Many people often question whether Max/MSP, PD and other graphical environments can be considered programming languages. Claude Heiland-Allen proves that PD is a full programming language by making an interpreter in vanilla Pd using no externals.
Soundflower from Cycling ‘74, a small freeware utility allowing internal audio routing under OS X, is available in Universal Binary for MacTel computers. Soundflower is similar to Jack, and while the latter has some more advanced features, I find Soundflower easier to use. They are both perfect for recording for example streaming audio.
{.imagelink}int.lib is a set of abstractions/javascripts for Cycling 74’s Max MSP software that facilitates the control of multiple parameters by navigating a two dimensional visual environment. It implements a gravitational system, allowing the user to represent presets with variable sized balls. As the user moves around the space, the size of the balls and their proximity to the mouse cursor affects the weight of each preset in the interpolated output. int.lib includes three objects: int.jit (the control centre), int.list (for interpolating lists) and int.vst (for interpolating parameters of a vst plugin). ...
Found an interesting thread on the Max list entitled Working with Max is not easy. But what is easy. Before we learn something we find it difficult. When we know it we find it easy. I guess a problem with Max, if it can be called a problem, is that its low entry-level (at least compared to many other programming languages) is that the user might be misleaded into thinking that this is something that can be mastered in two weeks. I think Trond responded in a good way: Musicians have to practice their instruments, rehearsing scales, etc in order to develop technical skills that are a prerequisite for artistic expression. A composition student have to study counterpoint, harmonization, orchestration, etc. In the same way artists depending on digital tools have to continuously explore and learn about their medium, in particular so because the “instrument” we are playing is changing on a more or less daily basis. Reading mailing lists, books, searching information on the net, trying out stuff by patching, checking out 3rd party objects, etc. are my etudes, and I have to do them on a daily basis. ...
There seems to be a lot of initiatives for making “higher-level” abstractions for working in Max/MSP these days. Now, I just came across a project at UCLA intended mainly for theater productions: Theater Max is the result of several years of work, lots of trial and error, and far too many hours of programming for us to count. What we now call Theater Max got its start in 2001 with a production of Eugene Ionesco’s Macbett. This was the first production in UCLA’s Theater Department to incorporate interactive technology into a mainstream theater production. The purpose of the interactive system was to give the actors the ability to control and influence various aspects of the lighting and sound during the performance. David Beaudry, one of the authors of Theater Max in case you missed that, was asked to do the sound design for the production. ...
Just came across the UBC Max/MSP/Jitter Toolbox which seems to be quite similar to Jamoma. The UBC Max/MSP/Jitter Toolbox is a collection of modules for creating and processing audio in Max/MSP and manipulating video and 3D graphics using Jitter. I have just briefly tested it, and here are some screenshots from one of the example patches. {.imagelink}
Some notes from ICMC, Barcelona, Spain 4-10 September 2005. Sunday 4 September I attended a workshop on audio mosaicing, which was more like a set of presentations by different people, but still interesting. Jason Freeman, PhD from Columbia, now at Georgia Tech, talked about a java applet creating a 5 second “thumbnail song” of your iTunes collection. Opening concert Chris Brown had composed a piece for the Reactable interactive table made at UPF. The table is very nice, and is responding quickly, but I felt there was a missing link when it comes to the relationships between the gestures made, objects presented and sonic output. Jose Manuel Berenguer played sounds and visuals. I liked the beginning a lot, with a nice combination of granulated sounds and visual particle sworms. Ali Momeni’s installation “un titled” is using the new moother object which makes it possible to acces the Freesound database from within Max/MSP and PD. Ali used it to query for similar files and organizing them in 2-dimensional “sound spaces”. A large mechanical construction is controlling the parameters via Wacom tablets. Nice concept and I like the idea of getting things bigger and more heavy to use, but I had some problems with the mappings and the concept of having to press the large sticks down in the ground to get new sounds. Monday 5 September Fernando Lopez-Lezcano, CCRMA, Stanford, talked about Planet CCRMA and future issues. On a question on free software, he said something like “to me, free software is definitely not free”. Norbert Schnell from IRCAM presented FTM, a nice collection of Max-objects for more advanced data handling in Max/MSP. Rosemary Mountain, Concordia / Hexagram, showed a setup for testing how people can organize visual and auditory stimuli. She used a wireless barcode reader. Ge Wang, Soundlab, Princeton, showed his Chuck programming language, a text-based music language, with some nice graphical add-ons. I’m very sorry I missed his “text-battle” with Nick Collins at the Off-ICMC. Tuesday 6 September Vegard Sandvold, NOTAM, presented some promising results on the use of semantic descriptors of musical intensity. I tried the experiment when it was up and running, and have some problems with the concept of forcing stimuli into predetermined categories. It would be interesting to do a set of similar experiments using a continuous scale instead. His system is currently used by NRK in the radio-intentiometer. Douglas Geers, Minnesota, presented a nice piece in the evening concert, with a violinist wearing glowing thread which he processed with Jitter. Wednesday 7 September Thursday 8 September Rui Pedro Paiva, University of Coimbra, Portugal, presented a way of melody extraction from a polyphonic signal. Based on auditory filtering, and with no attempt to make it fast, they obtained an average performance of about 82% on a varied set of music. Geoffery Peeters, IRCAM, presented a method for rhythm detection which seems to be very promising. Nick Collins, Cambridge, presented an overview of different segmentation algorithms. Xavier Serra, UPF, presented a nice overview of current music technology research, and called for a roadmap for future research. Friday 9 September Eduardo Reck Miranda, Future Music Lab, Plymouth, showed some of his work using EEG to control music. They still have a long way to go, since the signals are weak and noisy, but they had managed to get people to control simple playback of sequences. Carlos Guedes, NYU / Porto, presented his m-tools, a small package of Max-objects developed for controlling musical rhythm from dance movements. and Perry Cook, Princeton, showed tools Jasch and played a nice set at the Off-ICMC.
Here, I focus on how we can analyse, visualize and synthesize sound, or more specifically the timbre of instruments. Pitch and Timbre Perception Our perception of music is based on the grouping of frequencies in time and space. That is why a set of frequencies can be heard as a specific tone with an associated pitch, loudness and timbre. Such grouping is done by relating frequencies that have their origin close in spatial location, have similar onset time, and move in the same direction. The problem, however, is that there are no computational tools that can do this in an immediate and straight forward way like the human brain. ...
Explaining how one can synthesize a musical tone with Max/MSP.
The intention of MAX was to create a graphical programming environment for musicians and composers (Puckette 1985). Originally developed at IRCAM by David Zicarelli and Miller Puckette in the late 1980’s, it soon became popular for controlling MIDI- instruments (Puckette 1988). Its unique flexibility, and the possibility for users to extend the capabilities of the environment by writing new code, secured its position in computer music (Puckette and Zicarelli 1990). The novel idea was the creation of a graphical environment that could be run in real-time, allowing the user to interact with the program. The MSP-package (released in 1996) added audio capabilities, and Jitter (released in 2002) allows the manipulation of video. Today MAX/MSP/Jitter are commercially available products, continuing to attract a large community of users10. ...