Max MSP

decko69

Hey guys , i was just wandering if anyone in here has any experience with Max Msp as i hear its the dogs ******* , ive been looking on u-tube at some tutorials but they seem a littel over my head , im well use to the usual DAW software and vsti's , but ide like to get to know this software a bit better , can anyone shed a littel light on this for me , my aim is to rewire it to cubase 5 and use my novation X-Station to controll it any ideas ?
thanks
Declan

Anima

MaxMSP is the commerical version of PureData, give that a try first maybe. Its similar to CSound but its purely graphical instead of a programming language. Its easier to get something going but you still need to know the fundamentals of synthesis to get anything worthwhile.

Compared to a DAW and VSTs, it's not very quick to get ideas down at all. Its really for academia and sound design instead of electronic dance music. Unless you want to make very strange IDM music like Autechre or other experimental stuff, you won't really need it. It is very powerful though and you can basically do anything you like with sound and video.

decko69

well yeah funny you should mention autechre is exactly my bag its the kind of music i like to listen to and would love to produce (its just a hobby / creative outlet for me ) but vsti's dont seem to realy do it , some of the reaktor ensombels come close , but as i said above thread its too hard to controll , so how do these guys get their sounds ? am i barking up the wrong tree ? should i forget about it if im not prepared to go back to collage lol which is something i am seriously thinking bout

rcaz

I'm really into Pure Data, not very good at it yet but I'm getting there. I disagree that these kinds of programs are purely for academia stuff and sound design or Autechre-type stuff, it's just another way of working towards something. It helps that it's much easier to go towards the completely far-out types of music with it, but it really is just completely open-ended to do what you like with.

I used to just build synths and things in Pd for the satisfaction of it, but it's way harder than just sending MIDI and audio between it and DAW. I've started getting Pd and Live to send MIDI and audio between each other and it's really great. It's really great the way you can work with numbers in Pd exactly how you want to imagine it. I've been generating and processing MIDI numbers in Pd and sending them to parameters in Live, or sending some basic sawtooths into effect racks in Live. Setting up a load of MIDI clips, sending them into Pd for some processing fun and then sending the finished MIDI back into a synth in Live is great fun.

I'd say definitely give Pd a go, it's a free download, and you can do absolutely everything with it than you can do with Max/MSP, just Max/MSP is way more developed to make things a little easier. Pure Data is super powerful. Definitely go for it

Here's a really helpful tutorial someone wrote, it was a lifesaver in getting me started

http://www.pd-tutorial.com/english/index.html

Carl Sagan

Been trying to remember the name of this program for a year or so. Love how Jonny Greenwood uses it.

Sham Squire

Would highly recommend getting the free 30 day trial of Max from the cycling '74 website and going through the tutorials. It can be as complex as you want it to be and a good example is learning to play the violin. How good you want to be will dictate how much time you spend on it and the tutorials are a great way to see if it's up your alley or not.

+1 to everything El Pr0n said. You could just as easily try PD but the Max for Live add on to Ableton Live is a convenient (and slightly subsidised ) way of getting into Max if you already have Live. It also comes with a lot of patches so you can take those apart and see how they've been made, re-design them if you like.

splitrmx

decko69 wrote: »

so how do these guys get their sounds ?

That's like asking what kind of paint did van Gogh use. It's the artist that makes the art, not the tool.

Max/MSP is just one of the many different things Autechre use anyway: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr04/articles/autechre.htm

rcaz

splitrmx wrote: »

That's like asking what kind of paint did van Gogh use. It's the artist that makes the art, not the tool.

Max/MSP is just one of the many different things Autechre use anyway: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr04/articles/autechre.htm

There's a bit of a science to it too... A bit like if Van Gogh had to go and make his paints.

If you want to use Max/MSP or Pd or something for synthesis, you have to know how to synthesise sounds the way you want. Like if you wanted to make a 'normal' electronic kick drum, you'd have to build a patch that puts an amp envelope on a sine wave generator, and a pitch envelope to make the pitch fall really quickly. Then you play around with all the intricacies to have it sounding that way. If you want to make some string sounds, you have to know how they're made (some sort of sawtooth trickery? I'm not too well-up on my synthesis).

But that's just the tip of the iceberg, the things you can do with this stuff is infinite

decko69

splitrmx wrote: »

That's like asking what kind of paint did van Gogh use. It's the artist that makes the art, not the tool.

