Imagine that you could talk to your DAW. No longer hampered by the movement of a keyboard and mouse, you’re able to load plugins, tweak parameters and adjust levels using nothing more than your own voice.
Now imagine that the DAW could talk back – not only telling you what it’s doing, but answering questions about your project and offering technical and compositional advice like a friendly, knowledgeable assistant. This might sound like a sci-fi music production fever dream, but what we’ve described is the concept behind Melosurf, an experimental Max for Live device that allows Ableton Live users to control the DAW with their voice alone.
Melosurf surfaced last week in a demo video (embedded above) published by an account with 38 subscribers and is not yet available to the general public, but the teaser gives us a tantalizing glimpse of an intuitive, voice-driven workflow that may well be the future of the DAW.
In the video, the creator begins by changing the tempo and key of their Ableton project with a voice command. Neat, but not exactly game-changing. Next, they ask Melosurf to set up compression a sub bass track sidechained to a kick track and roll off the high frequencies with an EQ. That’s already pretty impressive, but what comes next is even wilder.
This intuitive, voice-driven workflow may well be the future of the DAW
The narrator then asks Melosurf how to make the bassline in an existing MIDI clip “groovier”. It responds by analyzing the harmony in the clip and how it fits rhythmically with the kick pattern on another track, offering some solid advice on how to inject a little funk into the low-end. “The notes hit right with the kick, so it feels a bit stiff,” Melosurf replies. “Try some syncopation and velocity variation to add more bounce.”
After that, Melosurf is asked to demonstrate how to make a plucky synth lead with Ableton’s stock Wavetable synth. It doesn’t miss a beat before opening up Wavetable and tweaking the synth’s waveshape, envelopes and filter to create a “nice plucky lead” in seconds that sounds half decent to our ears.
How does it work? The creator has provided no details other than to confirm that Melosurf is essentially “a website embedded inside a Max for Live device” that interfaces with Ableton’s API to execute voice commands. While there’s no mention of AI in the video or its description, another video shared to Melosurf’s official account describes it as an “AI assistant”, confirming that an LLM is involved behind the scenes. (Others have previously achieved something similar by using the Model Context Protocol to control Ableton via LLMs like Claude.)
It may well be the most sophisticated example, but this isn’t the first time we’ve seen voice control or AI-based assistance integrated in a DAW: Universal Audio introduced basic voice control over recording functions to its LUNA DAW with a recent 2.0 update, and Image-Line has integrated an AI assistant in FL Studio with its 2025 release – a chatbot named Gopher that’s trained on the DAW’s reference manual, it can provide answers to music production-related questions via its text-based interface. (Another voice-controlled tool worth a mention is Vochlea’s Dubler 2, an innovative plugin/app that turns your voice into a real-time MIDI controller.)
To describe the demo as promising would be an understatement. Implemented effectively, this kind of context-aware, voice-controlled assistant could not only be a major time-saver in the studio, automating the laborious and repetitive tasks that can stymie our creative flow, but also present a fundamental shift in how we make music, making DAWs feels less like tools and more like musical collaborators. That’s not to mention the immense benefit that something like Melosurf could have for visually impaired producers.
While Melosurf isn’t yet available, the developer says they’ll be running a private beta soon and anyone that’s interested can sign up for a waitlist via their website.
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