Products / Just Play

Just Play.

No fixed tempo, no click track — just start playing. We'll figure it out after.

A Max for Live device that detects the natural tempo curve (rubato) in a freely-played MIDI take — captured live on the device or pulled from a clip you already have. From there, straighten it into a new MIDI clip — with dials to preserve, flatten, or even exaggerate the original tempo fluctuations, anywhere from a fixed BPM to well past how you played it — or write a tempo map that bends Ableton Live's grid to follow your playing instead.

Available now Intro price · $60 after July 31 Max for Live · Live 12+ Apple Silicon Mac · Windows
Buy Just Play $45 intro → Try the demo
Line drawing of a single hand descending toward a piano keyboard, index finger pressing one key — the hand in orange, the keyboard in cyan — symbolizing 'just press a key and start playing.'
Live demo

Play it loose.

This is Just Play's actual device UI, running right here in your browser on a freely-played take — no install, no purchase, no Ableton Live required.

What it does

Stop fighting the metronome.

Most MIDI tools assume you've decided on a tempo before you start playing. Set the project BPM, click in, follow the click. That works for some kinds of music. It doesn't work for the kind that arrives — the phrase that bends as you play it, the take you start before you know what tempo you're in.

Just Play assumes nothing. Arm a track with Just Play on it and just record normally in Ableton Live — it captures the take automatically — or point it at a MIDI clip you've already recorded. Either way, the device walks through your take, traces the natural pulse beat by beat, and shows you a graph of how your tempo actually moves. Then two dials decide what to keep: the Rubato dial sets how much of that natural movement survives — from locked to a single fixed BPM, to exactly as you played, to pushed even further than you played it — while a Smooth dial irons out the beat-to-beat jitter without flattening the overall shape.

How it works

Three steps.

Analyze, adjust, apply — the whole workflow, start to finish.

1 Analyze

Trace the pulse.

Click ANALYZE. Just Play walks through your take and traces the natural tempo curve of the performance, beat by beat — and plots it as a visible graph. If the auto-detected beat grid slips in a tricky passage, switch to the BEATS tab, drag a beat to where it belongs, and RE-FIT re-tracks the take around the beats you anchored.

2 Adjust

Decide how much to keep.

The Rubato dial sets how much of your natural tempo movement to keep — 0% flattens it to one steady BPM, 100% (the default) leaves the timing exactly as you played it, and up to 200% pushes the swells even further than you played them. A second Smooth dial evens out beat-to-beat jitter without touching the overall shape. The graph updates live so you can see what you're doing.

3 Apply

Output the result.

Two ways out. CREATE WARPED CLIP writes the result back as a new MIDI clip you can drop on a track; pair it with SET TEMPO, which matches the project's BPM to what you actually played so the clip auditions at the right speed. Or CREATE TEMPO MAP does the inverse — it keeps your performance's timing exactly and writes a file that bends Ableton Live's own grid to follow you when you drop it on an Arrangement track.

Highlights

What you can expect.

Beat-by-beat tempo curve

Just Play doesn't just give you an average BPM — it traces the moment-to-moment pulse of your performance and shows it to you as a graph.

The Rubato dial

One dial spans the whole continuum: 0% irons your timing flat to a single BPM, 100% keeps it exactly as you played, and up to 200% pushes the natural swells even further than you played them.

Smooth out the jitter

The Smooth dial runs a gentle low-pass over the beat-to-beat tempo, ironing out the small wobbles that creep into any live take — while leaving the overall shape of your phrasing intact.

Native to Ableton Live

Built as a Max for Live device. Drop it onto any MIDI track — no separate app, no exporting and re-importing files. The whole workflow lives inside Live.

Specs

What you need.

Requirements

  • HostAbleton Live 12.x
  • EditionSuite, or Standard + M4L
  • OSmacOS 14.0+ (Apple Silicon, M1+) · Windows 10+
  • Format.amxd (Max for Live device)
  • InputMIDI — live take or clip

Included with purchase

  • Just Play deviceSigned installer
  • LicenseSingle-user, lifetime
  • UpdatesFree, included
  • SupportDirect email
  • Refund window14 days
Frequently asked

Questions, answered.

Does Just Play work with audio?

No — Just Play operates on MIDI only. For audio tempo detection and warping, Live's built-in tools are the right place to start.

Is the analysis real-time, or offline?

The analysis is offline — there's no real-time tempo-following mode. You can still capture a take live: with Just Play on a record-armed track, record normally in Ableton Live and stop, and Just Play detects the take and analyzes it the same way it analyzes a clip you already have. Either way the tempo pass runs after the fact, looking at the whole performance at once — which lets it make better decisions about the tempo curve than a real-time follower could.

Can I override the detected BPM?

You can halve or double it. If the detection locks onto half or twice the tempo you'd tap by hand — a common quirk of any tempo tracker — click the ÷2 or ×2 chip on the chart to correct it. The chips are cumulative and it's a lossless re-label, not a re-analysis: your performance sounds identical at the corrected number, and all three outputs use it — CREATE WARPED CLIP, CREATE TEMPO MAP, and SET TEMPO. Beyond that, Just Play treats its own analysis as the source of truth on the natural tempo of the performance — but once the corrected clip is back in your project, it behaves like any other MIDI clip in Live: you can warp, pitch, or change its playback speed using the standard Live tools.

When should I use CREATE WARPED CLIP vs. CREATE TEMPO MAP?

Both start from the same analysis; they differ in what moves. CREATE WARPED CLIP moves your notes onto a steady grid and writes them as a new MIDI clip — reach for it when you want a clip that plays at one tempo (the Rubato dial decides how much of the original push-and-pull to keep). CREATE TEMPO MAP moves the grid instead: it leaves every note exactly where you played it and writes a file that, dragged onto an Arrangement-view track, prompts Ableton Live to import the tempo — so the bar lines bend to follow your performance. Use it when you want your playing left untouched with Ableton Live's grid lined up behind it, which makes it easy to layer other parts that follow your rubato. If Ableton Live doesn't show the import prompt, restore it under Settings → Display & Input.

What's the SET TEMPO button for — do I need it?

It's an optional follow-up to CREATE WARPED CLIP, not a standalone alternative. That button writes the new MIDI clip into your project; SET TEMPO then matches the project's BPM to the tempo you actually played, so the clip auditions at its natural speed. Run them in that order — the warped clip is measured against the current project tempo, so setting the tempo first would warp it against the wrong baseline. If you're not auditioning right away, just create the clip and skip it. (With CREATE TEMPO MAP you don't need SET TEMPO at all — a tempo map carries its own tempo curve.)

How do I move around the BEATS editor?

A two-finger swipe pans the beat map and Shift-swipe zooms, with 0 to fit. Because that swipe can also scroll Ableton Live's device chain when there are enough other devices alongside it, the BEATS editor keeps a minimap strip along the bottom — drag its window to pan, or click to jump, without touching the wheel.

Are updates free?

Yes. Once you've bought Just Play, updates are free for the lifetime of the product.

Ready to play?

Just Play is available now. Buy once, use it forever. Updates to Just Play are free. Ships as a signed, notarized installer with a license key, delivered immediately after checkout.

Buy Just Play $45 intro → View documentation

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