Max/MSP is just one of the many different things Autechre use anyway: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr04/articles/autechre.htm

no need to be smart split im just asking a question here no need to take that attitude , u see this is exactly the kind of thing that dosent help , Split if u dont have anything useful to say dont bother !!!!

decko69

decko69 wrote: »

no need to be smart split im just asking a question here no need to take that attitude , u see this is exactly the kind of thing that dosent help , Split if u dont have anything useful to say dont bother !!!!

and by the way split ask any artist and they will tell you that your choice of paint is everything ! smart ass !

studiorat

I'm using Pure Data for about a year now. I'm handy enough with it at this stage, I've made sequencers, video games, synthesizers etc with it... The program is free, so why would you buy Max? especially since you're learning. Maybe after a year or two Max might be more useful, personally I'm comfortable enough with Pd. The Ableton thing is probably the best reason to go for it.

Out of all of the "academic" stuff out there it's probably easiest to use. There's ready built versions available to download, you'll be up and running in minutes.

Pd is also pretty useful for video and graphics, and there's so many patches readily available it's pretty easy to get going once you load them up. The help files with Pd are excellent also.

If you have any knowledge of programming at all; Java or C or something You could try your hand at Csound or SuperCollider it's really not all that hard to get going and again the help a available online is superb.

The added beauty of Pd, Csound, and SC etc is that you can use the "engine" of the program to drive your own computer music program, if you are so inclined.

That said, most of the weird music dudes I know and work with just use old crap they found and stuff made up and don't use any computers at all.

Finally, it is possible to use PD with VST's and afaik it is possible to make a VST from a PD patch. See here : http://crca.ucsd.edu/~jsarlo/pdvst/ I haven't tried it but it seems quite likely to work.

Oh, and Van Gogh did mix his own paint.

Anima

Well Autechre have gone from using old analogue gear to using digital stuff such as Max/MSP. They've managed to produce very unique music no matter what they use so they're the common denominator in this, not the equipment.

So I'd agree with splitrmx. Thats not to say you can't create something great either but asking how to recreate another person/bands style is a bad way to begin.

rcaz

Cool post studiorat!

studiorat wrote: »

Oh, and Van Gogh did mix his own paint.

But I said make, not mix. Like, extracting from pigment from rocks and making it into paint and all. At least to me it made sense as a comparison...

Chloroplast

its possible to sound like autechre and get the same sound as them without using the exact same tools that they use. i will say that if you cant achieve it using some basic vst/vsti or even reaktor then try using max msp but dont be surprised if you still cant achieve it.

studiorat

So I had to go off and find out who autechre were and what all the fuss was about, good music but not really my thing. IMO there's not a whole lot of Max stuff going on there.

I did however find a link with what supposedly is a Max patch built by them, and downloaded it and ran it. Kind of a granular synthesis thing not particularly well built and as it turned out, fake.

Here it is for anyone interested : AE patch.

rcaz

studiorat wrote: »

So I had to go off and find out who autechre were and what all the fuss was about, good music but not really my thing. IMO there's not a whole lot of Max stuff going on there.

I did however find a link with what supposedly is a Max patch built by them, and downloaded it and ran it. Kind of a granular synthesis thing not particularly well built and as it turned out, fake.

Here it is for anyone interested : AE patch.

Autechre sound different almost album-to-album. Something like Gantz Graf or Confield or something would probably be very Max-y, Incunabula or Amber, probably no computer at all.

I really like the way guys like Autechre and Aphex Twin et al kinda leave their gear ambiguous. Like you can go to a gig and look at the floor in front of the guitar player to see how they get their sounds, but with guys like these, it could be anything, so it's not worth worrying about.

Then again, people hear something like "Richard James touched a Max patch once" and then message boards explode with "MAX IS HOW HE DOES IT!!!!" or whatever. Double-edged sword

seannash

I always think there are far more important production related things you could dedicate time to than max.

rcaz

seannash wrote: »

I always think there are far more important production related things you could dedicate time to than max.

I don't see Max so much as production-related. At least the way I like to use it, I think of it as an instrument.

If you wanted to make some sort of generative or stochastic electronic sounds, is there any way to do it without devoting a lot of time to some sort of program like Max or similar?

seannash

El Pr0n wrote: »

I don't see Max so much as production-related. At least the way I like to use it, I think of it as an instrument.

