Max/MSP

[thawkins]

5 minutes ago, Nil said:

@thawkins Tidal can also output 14bit MIDI CC, which is vastly more precise but might overload any virtual MIDI bus (used to pipe out MIDI from Tidal / SuperCollider to Live). Now, Live (and M4L) uses built-in automation protocol, which is super smooth with an amazing resolution. Of course it's not mandatory in all situation, but it can make a world of difference for sound design (and mixing).

 

I guess this depends on how much CC are you going to push per second. Ideally this is limited by how much Live can handle, because your CPU should be able to take gigabytes of communication traffic between applications without breaking a sweat. It also matters a little bit if you really want to use all 14 bits of accuracy (16384) or whether 4000 is enough (11bits).

I guess what I am saying is that this sounds like an interesting programming thing to work on. I only wish I had the time and energy to do that aside from my day job...

[Limo]

6 hours ago, Nil said:

believe I could use the knowledge to build the text-based sequencer I'd love to use (i.e using arrays of value rather than grids, and having distinct lists for pitch / gates / velocities) to "transplant" my Tidal MIDI workflow and sequencing into a M4L device.

 

3 hours ago, thawkins said:

This sounds suspiciously like starting to design your own programming language, which is OK to a point I guess.

Yes. There is already a programming language that uses arrays of values. It's called Lisp. Last year I used it to build a live coding tool where you could just send lists of things from the comfort of your text editor and Live would play them. Wasn't particularly hard to make but from doing this I learned I like building live coding tools more than I like using them.

 

2 hours ago, Nil said:

For long automations, or smooth fades etc... it's a whole different story.

Arrays of text are not great for that in any circumstances, I should think. 

[sweepstakes]

Some (maybe useless) thoughts:

• Pitch bend is 14-bit - as long as you only need 16 per (virtual) device, you can just assign them to different channels
• You can also bake things like inertia (or "fine" controls) into your synths in order to fake higher resolution
• Anywhere you can use OSC, a lot of these resolution problems melt away, and so does mapping/organizing, which imo is potentially an even larger time suck

[cern]

5 hours ago, Nil said:

Max seamless integration to Live makes it much interesting to me.

But if you have Ableton and M4L you can not run max as standalone or what?

And if you have max as standalone you can not use it as a M4L device or what? 

Seems pretty bad.. 

[thawkins]

7 hours ago, cern said:

But if you have Ableton and M4L you can not run max as standalone or what?

And if you have max as standalone you can not use it as a M4L device or what? 

Seems pretty bad.. 

I don't want to run Max standalone.

Here's the thing - I have spent 2-3 years pairing Pure Data to Ableton Live and yes it works, and you can do a lot of things. I have had a lot of fun and made some cool tracks with this combo.

The problem for me is that I started to have a lot of projects and I wanted to have an organization where I have everything in the Live project, so I when I want to finish an idea from 3 years ago, I can just boot it up and I don't have to figure out what Pure Data patch I had somewhere that did an important thing. By moving those things into M4L devices I can sort of achieve that.

Yeah I know I could use Git version control to store my Pure Data history and come back to it when I need to, but fuck I do this all day at work and music stuff is not the place I want to deal with this.

That's just my workflow - I want to use Pure Data/M4L to generate MIDI and use Live (or another DAW) to record that and turn it into sound using VSTs or external hardware.

[iococoi]

 

[Nil]

@rhmilo Scheme, right ? 😉 If so, I'm well aware of it, looks super cool, thought it'd require me to adapt several new mindsets : Max, Lisp and yours ! I'm not sure I have the time nor the energy here, as eventually all I want is to have fun writing shitload of tunes, ah !

I'm seriously considering Max to keep everything into the Max4Live/Live environnement. Ditching Tidal (and Atom / SuperCollider / Haskell / Link) in favor of Max makes sense to me only if going for a "Live contained set-up". Now being an Ableton Certified Trainer, I'm not ditching Live anytime soon hehe, so transplanting what I do with Tidal (which isn't that complicated really, just flexible MIDI sequencing really) into Max/M4L would be IMO the most logical move here.
 
If only Tidal was a Max library, it'd make everything much easier for me 😉

I love Live, and the more I use Push the more I love it too... but I just hate piano rolls. And once you've freed yourself from a rigid grid, you can't go back hehe.

I'm being super candid here, being a total Max newbie, I just thought hacking from skimming Step by Step that I could eventually hack its sequencer (which seems to offer most of the option I  seek) by replacing the live.step object by several list objects... but I guess it reveals how much of a total naive newbie I am here 😄

Ideally I'd use M4L to MIDI sequence / perform, and Live's built-in automation system, mapping, macros etc.. for everything else (handling plugins, sound-design, recording, mixing, automations, you name it). An update Gibberwocky M4L device could be exactly what I'm looking, with the most minimal learning curve. Once again I just want to write tunes, and have fun doing so 🙂

@sweepstakes  I've thought of OSC too, but have no clue (from the little I know) how I could implement it. I also believe that some parameter modulations are much faster to draw than to code. Thanks anyway, not a useless post at all.

@iococoi wow, thanks, awesome video ! 

