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maxMspGen haaaalp


marf

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What I did to get used to it was just learn the basics and then dissect other patches and figure out how to do things from observing how they worked. There's an Autechre patch out there (an early version of Acroyear2, I think) that was very useful for me.

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There's an Autechre patch out there (an early version of Acroyear2, I think) that was very useful for me.

Dunno about that, it's an absolute mess of a patch, that's like learning music theory by staring very hard at this -

 

http://i.imgur.com/SM84bqI.gif

 

I'd say if you wanna learn, then start simple (Using Baz's Tutorials):

 

 

(work through them here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNOiEhpAKmrII_xwFUEsNaA )

 

Bought Max6 (now have 7) over two years ago, and still not touched (or had any reason to touch) the Gen~ side of things ...

 

If you want a big bastard book then I recommended this - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Electronic-Music-Sound-Design-Practice/dp/8890548401

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It doesn't seem very messy to me. It's complicated, but it's organized and coherent.

Ah just checked out your zip, that's a nicely cleaned up edition (which I didn't actually realise was out there !), originally it looked like this :

 

max_ae.png

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Aye, my one was dated around 2003-ish I think (except muggins here resaved it a few years later knocking off the time stamp). Was definitely at uni at the time so predates that 2006 one, think it was a Confield era snippet

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im a manual reader. i dont know why. i imagine it comes with a maual..

Not sure about the boxed copy (if it even is available in a boxed version anymore!) but the download version comes with bloody amazing reference support and/or tutorials for basically every object
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I'm currently in the midst of this nonsense now. Max is hard. Msp harder. There seems to be quite a jump from reading a patch to writing one. Some people just seem to be fluent at this. Maybe computer science backgrounds help. Maybe I'm just a stupid social scientist. Knowledge of signals seems pretty important the more complex u get. That said our good friend Mark Fell seems to consider simplicity just as fruitful often generating what appears to be complex from straight forward algos. The YouTube tutorials have moments where u just have to know what to do. Just because u have to I will etc This is the challenge so far.

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Max is hard. Msp harder.

Really ? Not found that myself - with the 'Max' side you're just manipulating numbers and the 'MSP' side the sample buffer - Aside from adding the tilde symbol at the end of the object I haven't really noticed much different in the way of difficultly. Though I'm still a super newbie, maybe I'll find out the differences as I delve deeper.
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MSP is definitely more difficult to control than Max, because signals can be very unpredictable when you aren't sure what you're doing. I tend to just focus on the Max side and let VST and samples handle the sound design and signal manipulation because of how complicated signals can be. MSP is what makes the interface so inaccessible, in my opinion; it's much easier to learn Max and then MSP than the other way around.

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MSP side of things is difficult in that there is more math and physics needed than the Max part. It's not required to know the math but you probably won't be able to venture too far out from what the tutorials provide. Max deals with the control aspect of everything and having things send, receive and transform messages (sequencing). The most difficult stuff with Max is order of operations if you are not using the expression object. The MSP is when you are working with the actual modelling of sound and trying very hard to remember how to do trigonometry functions and identities from algebra 2. Many of the tutorials I've seen gloss over the math aspect and dive right into how to make a certain effect or generator, so even though you know how to program the MSP portion you will not completely understand why.

 

For actual Max/MSP tutorials on making stuff, the ones that come with Max are mostly good (they're becoming outdated though.) If you don't know anything on digital sound processing there are a couple of textbooks that explain everything really well called Musimathics Vol 1 and 2 by Dr. Gareth Loy http://www.musimathics.com/. It uses C++ as its examples instead of Max but you can transfer what you learn in musimatics into max. Just a warning that they are a time sink and you'll have to know algebra to understand the physics concepts. It spends a good long time teaching the precalculus parts so you won't have to worry too much about having to relearn limits and differential equations. They also have algebra and trigonometry crash courses in the appendixes.

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It's not a key object at all. You can use the operator and trigger objects just fine. But because of the visual nature of Max/Pd sometimes they get confusing to wire together when you are doing a long formula and its easier to use the expr~ object. Also if I am doing an equation that just requires a function to be calculated once or infrequently I'll use just normal math objects because banging out an already calculated float is faster than for it to go through an expression and be recalculated each time.

 

I have a bunch of info on the subject on my artist webspace for beginners wanting to get into max and pd coming at it from a mathematically challenged perspective.

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im sort of leaning back to supercollider. its gotten better with quarks. i dont have a mac new enough to use them. but i like using just pure text. the beauty of the font.

 

ill check out msp and gen sometime when i have the access

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