If you wanted to make some sort of generative or stochastic electronic sounds, is there any way to do it without devoting a lot of time to some sort of program like Max or similar?

synths plus effects?
I really dont hear much done with max that you cant recreate.
Max just seems like a really complicated way of making noises

rcaz

seannash wrote: »

synths plus effects?
I really dont hear much done with max that you cant recreate.
Max just seems like a really complicated way of making noises

I can't think of any synthesisers that let you control parameters by defining probabilities... Just for one example.
It can be as simple or as complicated as the user wants, that's the best thing about it.

seannash

El Pr0n wrote: »

I can't think of any synthesisers that let you control parameters by defining probabilities... Just for one example.
It can be as simple or as complicated as the user wants, that's the best thing about it.

no thats not what i meant,yes you can do things with it other synths cant do but the sounds that it creates can be recreated with synths and effects.

rcaz

seannash wrote: »

no thats not what i meant,yes you can do things with it other synths cant do but the sounds that it creates can be recreated with synths and effects.

But if I want, I dunno, the cutoff frequency of a filter or the carrier of a ring modulator to change in accordance with some randomised equation or something, how would I recreate that sound with another synth?

Sure, a filter and a ring modulator can be done more easily, but the amount of control afforded by these kinds of programs is unparalleled, as far as I know. The only DAW I know is Ableton Live, and that can't do these things.

Even being able to create your sounds from complete scratch... Most synths, you pick your oscillators and their waveforms, and you can filter and modulate them, but you have to pick from a list of pre-defined waveforms usually, right? I know with Operator in Live you can draw in your own spectra, but that's not very well-defined. These synthesis programs let you do whatever you want to every part of the signal.

seannash

yep and that is all well and good but i still think the actual sound after all that fiddling about isnt unrecreateable(is that a word) with synths and effects.
There are other types of synthesis other than subtractive.
the random element is all that seems to be introduced
I understand what your saying but i honestly think that amount of "control" just lends itself to noodling about.

I do acknowlege that people get there kicks from all sort of things but for me as far as music production i dont find it productive,each to there own and all that

rcaz

I'm really into Xenakis and Karlheinz Essl and guys like that at the moment, guess it's a taste thing.

Things like... Taking a signal from a microphone and using that as the carrier in an FM synth, or using other input signals to define aspects of the sound... You can really use environments to define the sound... Decoding information from a camera to figure out what a filter might sound like if it was derived from your face or something... Working out a nice synth patch (with any sort of synthesis method), or taking some mathematics from a different sort and deriving your sound from that. These kinds of things.

I guess we're talking about different things, a lot of the things I love about this stuff is with their applications in a live setting, or at least have an instantaneous effect, while you're talking about production of a track? Still, I can't imagine many 'standard' synthesisers allow for a lot of these sounds.

It goes way be on 'noodling about' though, people do doctoral studies in this sort of thing.

seannash

it just seems that its the random element that is the big attraction in the examples listed above and how it effects the signal

and thats cool and all,like you said maybe im looking at it from a production point of view.

rcaz

A really cool use of Max/MSP I was reading about a while ago is the Boids flocking algorithm, someone programmed an algorithm that recreates the way birds fly in a flock and their movements and distances relative to each other.

Obviously stereo won't do it justice, but here's a stereo recording of what should be an 8-channel piece

http://soundcloud.com/enda-bates/flock-excerpt

Enda Bates is a lecturer in Trinity, this was part of his PhD work. More of his stuff is on his website. He did a thesis on Spatial Music which I'm starting to read now, it's super interesting.

studiorat

seannash wrote: »

it just seems that its the random element that is the big attraction in the examples listed above and how it effects the signal

and thats cool and all,like you said maybe im looking at it from a production point of view.

For me it's the fact that you can use graphics, sound and alternative controllers all at the same time, in a simple to use programming environment.

I guess the trick with Sonification is to make the piece stand on it's own without taking into account the development of the project. Listening to Xenakis for instance when you realize the thought processes behind the music it's an added bonus.

All too often the Electro-Acoustic genre relies on the program notes to make sense of the music. Similarly with ambisonics, every time I attend a a gig like that I spend more time being aware of the technology rather than the music. I digress...

Sham Squire

Personally, Max allows me to design functional environments that pertain to how I (and possibly no-one else in the world) likes to work. That's the real point of all this software. It gives people the tools to tailor everything to their (very) specific needs. A good example is the Launchpad controller that works with Live. It's just a grid of buttons. If there's something that I want it to do that there is no demand for, I don't have to worry that no-one will make that functionality available due to lack of consumer demand, I just make it for myself. Whether that's a particular type of instrument, or a particular method of controlling parameters, it's just up to me to decide what I want and then build it in Max.
For me it's not about trying to get sounds that wouldn't be possible any other way. It is about control and making things just right for me (even if everyone else might think they were rubbish/awkward/trivial/redundant/etc.).