Python RTMidi control Ableton Live

Question

I'm trying to control Ableton via the rtmidi_python library. At this point, I can send messages over bluetooth to the Slave, which receives them and sends them to Ableton. The problem is that a 'Play' command doesn't start Ableton on the other side. I can see that Ableton interpretes the command, but doesn't do anything.

When I hit play the 'Stop' button will be grayed out, but the track doesn't start and this will be printed

[242, 0, 0]
[250] 0.0

When I stop the track I receive

[252]

When I change my position, the slave changes the position of the track aswell, so I think the play command is not the right one. When I send a note_on message, it will be played by the Slave. I also tried to change the command to hex notation, but that doesn't seem to fix it.

Here is the midi part from the master:

midi_in = rtmidi.MidiIn()
for port_name in midi_in.ports:
    print(port_name)
selected_device = int(input('Select a device '))
midi_in.open_port(selected_device)

while recording:
    message, delta_time = midi_in.get_message()
    if message:
        data = json.dumps(message)
        sock.send(data)
        print(message, delta_time)

And here is the slave:

midi_out = rtmidi.MidiOut()
for port_name in midi_out.ports:
    print(port_name)
midi_device = int(input('Select a device: '))

midi_out.open_port(midi_device)
data = client_sock.recv(1024)
while data != '':
    stream = client_sock.recv(1024)
    message = json.loads(stream.decode())
    print(message)
    midi_out.send_message(message)

Can somebody help me out? Also if anyone has any tips on getting the MIDI Beat Clock, I would love to hear them!

EDIT I just found out that I'm looking for the [248] command, which should be sent 24 times per quarter note. But it's not showing up in my console.

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 27 '14 at 14:35

Concerning the [248] midi clock event message: they are ignored by default.

I use the MidiIn.ignore_types() method to receive them:

midiIn.ignore_types (sysex        = True, 
                     timing       = False,
                     active_sense = True)

Usually after a call to open_port().

Python RTMidi control Ableton Live

1 Answers1