One screen, all your harmony.

Tuple is not a sequencer. It is a composition and performance tool that lays out every valid chord in your key as a playable grid — always visible, never hidden behind a menu.

Getting Tuple onto a track.

Your first progression in 60 seconds.

1. Set the tonality. Click KEY and SCALE, or press SYNC ♭♯ to import Live's current scale.
2. Open the grid. Click OPEN to reveal the full window with every chord.
3. Play a chord. Click a cell in column I — it sounds and its notes appear in the Monitor.
4. Move on. Jump to columns IV, V, VI… With Voice Leading on, transitions stay smooth.
5. Record. Arm the track, hit record, and perform the grid live.

The control strip.

Inside Live's rack, Tuple sits in a compact strip: controls on the left, Monitor on the right. The full grid opens in a second window.

The full window (grid).

One click on OPEN unfolds the whole grid: seven degree columns, the BORROWED column, and a tool column on the right.

Tuple, in the flesh.

The diagrams on the previous pages are simplified. Here is the real device, captured live — the same controls, colors and grid you'll meet in Ableton.

Figure 3.3 — The full window in E Minor: degree columns I–VII + Borrowed, the left controls and the Monitor. The active chord (Em) is gold.

Figure 3.4 — The Progression drawer open (see Chapter 11): captured chords as colored cards, ready to write to a clip.

Figure 3.5 — The compact strip as it sits in Live's rack.

Key · Scale · Sync.

The Tonality section defines the harmonic world: the whole grid is recomputed the moment you change root or scale.

Key — the root

Choose one of the twelve chromatic roots, from C to B. This is the tonal center the degrees I–VII are built around.

Scale — the mode

Seven scales determine the color of the degrees and the available chords:

Why these seven? They cover the everyday major and minor modes. Other scales (melodic minor, Lydian dominant, symmetric or exotic) aren’t built in — pick the nearest mode and reach for the borrowed chords in the grid to add colors from outside the scale.

Sync ♭♯ — import from Live

Octave · Voicing · Voice Leading.

Four settings, in this order: the register, then how the notes are spread, then how they move from one chord to the next.

What Voice Leading changes.

Every valid chord, never hidden.

Tuple's principle: show the maximum number of valid chords for the chosen scale, and keep borrowed chords inside the same grid.

Layout — reading the grid in color.

The LAYOUT button cycles through five color logics. The grid stays the same; only the way you read it changes.

Where to go next.

Turn SMART on and, as you play, Tuple lights up the chords that follow naturally from the one you just played. It’s a guide laid over the grid — every chord stays playable; nothing is hidden or forced.

How to read it

The hue is always the degree color of your current Layout, so the grid still reads the same. The brightness carries the suggestion: brighter = stronger. Empty cells stay dark, and the chord you just played stays highlighted as the anchor.

The SMART button cycles Off → Function → Voice leading. Suggestions are grouped by harmonic function, so you always see a spread of options — a few resolutions, a few tension moves, a few colors — never a whole row lit at once.

The fifteen voicings.

The voicing decides how the notes are spread. All are playable with one hand (except Piano; Spread and the Drop voicings run wide by design), with the root staying in register.

The chord families.

Each column stacks these families, in the priority order below. The engine only shows a family when the scale makes it valid for that degree.

See & organize.

Build it, then bounce it.

Stack chords into a progression inside Tuple, then write the whole thing straight to a MIDI clip — no re-playing your chords into a record track.

The grid, under your fingers.

With a Push 2, play the chord grid straight on the pads — one chord per pad, the colors mirroring the screen.

Capture the take.

Progression → Clip (Ch. 11) writes a fixed progression. To capture a live performance instead — especially when you play on Push — record Tuple’s MIDI output onto a second track.

The routing

1. Add a second MIDI track.
2. Set its MIDI From to Tuple’s track, and the chooser below to Post FX — that taps Tuple’s generated chords, just before the instrument.
3. Set the new track’s Monitor to In. This is the step most people miss — without it the track receives nothing.
4. Arm the track, press record, and play the grid.

Avoid doubling

For playback, give the record track its own instrument and mute Tuple’s — otherwise both sound at once.

In Push mode

When Tuple is driving Push, add one setting on the record track: set its MIDI To to No Output, so the monitored notes aren’t echoed back and doubled.

Figure 13.1 Record track in Push mode — From Tuple, Post FX, Monitor In, MIDI To No Output.

Key terms, in one place.

A quick reference for the words used throughout this manual.