JavaScript files.

wichniowski / gibberwocky