Max/MSP anyone?

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This weekend I decided to download Max/MSP and start doing stuff with it. It is superb! I put together a little drum synth and pattern sequencer this afternoon from scratch, and now I feel like a god.

Also, check this Autechre patch:

http://www.recordlabelrecords.org/patches/aeTM3_3_forPC.zip

:o

Andrew (enneff), Sunday, 11 February 2007 04:55 (eighteen years ago)

I downloaded jmax once just to test the waters, but haven't had time to get things going. Will make plans for this weekend.

naus, Thursday, 22 February 2007 03:04 (eighteen years ago)

never forget nf ;_;

electricsound, Thursday, 22 February 2007 03:40 (eighteen years ago)

I'm taking a course on Max/MSP. It seems like there's a hugely steep learning curve but I expect that it will be powerful in the long run.

Sundar, Friday, 23 February 2007 00:31 (eighteen years ago)

Andrew -

my friend Jacopo studied Sonology and he makes Patches. You might like his Olanto one... I've put all the info I have on it below (I did a little mailout for him to all my music making friends).... Enjoy and get in touch with him if you have any questions, wishes and feedback.
Sorry for the long nature of the post but I hope you'll find it interesting.

GO HERE TO DOWNLOAD IT
www.lan-muzic.com <<MAX PATCHES>>

OLANTO MAX MSP PATCH

Hyper step Sequence machine for Live electronic music based on pattern building, with some nice little MIDI and Audio features.
In other words its a "made for live improv thingy dingy"!

As a compositional tool the Olanto Patch is made to play with patterns in a Live context in an interactive and interesting way.
It follows the indian raga concept of flying with a limited amount of rules around a certain rythmical structure and then coming back to coeherence. The Patch has been implemented with Max/MSP(www.cycling74.com) a powerful mathematical tool for Audio(and not only) software design.

You draw the rules and you can play with the rules.

There are 4 main sections (modules) patched with each other....
1) The MIDI step sequencer which offers realtime-step recording/drawing of events for 8 MIDI tracks (Pitch, Velocity, Duration, and 1 Continues Control).

2) The Audio section: 3 Choppers/Resequentiators which can record, playback, resequence the loops, create granular effects, all in realtime, all BPM syncable. You can actually use uneven divisions to create difficult but coherent tempo patterns (11/8 against 7/4 for example), with whatever sound.

3) An Audio DSP chain, with four Audio tracks: Track number 1 and 2 have in insert a distortion, a multipurpose two octave filter (Lpf, Bpf, Notch, Hpf, Resonant, allpass).
Track 3 implements a Bit/Sample crusher plus filter, and track 4 a Ring Modulation Device.
There are 2 sends for each track for two different kind of Delaying.
Both Delays are Virtual Simulation of a Tape delay, but BPM syncable with infinite Feedback and panning, One Delay implements a multiband Filter.
Here too you can create a Pattern for each Parameter, and Draw a quasi-score again multiplying your "hands", and everything as quick as passing your finger on the computer' s trackpad.

4) The Sequencer for sequences that is assigned to the various pattern generating machines (both MIDI and Audio).
Although patterned oriented the sequencer that sequences the sequences gives the opportunity of playing around with poly rythmycal structures and to easily recombine them so to give a sense, a meaning, to what you do by going back to a main musical point (the indian raga!!!).
This gives the possibility of reaching dramatic changes while using a simple step sequencer, something you cannot do in real time with other loop based, or step based commercial software.

In fact Olanto is a "made for Live impro" thingy dingy!!!
There is no compromise!!! You do it Live or not, in fact I implemented a way of saving the patterns, but you HAVE to save them individually, why?
So you can also navigate through patterns while playing and reroute them for something else, but you are also obliged to remember what you did, similarly as playing an instrument.

So have a nice try, and the more you fool around with it, the more you' ll have fun!

For more Details or for the entire Max/MSP Patch, or any curiosity please feel free to contact me at jacopo@lan-muzic.com specifying in the object it is for the Patch please!

- - - - JACOPO CARRERAS - - - -

During his teens, Jacopo swings between Hard-Rock, Acid Jazz and Techno, playing the bass in several bands, spinning the most experimental music he could find and absorbing all the possible influences in the periferic, but extremely active, music scene of Rome. He quickly develops his passion for samplers and drum-machines, trying to implement live improvisation with the bass and electronic-pop beats. Growing up means also being a little confused of what you want to do, but chance sometimes helps.

While continuing his humanistic studies, they gradually push him to the Royal Conservatory of the Hague (NL) for the Sonology course, one of The Temples of pure Electronic music.
From then on he starts computing music through Max/MSP. Partly via knowledge, mainly via trial and error he builds his own musical environments, for composing, playing, sound design. No compromise is made and chance gives a hand again.
Through his friend and musical collegue Donato, he meets Marco and Ingo the Exercise One duo, light at first sight. Finally he lands in Berlin, where he finds himself envolved in the LAN crew with his first pure techno release "Sagredo". Twisted techno, as someone defined it, a mess for others, for him fun playing it live.

