Max/MSP, Max4Live, & RNBO (the thread)

24Franks · 2022-09-14T00:53:24.824Z

If there is anyone on here that has wanted to learn Max as a total beginner we are offering a three week Intro to Max workshop through Synth Library Portland! If you know of anyone interested please share

withfriends.co

9/27 - Intro to Max (Samples & Sequencers) by Synth Library Portland

Get tickets and support Synth Library Portland by becoming a member

clumsycomputer · 2022-09-14T01:19:52.590Z

been a while since ive done the max/msp thing (in many ways my introduction to programing), but thought i should lay this out there to those with the proper experience. ive been iterating and fleshing out a bunch of rhythm-related math over the past decade and have done the work of documenting and encoding a bunch of the concepts that i feel are novel and valuable to electronic musicians. ive implemented these concepts as a typescript library called clumsy-math and believe if the right person ported this to max4live or something similar then they would be unlocking a door to a whole new world of mathematically generated rhythms that is currently unavailable to electronic musicians.

note the project is distributed under an MIT license so y’all would be free to do with it has you please. even make some cheddar if so inclined. i simply don’t have the time these days to take on such a project, but it would of been a dream of mine 10 years ago.

so if any of you are interested in such an undertaking im here to answer any questions

also if anyone is aware of similar math that is being developed and your able to point me in the right direction that would be much appreciated. i wanna make sure im on the same page with others doing similar work

_mark · 2022-09-14T10:24:55.196Z

Yeah - happy to have a look, either post here or PM me.

Xylr · 2022-09-29T15:41:20.153Z

I recently downloaded the current 8.3 version (was on 8.2.1 previously) because I wanted to try out the latest starter patch, MC Masher (here: https://cycling74.com/articles/max-8-3-starters ) as heard in this c74 IG post Cycling '74 on Instagram: "This week's Max 8.3 Starter patch takes a single instrument sample and drifts out of sync into a lush ambient sound, leveraging mc.phasegroove~ and mc.groove~ (w/ timestretch turned on) and "deviate" messages. #timestretch #ambientmusic #maxmsp #cycling74"

…but I am hitting 100% cpu trying to run it. I can open other max patches so I don’t think it’s a preferences thing. Any ideas?

iainduncan · 2022-10-02T15:00:13.860Z

Hi friends, I have just put a video introduction to scripting Ableton Live in Lisp (through Max for Live) with Scheme for Max.

Scheme for Max is a free and open-source extension to Max/MSP that enables you to script and live-code Max and Max for Live using s7 Scheme Lisp. You can use s4m for live-coding, building sequencers, generative music, scripting the Live API, making control surfaces, and lots more! In this video I demonstrate the example Live devices included in Scheme for Max 0.4

Get Scheme for Max from GitHub Releases · iainctduncan/scheme-for-max · GitHub

Find out more on the forum: https://schemeformax.discourse.group/

Hope this of interest to some!
iain

timp · 2022-10-02T20:30:54.834Z

For anyone interested in Samplebrain (ApheZ Twin sample masher) mentioned in another thread there is a (simplified) Max version here

_mark · 2022-10-03T10:45:05.188Z

Try having a look at the signal vector size in the prefs. I don’t need low latency most of the time, so usually run with this:

Screenshot 2022-10-03 at 11.42.10732×396 14.1 KB

You can still do most signal rate stuff (eg clocking modular) at 32, hence why a good balance for me.

edit: I just had a look at the patch you mentioned - it is surprisingly cpu heavy! Seems like 24 channels of groove~ @timestretch 01 is the culprit, but that makes sense given the processing I guess. You could try running half that at 12 channels and probably still get some nice results though.

Here it is for anyone curious:
ben-mc-masher.maxpat (9.0 KB)

Anfim · 2022-10-05T04:23:06.709Z

Cycling '74 is teasing max for ARM

https://twitter.com/cycling74/status/1577342904540041217

DMR · 2022-10-05T15:47:41.083Z

It seems like the licensing requirements for Max have also prevented it from being used in cases like this, where something open source like PureData could be more conveniently used instead. I wonder if there may be some changes on that front?

ampism · 2022-10-06T10:20:38.682Z

Sorry for dumb question folks, but how do I use this patch?:

https://cycling74.com/articles/starting-points-in-max

When I click on this, it opens a page of very ominous looking code, that immediately makes me shut my laptop and put the kettle on. Perhaps with some gentle guidance, one of you can explain how I get this thing up and running? I have only ever accessed M4L stuff from within Ableton, never as standalone software, if that helps.

I’m a huge fan of Jacob’s work, Cartographer opened up whole new worlds for me.

Thanks in advance!

_mark · 2022-10-06T10:54:22.437Z

You just need to open it with the Max application instead of your text editor. So either right click and go ‘open with…’ and point to Max or launch max and choose open from the file menu.

ampism · 2022-10-06T20:22:26.115Z

Thanks @_mark . That makes sense

xmacex · 2022-10-09T23:03:36.676Z

I’m reading Georgina Born’s Music and Digital Media A Planetary Anthropology (2022, UCL Press )

Chapter 6 is with Joe Snype, and titled Max, music software and the mutual mediation of aesthetics and digital technologies.

