Just watched this incredible performance from the Free Jazz thread and hopped over, inspired, to Max. Here’s a quick patch for playing around with glitchy builtin laptop mic feedback. No headphones, it’s feedback time! :smiling_imp:

laptop.feedback.maxpat (17.6 KB)

(Note: input audio causes the groove~ to duck, and sensitivity sets the amount)


(Really quick test recordings… I like the crusty sounds at the end of the first, and the second gets… uh, wild :joy: )

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neat patch! thanks for sharing, was quite fun just to replay some songs or samples from my computer speaker etc.

but i really had no idea my iphone could also be a mic into max — quite fun just wandering around the house making a racket, recording the rain outside, or banging the table

(i could see adding something to bang the randomizer at random times while i’m wandering around)
fun!

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hi everyone,

i just build a max for live device, it’s a midi controller for chase bliss mood mk2.
you can download at the link below for free.

i was studying Max/MSP for the past weeks. in order to familiarize myself with the Max environment, i decided to build something simple, a midi controller.

so i took a M4L Midi Controller for Generation Loss mk2 built by Chase Bliss as reference, stripped it down, tried to understand how it was working, and build myself a similar midi controller.

finally i think it’s done, i’ve tested it and i think it worked fine (hopefully :joy:).
pretty stoked and such a pleasant feeling to be able to build something and use it. definitely will continue this Max journey down the rabbit hole :rainbow::rabbit2:

if you decided to use it, i hope you find this device useful for your creative process.

cheers.


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i just got the mood mk2 and im setting up my ableton now again with max… this is alllll up my alley right now! gonna try it soon

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I think link is broken… I can’t find anything

I use it all the time, it’s my back generative music when I making coffee and want to let the music play for a few minutes. I drop a piano I played and then it’s doing it’s own path that I’m found of.

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Ah thanks…! This device seems awesome…

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since I’ve recently dived into PureData again I’ve caught the visual programming bug. this time it feels like it’s gonna stick for a while. been having a lot of fun learning and using pd but I also wanted to transport my knowledge to maxMSP and really get to learn it well.

While I love the minimalism of pd, the extensibility of max (m4l, jitter, gen~, rnbo and all their applications) is really intriguing and I would love to explore that world

also the fact that I was around back when monome and maxMSP were best buddies always brings back fond memories and I would love to potentially bring back so of those lovely memories (I still have a working mlr2 version somehow)

having said all that, I’m trying to figure out what would be the best way to dive into max, normally I like to follow YouTube tutorials but I didn’t find any that really clicked well with me. I heard about a book called " Electronic Music and Sound Design - Theory and Practice with Max 8" that I might check out

any other helpful resources for max learning? ideally stuff that explains what the core max concepts are rather than a “follow my steps to recreate what I just did without understanding anything” type deals?

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That book - actually all three volumes - is the answer, or was for me anyway. I had used Max on and off for years but it wasn’t until I had to teach it and got Vol 1 and worked through it methodically, twice (I made every single patch twice - once on the first read and the second time as fast as I could to develop muscle memory and speed) that I really got it. Totally recommend them!

The VJ Manzo book is good too but mostly for the max side of the language.

Top tip btw if you’re on apple gear you can get the books as iBooks for cheaper which actually make sense as you can have it open on your screen while yo patch…plus the examples play ‘in the book’ so to speak.

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great thanks! also good note on the iBook side thanks :slightly_smiling_face:

I do have another question that might be a bit vague or person dependent, but is it really doable to simultaneously use pd and max or do people tend to just stick to one? there are things I love about both and I want to use both but I feel also that they are quite different in the objects it has and the way its implemented even thought they started from the same place.

I guess it’s kind like having 2 different programming languages…

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I never felt like I couldn’t do both but you do have to keep in mind the differences. Max order of operations is dependent on where the objects are on the screen (unless you do the right thing and use trigger/bang objects…which you should lol), where as PD is dependent on WHEN you connected the objects (or at least used to be, it’s been a while since I used it)…and that can seriously mess you up if you confuse the two.

Obviously there are different objects and visual aesthetics etc. but it’s not that hard to keep them separate. In some ways I think knowing PD can make you a stronger Max coder due to it not having as many higher order objects.

I think maybe only you would be able to answer that question tho. I tended to work in one for a while and then flip depending on my mood. Fwiw, Vol 1 of the above book (EMASD) has a PD version of the same text in case you’re curious. It’s literally the same book ported to PD.

Oh btw Gregory Taylor’s Step by Step book is great and much fun. I have his Gen book too but haven’t started on it just yet.

Ps - I should note I’m not some great patcher btw, these days I’m borderline competent :joy:

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yeah I saw the pd port of it and thought that was quite interesting.
I think that what I actually really enjoy from pd precisely is the fact that it’s quite low level and minimal with objects vs the big selection of things in max… I love the idea of really building everything almost from scratch as a learning tool and an expressive tool.

Pd really gives me the same feelings I get when designing electronic circuits for music / sound generation/manipulation which for me is very gratifying so going into max with the more lower level focus is definitely what I’m going to be aiming for.

right now I’m just experimenting with recreating the same small pd patches I’ve been making into max and learning that way. thankfully there are more things that are common in the lower level stuff than I expected. I guess most people tend to gravitate towards the more complete/dedicated options like for example the counter object vs making a counter with a floating object and an incrementer.

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The aforementioned books are really good if you are ready to do some focused work. I heartily recommend them too.

There’s also a helpful video course that methodically goes through many aspects of the language in a different way from the books. Matt Wright’s Kadenze course is a methodical language focused approach. I highly recommend that too. And it’s free but you have to sign in to Kadenze.

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if the lower level / from scratch feeling is really what you’re after, and you do decide to dive in to max rather than sticking with PD, i’ve gotten a lot of satisfaction from trying to do as much of my patching as possible in gen and gen~

if you go that route, i would consider the Gregory Taylor gen book to be absolutely essential. it’s the best music tech book i’ve bought in years!

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I’m really tempted by the PD version of the book myself just as a refresher…but I had to stop myself as I have enough to do already (as in the aformentioned Gen book ha!).

@zoundsabar ‘s suggestion on the Kadenze course is good too - very thorough I thought. Also Chris Dobrian’s site has some great stuff (he wrote the early MSP documentation / tutorials):

http://www.algorithmiccomposer.com/

and

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yes!! I’m currently in the process of watching a talk he did on YouTube going through the gen~ stuff. definite interest point for me too with the daisy seed integration

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Not a gen~ magician, but I do happen to be reading chapter one of Cipriani and Giri vol 3 which deals with gen, and I believe it contains an answer for you. It looks like peek does what you want.

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i dont know much about where you’re coming from but last night i was watching this and found it educational

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philip has been killing it with these tutorials on his channel! this tutorial definitely helped me out when I was stuck in a weird rut building out a gen looper/sampler I’ve been working on.

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Absolutely! I only very recently discovered his channel and immediately subscribed and started watching his videos. Some of the best presented explanation videos on max out there (at least for me)

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