The bach library is a package for Max meant to bring symbolic music representation and computer-aided composition in a real-time environment (Agostini & Ghisi, 2013, 2015). In this article, we introduce a more ambitious project: situating the bach library inside a wider family of tools dealing with real-time computer-aided composition in Max, which we call the ‘bach family’. We give an overview of its core member (bach) and of its second member (cage: a high-level library of ready-made modules). We introduce its third member (dada: a library of non-standard user interfaces, currently under development), and discuss future perspectives and ideas.