Ableton Live Take Extractor

You've recorded a bunch of live multitrack takes in Ableton Live and want to easily group the audio files by take. Tell this script where to find your Ableton Session file, the directory where the samples are located, and where you want them to go. It will make a directory for each take with its samples within.

This assumes that all takes are sequential- that every audio file in a given take shares a start time, and that this start time is unique to this take. If you've dragged one take to start at the same instant as another, this won't work correctly.

The one file I've tested this on was generated by Ableton Live 8.2.5 . Use this at your own risk.

Example

Here I have an Ableton Live session, mysession.als in my current working directory, the audio files Ableton wrote to disk in /media/audio/Samples/Recorded/, and I want the organized takes to end up in /media/takes.

$ python extract_takes.py mysession.als /media/audio/Samples/Recorded/ /media/takes

/media/audio/Samples/Recorded/0008 COLIN e22-anamod 1.wav --> /media/takes/take-01/0008 COLIN e22-anamod 1.wav
/media/audio/Samples/Recorded/0002 MIKE cab.wav --> /media/takes/take-01/0002 MIKE cab.wav
/media/audio/Samples/Recorded/0002 KICK-anamod 2.wav --> /media/takes/take-01/0002 KICK-anamod 2.wav
/media/audio/Samples/Recorded/0002 FT.wav --> /media/takes/take-01/0002 FT.wav
/media/audio/Samples/Recorded/0002 OV.wav --> /media/takes/take-01/0002 OV.wav
/media/audio/Samples/Recorded/0002 ROOM.wav --> /media/takes/take-01/0002 ROOM.wav

/media/audio/Samples/Recorded/0009 COLIN e22-anamod 1.wav --> /media/takes/take-02/0009 COLIN e22-anamod 1.wav
/media/audio/Samples/Recorded/0003 MIKE cab.wav --> /media/takes/take-02/0003 MIKE cab.wav

...

* If this looks right run it again with -c to copy the files

$ python extract_takes.py -c mysession.als /media/audio/Samples/Recorded/ /media/takes

/media/audio/Samples/Recorded/0008 COLIN e22-anamod 1.wav --> /media/takes/take-01/0008 COLIN e22-anamod 1.wav
/media/audio/Samples/Recorded/0002 MIKE cab.wav --> /media/takes/take-01/0002 MIKE cab.wav
/media/audio/Samples/Recorded/0002 KICK-anamod 2.wav --> /media/takes/take-01/0002 KICK-anamod 2.wav
/media/audio/Samples/Recorded/0002 FT.wav --> /media/takes/take-01/0002 FT.wav
/media/audio/Samples/Recorded/0002 OV.wav --> /media/takes/take-01/0002 OV.wav
/media/audio/Samples/Recorded/0002 ROOM.wav --> /media/takes/take-01/0002 ROOM.wav

/media/audio/Samples/Recorded/0009 COLIN e22-anamod 1.wav --> /media/takes/take-02/0009 COLIN e22-anamod 1.wav
/media/audio/Samples/Recorded/0003 MIKE cab.wav --> /media/takes/take-02/0003 MIKE cab.wav

...

The takes are now grouped in /media/takes/take-01, take-02 etc.

Usage

usage: extract_takes.py [-h] [-c] [-o] session source target_dir

Extract takes from an Abelton Live session file

positional arguments:
  session          The Ableton ALS (XML) file to parse
  source           The directory containing the audio files
  target_dir       The directory to copy the takes to

optional arguments:
  -h, --help       show this help message and exit
  -c, --copy       Copy the files to the target directory, defaults to showing
                   you what would happen
  -o, --overwrite  Overwrite existing files Default is to stop and raise an
                   error