He is now working on new patches, different productions, from pop to intimate/sweet hard techno, the co-owned Post26 café and looking at the crazy world.
Ehm, an oscillator please we need a sawtooth...

idle_matilda, Saturday, 24 February 2007 10:01 (eighteen years ago)

if only it were in pd

JW, Thursday, 1 March 2007 20:17 (eighteen years ago)

five years pass...

the learning curve is steep as fuck can someone help me please i'm overwhelmed

spazzmatazz, Wednesday, 12 September 2012 16:17 (twelve years ago)

what are you trying to build

would smash pumpkins (Ówen P.), Wednesday, 12 September 2012 17:25 (twelve years ago)

^ U&K

Crackle Box, Thursday, 13 September 2012 15:03 (twelve years ago)

I think a few people get a bit confused as to what Max/Msp actually is. The thought of learning Max is kind of weird because if you don't have a half decent background in digital audio + midi even simple things will seem massively complex. If you're looking to make sounds quickly by plugging things together, get Reaktor. It's insanely easy to use; especially if you've played with a modular synth before and will give you a good grounding in how things affect each other.

Anyway my hangovers are spent watching tutorials on Youtube and occasionally having huge OMG duh jesus christ that's how you do *that* moments. I can't get on the Youtube at work but I think one of my favourites is this guy called 'BazTutorials',

Do you use it for much Owen? I made a 4 channel spectral cross fader that gets lots of use, say I have 4 pad type sounds I can pick and choose which frequencies come from which channel. Gonna have fun expanding that and making it more playable, all the FFT stuff get's pretty easy once you begin to connect the dots and work out which bits of code you can re-use.

My knowledge is really lacking in the Midi/Max side of things; I want to make more complex midi systems where controller/note/velocity have funny little relationships but also where I can define quite strict tonal/rhymic/density type elements but bah even making simple stuff makes my brain hurt.

Crackle Box, Thursday, 13 September 2012 15:21 (twelve years ago)

I haven't used msp at all at all. (I don't like the sound of it.) I've built some generative MIDI patches for a couple of film things. Mostly, though, I just use it as an interpreter. Press a button to trigger a sequence, scale these 127 CC values to a new slope of OSC commands, stuff like that.

would smash pumpkins (Ówen P.), Thursday, 13 September 2012 15:51 (twelve years ago)

I am laughing now at spazz saying "Emeralds is boring" one one thread and "Max/MSP idgi" on another. (Not joshing you spazz Max/MSP is hard but you're gonna have to hit the books pretty hard to make anything less boring than Emeralds)

would smash pumpkins (Ówen P.), Thursday, 13 September 2012 15:53 (twelve years ago)

What does U&K mean?

would smash pumpkins (Ówen P.), Thursday, 13 September 2012 15:54 (twelve years ago)

I've always wanted to make a "Max/PureData for mortals" program because frankly it's confusing to me, too!
Do you guys think a reasonable number of people would be interested in such a thing?
It would have to be pretty dumbed-down is my guess.

Philip Nunez, Thursday, 13 September 2012 15:56 (twelve years ago)

U&K = urgent & key

with the ghostly "YOOOOOOOOOOOOHHOOOO" vocals? (crüt), Thursday, 13 September 2012 15:59 (twelve years ago)

"Max/PureData for mortals"?

I guess colour coded ports, common mathematical operations having their own modules/macros, fewer objects but then you're kind of just making Reaktor anyway

Crackle Box, Monday, 17 September 2012 12:25 (twelve years ago)

Does Max for Live help? That's pretty much all I use.

EveningStar (Sund4r), Tuesday, 18 September 2012 01:28 (twelve years ago)

Crackle Box, do you use any of your MaxMSP patches on the track you linked on the "what do you sound like?" thread?

I still consider myself a Max/MSP novice. I've used it to design a few effects in M4L, basically.

EveningStar (Sund4r), Tuesday, 18 September 2012 01:36 (twelve years ago)

Yeah a lot of it is going through that spectral crossfader thingy, which is a modded version of this:

youtube.com/watch?v=svMh1LKjOo4

The samples were all recorded at various points along the Necropolis railway line in London (how original(!) trains! railways!) which were then loaded into a granular sampler so I could layer and make textures out of them.

Anyway it's my first attempt at doing stuff like and now I've just got hours of improvisations like what's on the Soundcloud and no idea what to do with it all.

Crackle Box, Tuesday, 18 September 2012 09:39 (twelve years ago)

BazTutorials appears potentially exciting.

If you're interested in FFT-based processing, there are some great objects in this library: http://www.somasa.qub.ac.uk/~elyon/LyonSoftware/MaxMSP/FFTease/

EveningStar (Sund4r), Wednesday, 19 September 2012 00:14 (twelve years ago)

is there some paritcular feature that is particularly cumbersome to execute in max that would be cool if it were easier?

Philip Nunez, Wednesday, 19 September 2012 00:29 (twelve years ago)

ooh cheers! xpost

Phillip - This might be just a personal thing cuz i'm well stupid but scaling values is the thing that always gets me.

Say i have an object farting out a bunch of values 0-1000 and I want to plug that into an object that accepts -1 to +1 and say I don't want that relationship to be directionally proportional but biased at the edges or w/e. That's where I always get stumped but I get the impression most people that use the program don't. There's now a version of 'Scale' that works in the signal domain iirc but a visual graph like thing that allows you to do weird scaling like that would be amazing imo.

Crackle Box, Wednesday, 19 September 2012 09:17 (twelve years ago)

I assume you mean you want to scale 0-1000 to -1. to +1.? I haven't done anything more complex in this regard than expr objects with a sin or cos function

E.I.E.I. (Ówen P.), Wednesday, 19 September 2012 12:46 (twelve years ago)


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