I handle the mental effort required by following my motivation. I pick up Pd whenever I have a clear idea of what I want to achieve with it, even if that idea is “vaguely explore concept/technique X”. Then I stop whenever I lose motivation and go do something else, which inevitably ends up informing and developing how I approach Pd when I inevitably return to it.
This time round, those things were: building an Ambika and Shruthi (no need for conventional subtractive soft synths any more!), being inspired by seeing how people use grids to control live sample manipulation software, and realising how much more expressive my Pd use could be with interfaces like [filterview] available.
For example, Pd crashes on me if I plug in or remove an audio interface while it’s open. There are a bunch of undocumented features which work inconsistently and/or are buggy. There are tonnes of UI inconsistencies, limitations and irritations which feel like bugs when comparing it to something like Max or Reaktor.
I think one of the biggest factors leading to people seeing Pd as being buggy is that there’s a huge amount of DSP and Pd-specific knowledge required in order to make patches which actually sound good, which makes the whole thing feel glitchy and lo-fi until you know how to work around the clicks and pops.
