A turn-based music game that lives inside Ableton Live. Pass your stuck project to the next producer — or jam a fresh seed with five strangers — and finish it together.
The clock only counts down when Ableton is open. No ghosting, no perfectionism spiral, no guilt — close Live, the clock pauses.
Finite by design. Every track ships. After hand six, the device locks the session and generates the landing page.
No plugin hell. Either everyone works from the same curated palette, or you pass frozen stems. Sample-cleared by construction.
Open a stuck Ableton set (or the fresh-start palette template). The device reads your tracks automatically.
Make moves. Add a hook. Print a vocal. Fix the drums. The active-time timer pauses when you close Live.
The device freezes your tracks to stems, serializes the MIDI + device params, and uploads everything to the session.
They hit Receive. Stems and MIDI rebuild in their Live set via LOM. Discord pings the group. Clock starts. Repeat until hand 6.
"That track that's been dead for six months? Five producers finish it for you."
"Wordle for Ableton. Daily jam seeds. Six hands to a finished track."
Pass the Track is a Max for Live device — it can't run without M4L. You need one of:
Live Intro and Live Lite cannot load .amxd devices — you'll need to upgrade first.
Live menu → About Live. Look for "Suite" or "Standard". If Standard, check that the M4L add-on is installed (Preferences → Library → Max Application path is set).
Live Suite ships Max bundled. Open Max → About Max → confirm 8.5 or higher. Node for Max is enabled by default in 8.5+.
Grab PassTheTrack.amxd + the Project folder from the releases page.
git clone https://github.com/your-org/pass-the-track
cd "pass-the-track/device/PassTheTrack Project"
npm installDrag PassTheTrack.amxd onto the Master in any Ableton set. It auto-detects whether you're in stuck-track or fresh-start mode based on whether PTT_-prefixed tracks exist.
Edit config.json with your Supabase URL + anon key (free tier works) and a Discord webhook URL if you want turn-advance notifications. Then either create a new session code or join an existing one.
When your studio-time budget runs out — or you're just done — hit Pass. The device freezes your tracks, uploads the session state, and notifies the next producer on Discord. Your hand is over.
Pure Unicode. Pastes anywhere. Spoiler-free. Shows the lineage of who added what, at which hand.
PassThe.Track #112 🟩🥁⬛⬛⬛⬛ h1 laid the drums 🟩🟪🎹⬛⬛⬛ h2 added keys 🟩🟪🟥🎤⬛⬛ h3 brought a vocal 🟩🟪🟥🟦🔊⬛ h4 — that's me 🟩🟪🟥🟦🟧🎸 h5 added guitar 🟩🟪🟥🟦🟧✅ h6 closed it out finished · 18h studio time · ▶️ hear it: passthe.track/112
Waveform player, contributor credits with backlinks to Spotify, Insta, BeatStars. Shareable URL the second hand 6 hits pass.
Ownership follows the lineage. Six contributors, equal shares, signed by the session itself — not a Google Doc.
Copy-paste it to Discord, Twitter, your Insta story. It says everything without spoiling the song.
Yes. Pass the Track is a .amxd device — it can't run without M4L. Live Suite includes it. Live Standard needs the add-on. Live Intro / Lite won't work.
In Stuck Track mode, yes — the device freezes your tracks to stems before passing, so plugin compatibility never matters. In Fresh Start mode, everyone shares the same curated palette so MIDI + params travel cleanly across machines.
Each hand has a 5-day wall-clock backstop on top of the 3-hour active budget. If it expires, the hand opens up to your friends pool, then to the wider community. The track keeps moving.
All six contributors, equal shares. The device generates a split sheet automatically. Because everything is sample-cleared by construction (palette mode) or built from your own sources (stuck mode), there's no rights drama.
Almost any. You'll be prompted to label which tracks to include. The device handles freezing automatically. Return tracks can't be frozen in isolation — print their effects to the source tracks first.
The device is free. You need a Supabase project for session storage (free tier handles plenty of jams; ~$25/mo once audio really starts piling up). A Discord webhook URL is optional but recommended.
Both. The device reads clip slots and arrangement clips, and reconstructs into either on the recipient's side.
No — it's turn-based. Real-time DAW sync is a nightmare. Turns make it work over days and timezones.
Drop the device on your master, pick five friends, start the clock.