Progressive

About Progressive

Progressive is a songwriting extension for Ableton Live 12. Pick a key and major or minor, choose from a set of well-known chord progressions (I–V–vi–IV, 50s doo-wop, vi–IV–I–V, three-chord, ii–V–I, Pachelbel, 12-bar blues and more), and it lays each chord out as a looping Session clip on a MIDI track, grouped by progression and colour-coded, ready to play.

Because the chords are ordinary Session clips, every chord and every progression is MIDI-mappable and key-mappable through Live's own MIDI Map mode (Cmd+M), and launching a clip plays the chord through the track's instrument. No extra setup, map your controller and start writing.

What it does:
- Adds "Generate Progressions…" to the right-click menu of any MIDI track.
- Opens a dialog to choose key, mode, progressions and voicing. It prefills from Live's current scale (Scale Mode root and name).
- Output as Session clips (filling the track's slots top-down, reusing empty scenes) or as an Arrangement row laid end to end along the timeline.
- Chord length of 1/2, 1, 2 or 4 bars (assumes 4/4).
- Motion controls: chord order (as written, reversed or shuffled) and octave drift (level, rising, falling or random per chord).
- Voicing options: triads by default, add diatonic 7ths, or smart voicings with greedy voice-leading that keeps common tones and moves the rest by the smallest step.
- Optionally auto-adds a built-in instrument (Drift by default) when the track is empty, so the chords make sound immediately.

Install: download progressive-1.0.0.ablx from the Releases page, open Settings → Extensions in Live, drag the .ablx onto the page and enable it. Then create or select a MIDI track, right-click its title bar (or an empty clip slot on it) and choose "Generate Progressions…".

Requires Ableton Live 12.4.5 Suite (beta) or later. Source and the other extensions in the same repository (chords, ambient, reverse-midi) are on GitHub.

How to install

1. Download the extension from the author's link above.
2. In Ableton Live 12 Suite (beta 12.4.5+), open Settings → Extensions and add the .ablx file.
3. Right-click a midi track in your Set and pick Progressive from the menu.

Extensions run real code on your computer. Only install extensions from authors you trust, and save your Set first. More on safety →