The intro goes like this:

In recent years, Max – a graphical programming environment for media art practices – has come to prominence as a staple of contemporary music-making worldwide.1 Used by innumerable musicians and artists, Max software is taught to students as a core curriculum component in music, music technology and multimedia art degrees offered by thousands of institutions of higher education across the developed world. In their MusDig research, Georgina Born and Patrick Valiquet found Max to be ubiquitous in university digital music trainings in Britain and Montreal. But Max is also increasingly prominent outside academia, as evidenced by the three-day Max convention held at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in April 2019 and by a recent slew of how-to books for uninitiated coders in English, Spanish and German (Lechner 2014; Manzo and Kuhn 2015; Manzo 2016; Perales 2017; Taylor 2018). Despite Max’s established position as a global vernacular, there is scant research that investigates what the program is, the environments it inhabits, and how it is contributing to refashioning the nature of musicianship and the kinds of musical cultures evolving with music’s digitisation. Through multisite ethnography, this chapter provides a portrait of Max to inaugurate debate on these matters.

The prevailing conceptualisation of Max is formulated in terms of what it can do for those who use it. Unsurprisingly, Max’s developer, a company called Cycling ’74, presents the software as powerful, reporting that ‘for over two decades, people have been using Max to make their computers do things that reflect their individual ideas and dreams’.2 Less expected is the discourse of many Max practitioners. Online searches and conversations with users reveal scores of platitudes attesting to the program’s astonishing powers. Characteristic paeans include: ‘It’s so versatile and open-ended it can be used for practically anything’; ‘It’s pretty much capable of anything’; ‘Max can do anything you want it to’.3 The discourse that surrounds Max, then, constructs the software as aesthetically neutral, transparent and infinitely reconfigurable – a mirror reflecting back pure authorial intention. In short, as not a mediator. This type of discourse on music software has been prevalent in academic and nonacademic computer music and audio technology circles for decades.4 It envisages for Max a universal, purely technical functionality that denies its embeddedness in social and cultural formations, as well as its technical specificities and their musical consequences. Probing Max’s complex materiality and the actual uses made of Max, this chapter sets out with different assumptions: that Max and similar computer music environments are powerful mediators. They are not neutral channels supporting human musical imagination and labour; rather, they have particular proclivities that inflect, extend and transform musical imagination and labour.

The chapter is based primarily on fieldwork conducted by Joe Snape in spring 2014 at the University of California Berkeley’s (UCB) Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT).5 Probing Max’s sociomateriality via scenes deeply involved in Max design and use, it complements Valiquet’s and Born’s ethnographies (chapters 7 and 8). CNMAT has a long tradition of teaching Max to students at UCB, notably at its renowned annual Max Summer Courses in Berkeley, which ran under Adrian Freed’s stewardship until 2016, and of expanding Max’s functionality through software and hardware design. Beyond UCB, the San Francisco Bay Area is home to Max’s developer, the company Cycling '74. Many of Cycling ’74’s full-time employees live in the Bay Area and engineers working for the company hold positions at regional educational organisations. Together, Mills College and San Francisco Art Institute play important roles in fostering communities of Max users, as does Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) in Palo Alto. Individuals from these institutions and beyond participate in a vibrant experimental music scene that sees daytime developers perform as musicians by night, and in which everyday overlaps between programming cultures and musical cultures facilitate probing discussions about their interrelations.

Complementing the Berkeley fieldwork, and providing comparative perspective, was fieldwork at a second site: the 2013 Tokyo Experimental Festival (TEF) held at Tokyo Wonder Site, a contemporary arts organisation. Running for two months annually, the festival invites musicians and sound artists to undertake residencies and performances, and more than two-thirds of these used Max. In addition, as a musician, Snape has worked for almost a decade with Max alongside other users, inside and outside educational settings. His longstanding, lived engagement adds nuance to the ethnography that follows.

(I added bolding)

timp · 2022-10-17T23:12:55.469Z

Interesting idea: M4L wrapper for Valhalla plugs

Gumroad

ValhallaWrapper

ValhallaWrapper Use the amazing ValhallaDPS plugins like native ableton devices! -You can easily access any parameter without opening the GUI ( but you can still open it if you like : ) ).( www.vallhalladsp.com) DISCLAIMER: - These max for live...

Price: USD 10.0

anxietymachine · 2022-10-17T23:50:00.139Z

hey y’all - i have no experience with patching max, but this max4live port of grids doesn’t work on m1 macs. could anyone give guidance on how to fix that? Grids for Max for Live version 1.3 by mots on maxforlive.com

Markus · 2022-10-18T00:34:19.487Z

I don’t understand the purpose nor need for this. One can just expose all parameters of a plugin and use the ableton inbuilt “gui”. With that you can also sort parameters and there also exposed to remote control scripts / midi controllers.

timp · 2022-10-18T08:37:15.964Z

I thought it was about having the actual Valhalla GUI in the ableton device rack. Some plugins like K Devices make use of that space, but others don’t & just expose all parameters. I haven’t tried it but Vahallas GUI look functional at that scale…

Lolewlol · 2022-10-25T02:50:57.189Z

Gonna leave this god-awful karaoke night I’m at to try this out

violet · 2022-11-01T01:20:19.862Z

more of a cycling '74 question - but does anyone here use M from intelligent music? i’ve been interested in it after reading a steve roach interview where he gives it high praise. does anyone here have experience with it or know of any modern versions?

also love that richard lainhart was technical director at intelligent music in the 80s when it first released.

https://web.archive.org/web/20081103011823/https://cycling74.com/products/M

atarimagazines.com

Music: Intelligent Music's M

Music: Intelligent Music's M. The Interactive Composing System. From Start Vol. 3 No. 2 / Special Issue #4

24Franks · 2022-11-01T01:54:54.155Z

@staysh is a big M user