How to transfer MIDI from Logic to Ableton

Updated July 2026

MIDI is the most portable thing in your project — every DAW reads a .mid file. Getting it from Logic Pro into Ableton Live takes one export and one drag. Getting it there with placement, tempo and controller data intact takes knowing exactly what a MIDI file carries — and what it quietly leaves behind.

What a .mid file actually carries

A MIDI file stores performance instructions, not sound: every note with its velocity and length, controller movements like mod wheel (CC1) and sustain (CC64), pitch bend, and program changes. Export more than one region from Logic and you get a Format 1 file — the multi-track flavour of the standard, where each track keeps its own lane and a tempo track carries the project's tempo and time-signature changes. That's the good news: notes, CC, pitch bend and the tempo map can all make the trip in a single small file.

Now the fine print. A .mid carries no audio, no software-instrument choices, no plugin settings, no sends, no track automation lanes. The bassline travels; the bass sound does not. Every track you import will arrive silent until you give it an instrument in Live.

Export MIDI from Logic, step by step

1. Turn everything into real MIDI regions first. Drummer (Session Player) regions are patterns, not MIDI — Control-click one and choose Convert > Convert to MIDI Region or nothing useful exports. Loops and aliases need the same treatment — converted to regions and copies — so what you hear is what gets written.
2. Make playback settings permanent. Region-parameter quantize in Logic is non-destructive — it changes playback, not the stored notes. If a part should export quantized, Control-click the regions and apply quantization destructively (and apply region parameters) before exporting.
3. Select what you're sending. A couple of regions, one track, or the lot — press Command-A in the Tracks area to grab everything.
4. Choose File > Export > Selection as MIDI File. Pick a destination, name it, save. Multiple regions save as one Format 1 .mid with every track inside.

One setting worth knowing: Logic can save a single selected region as a Format 0 file (everything flattened into one track) via a setting under Project Handling. For moving work into Live you almost always want Format 1 — Live unpacks its tracks separately, while a Format 0 file lands as one undifferentiated clip.

The traps that lose data silently

1. Instruments don't travel. The most common surprise. Your Alchemy pad and your third-party synth patches stay in Logic; the file carries only the notes that played them. Budget time to rebuild sounds in Live, or send stems alongside the MIDI as a reference.

2. Placement is relative, not absolute. A MIDI file has no idea where your regions sat in the arrangement. Export regions one at a time and each file starts at its first event — a part from bar 33 arrives at bar 1. Export everything in one pass (Command-A, then Selection as MIDI File) and regions keep their relative positions; drop the file at 1.1.1 in Live and the song lines up.

3. Automation beyond CC doesn't exist here. Controller data recorded into the regions — mod, sustain, pitch bend, expression — exports fine. Automation drawn on Logic's lanes (volume rides, pan moves, plugin parameters) is not MIDI data and simply isn't in the file.

4. Channels flatten in Live. Live plays every note in a clip through that track's one instrument, so a Format 0 file with parts separated only by MIDI channel arrives as one clip on one track, all parts stacked together. Format 1 avoids this by keeping tracks as tracks.

Importing the .mid into Ableton Live

The Live side is pleasantly simple: drag the .mid from Live's browser or your file manager into the Arrangement view (or use the Create menu's MIDI-file import). A Format 1 file lands as individual clips across consecutive MIDI tracks — one Live track per track in the file. Drop it at the very start so the positions from Logic line up with Live's bar 1.

Tempo deserves attention. When Live detects tempo and time-signature data in an imported file it offers to import it — but the prompt is easy to miss, and as of mid-2026 users report multi-change tempo maps importing inconsistently. If your song sits at one tempo, the two-second fix is typing the Logic project's BPM into Live's tempo field. If it has a real tempo map, check the imported result bar by bar before you build on it.

Then the rebuilding starts: an instrument on every track, sounds dialled back in from memory, mix automation redrawn. For a sketch that's fine. For a full project, it's an afternoon.

The way that keeps everything in place

If what you actually want is the project in Ableton — not a folder of raw notes — convert the whole thing instead of exporting MIDI. Doseedo converts the .logicx into a native .als project: your MIDI arrives already placed on named, coloured tracks, exactly where it sat in the arrangement. Tracks arrive in order with names and colors; audio clips keep their fades and clip gain; MIDI notes, CC and pitch bend come across; multi-point tempo and time-signature maps, arrangement markers, volume, pan and breakpoint automation lanes, and buses and sends all carry over. On plugins, the honest picture: stock compressor, reverb, and delay settings map to the destination DAW's native devices with their core controls intact; other plugins arrive placed on the right track as device slots to re-fill — third-party preset state isn't reconstructed. The full spec is on the what-carries-over breakdown.

Manual MIDI export still has its place — sending one melody to a collaborator, moving a chord progression into a sampler, archiving parts in a universal format. But for "I need this song in Live," a converted project skips every trap on this page except the one no file format solves: third-party sounds you'll re-pick yourself. There's more in our guide to converting a Logic project to Ableton.

Related guides

• Open a Logic file in Ableton Live
• Convert a Logic project to Ableton
• Switching from Logic to Ableton
• Collaborate between Logic and Ableton