30/08/2026
This might be the most satisfying thing I’ve ever made…
My partner makes music in and we have talked for ages about making something together. One weekend we went absolutely FERAL over this project that we had no business attempting.
Derivative built a collection of components called TDAbleton that let Ableton 👉+ 👌 TouchDesigner hook up. I created some simple visuals controlled with MediaPipe, so my hands control the visuals and the visuals control the notes.
I still feel very new to so this was intimidating. He built MIDI instruments, and from what I can tell, TDAbleton’s MIDI only travels one way, from Ableton (controller) into TouchDesigner.
What I needed was:
Handtracking to trigger notes 👉 Visuals react with notes
Which required TD 👉 to Ableton 👉 back to TD.
Using Python in a CHOP Execute DAT got me around it. AI wrote most of the code, but I got to flex some new knowledge gained from my beginning Python course I’m taking through So I basically made a list of notes and got Python to fire a note through the SendMIDI TDAbleton component every time its value changed from 0 to 1.
Learning TouchDesigner and learning the basics of programming and code has been so fun and challenging. It was reeeealllly really REALLY satisfying to come face-to-face with a problem I’ve never encountered before and find a way around it using CODE. I’m gaining some problem-solving skills I’ve never had before, and I just can’t get over how far I’ve come in learning TouchDesigner and literally can’t get enough of it.
Shoutout to Elburz for teaching me the basics of TDAbleton!
And as always a big shoutout to and .art for creating the Media Pipe plugin which entertains me day after day.
