Leapmotion – Hands on ableton control

Leapmotion + GECO + Ableton control script 

A colleague and founder of Enable Music education lent me his leapmotion controller for a little while (thanks Tom!). Leapmotion is an infrared sensor that detects your hand movements which can then be turned into HI or MIDI data. 

I found it pretty cool but wanted it to be natively recognised within ableton so I made a control script for it – this allowed me focused control of ableton devices with 8 parameters. 

See the video for how it works, and how to set it up.

Leap Motion is configured to control the first 8 controls of a device or device rack (instrument/audio effects/racks). It will control the SELECTED effect (look for the blue hand) and can also be locked to a specific effect/instrument rack. 

Additionally you can manually reassign the controls (you will need to solo each hand gesture in GECO as you use MIDI Learn). (cmd/ctrl M in ableton)

Install instructions

1. 

The folder ‘LeapMotion’ (inside main folder- should contain .py files) needs to be copied to Live’s MIDI Remote Scripts directory. Close Live before transferring this folder. 

Windows:

         –  Program Files\Ableton\Live x.x.x\Resources\MIDI Remote Scripts 

         or –  ProgramData\Ableton\Live x\Resources\MIDI Remote Scripts 

MACOS X

Go to Applications, find Live.app or Ableton Live x.app, right-click and select Show Package Contents. The directory is located at: 

– Contents/App-Resources/MIDI Remote Scripts

2. 

Open LeapMotion GECO.geco

3. 

Ensure GECO is selected and enabled in ABLETONS MIDI PREFERENCES

– make sure INPUT – GECO –  TRACK and REMOTE are ON

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