[Limo]

13 minutes ago, Nil said:

all I want is to have fun writing shitload of tunes, ah

See ... and that's the difference between you and me. 😉

13 minutes ago, Nil said:

I guess it reveals how much of a total naive newbie I am here

Not really. You *can* hack something together where "several list objects" go into Live. It's probably not even hard. You would need to devise a way to send clock pulses (just copy paste from the book) and a way to turn list elements into MIDI events. This, too, is not hard.

Unfortunately, when you've done that you end up with an unpleasant to use, much less feature-full version of TC (what makes TC - and also Scheme/Lisp - nice to use is the fact that you can run it from your text editor). Editing Max lists on the fly is ... not very nice.

One possible way around this is to write something that reads sequence data from text files, edit those text files in a text editor and have your M4L tool read in the text file when it's changed, maybe because you're hitting a large button or something like that.

It'd still be a kludge, though.

[sweepstakes]

2 hours ago, Nil said:

If only Tidal was a Max library, it'd make everything much easier for me 😉

If only everything was a library. I'm so sick of 99% of problems (or just foregone possibilities) being compatibility issues. I hope someone solves this problem in the next 20-50 years.

2 hours ago, Nil said:

once you've freed yourself from a rigid grid, you can't go back hehe.

Yep, once you've had a taste of the fluid frontier, everything else feels like a toy.

[psn]

Just play in a band with a drummer if you hate the grid so much. 

[d-a-m-o]

7 hours ago, iococoi said:

 

Great vid, thanks !

[cern]

Where can I listen to good music made with max? 

The only music with complete tracks that ive found is Rinos stuff which is very dope
 

 

[Limo]

54 minutes ago, cern said:

Where can I listen to good music made with max?

https://bleep.com/artist/71-autechre

[cern]

Yeah but Autechre does not use max only you know. 

There is many people here talking about max but where can I hear your music made with max? 🙂

[Limo]

2 hours ago, cern said:

Yeah but Autechre does not use max only you know. 

Yes they do - these days, anyways.

 

2 hours ago, cern said:

where can I hear your music made with max? 🙂

One does not use max to make music ...

[cern]

Can you prove they do 100%? 

Oh yeah you use it as a tool to talk about I see but what have you created with it? 

[Bodhidharma]

34 minutes ago, cern said:

Can you prove they do 100%? 

Oh yeah you use it as a tool to talk about I see but what have you created with it? 

onesix sets are 100% max msp btw, i asked sean

[cern]

4 minutes ago, Bodhidharma said:

onesix sets are 100% max msp btw, i asked sean

Good someone know what they talking about.

Looking forward to see all your max creations here 🙂 

[xox]

I can’t remember hearing a piece of music made with max and thinking wow this couldn’t be made in a daw! Even Autechre, majority, if not every track made with max could be replicated in a daw but probably much harder bc youd need to automate millions of parameters; max is good if you know it well, you can generate ideas much quicker, create versions easier with algorithms, set exact rules and parameter changes relative to other parameter states and the most important part is it takes  you to places you never remotely knew existed - max is much better in this than supercollider and other text based environments imo which are more logical and strict; max talks back to you! That’s what i like about it and that’s what I’m  looking for in electronic instruments, some have it more than others... to be powerful but ‘alive’. MDuw, Mnm, OT and Lyra 8 have that quality.

 

Edited February 10, 2021 by xox

[thawkins]

1 hour ago, cern said:

Good someone know what they talking about.

Looking forward to see all your max creations here 🙂 

IMO looking for "music made with $THING" (where $THING is modular, tube amps, pure data, max, dawless whatever), is going to be always disappointing, because then you are selecting for music that otherwise sucks so fucking bad that the author or whoever has to specifically mention that "hey I made this with $THING!!!".

It's technically interesting to see the results yes, but in the end I am looking for engaging music, and I don't care if the guy used a retro mellotron loaded with microtonal farts sampled off Benny Hill or "just sampled" another guy who used a retro mellotron loaded with microtonal farts sampled off Benny Hill.

[thawkins]

In my experience Max and Pure Data both - when used standalone - are mostly meant for interactive sound installations and really experimental stuff. Sometimes it is new and exciting, but often times it is boring and sounds like a refrigerator compressor engine having a shroom trip. I.e. I am an asshole but I will say I wish people making "experimental" stuff with Max/PD would set the bar a lot higher sometimes.

That said, I wish I got a job doing those installations though.. 🙂 Time to go refresh IRCAM jobs pages again I guess.

[hijexx]

If you use samples in Max is that cheating? This is for the qualification of whether a song is “pure” Max.

[cern]

Im very curious about this program because It has a nice enviroment and it is not a basic DAW for sure.

Why Im asking is because Ive seen alot of tutorials and some patches but thats it. Maybe I will buy a license instead of a synth and use it as a tool and sample source. Just want to hear if it's worth it. 

[psn]

It's worth it if you a) have a clear idea what you want to achieve and b) have the hours to put into it. 

[cern]

35 minutes ago, psn said:

It's worth it if you a) have a clear idea what you want to achieve and b) have the hours to put into it. 

Better than the black endless world of modular system for sure.. I will not take that step. 😄