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Refactor: MIDI Element Decomposer for Ableton Live

REFACTOR

Dynamic Pattern Reconstructor

$9
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Refactor is an Ableton Live Extension that decomposes a MIDI clip into element-based variations. It identifies every unique pitch in the clip as an element, a drum pad, a melodic note, a chord tone, then generates a series of clips containing different subsets of those elements. Every timing, velocity, and length value from the source is preserved exactly across every variation; the only thing that ever changes is which pitches are present. Six modes control how those subsets are chosen, from a simple linear build-up to a fully combinatorial enumeration of every possible combination, with a live clip count updating in the dialog as you adjust settings.


MULTIFACETED BUILD MODES

  • Build Up adds one element per clip ascending by pitch, growing from sparse to the full set
  • Break Down is the inverse, starting full and stripping one element per clip descending by pitch
  • Build + Break runs a build phase and a separately randomised break phase back to back, sharing the full-density clip between them rather than generating it twice
  • Shuffle builds additively like Build Up but randomises which element enters at each step, generating a different order on every Generate click
  • Chaos assigns each clip a completely independent random subset with no progression at all, with Count setting the total clip number directly
  • Combinatorial generates every possible K-element combination from the full set with Fixed Per Clip, using C(N, K), or a random mix of densities up to a Count you set with Per Clip ?!
  • Reads every unique pitch in the source clip as a named element, with all occurrences of the same pitch sharing one element together
  • Reads Drum Rack pad names automatically when the source track has one, so a kick, snare, and hi-hat pattern shows as Kick, Snare, and Hi-Hat instead of raw note names, both in the dialog and in the generated clip names
  • Falls back to standard note names for any pad that hasn't been renamed from its default
  • Treats melodic and chord-tone clips identically to drum clips, since the underlying logic is the same regardless of what the pitches represent

The six modes aren't six unrelated ideas, they're really three pairs answering the same underlying question with different amounts of structure. Build Up and Break Down are deterministic and symmetric. Shuffle takes Build Up's same density curve and randomises the order. Chaos and Combinatorial both abandon any density curve entirely, but Chaos samples randomly from the possibility space while Combinatorial enumerates it completely. Picking a mode is really picking how much you want structure versus exhaustiveness versus pure chance.

Drum Rack detection runs automatically and can't be turned off, which is the right default for the case it's solving: a drum producer decomposing a beat into build-up and breakdown variations wants to see Kick and Snare in the clip browser, not C1 and D1. The fallback to note names when pads aren't renamed means the feature never breaks anything, it just doesn't add the readability bonus until you've named your pads.


Tool Tip Annotated
Learn all you need to know directly in Live - just click the [?] icon in the Extension and hover your mouse over any parameter.
Scale Aware
Natively integrated with Live 12's scale and key for seamless workflow.
Already comes included in:
Extensions Bundle 001 · Ultra Bundle

Requires:
Ableton Live Suite 12.4.5 or above.
Not available in Live Standard, Intro, or Lite.

EXTENSION
Workflow