Gleetchlab

Gleetchlab is

"a stand-alone software for glitch music authoring and sound design. Gleetchlab is a modular software designed for realtime sound manipulation.
Features include convolution, granular, neural and attractors synthesis, spectral filtering, loop points manipulation, CD skip and wow & flutter simulation, vst plugins hosting, webcam controllers."

I've not had chance to download and play yet, but the features sound interesting and its free!
Might be a useful starting point for anyone interested in starting with MaxMSP to see what kinds of things can be done.

Wacom tablets

Here's a video of two australian academics in their research/rehearsal space discussing and demonstrating their use of wacom graphics tablets to control digital audio.

Getting one of these tablets working within maxmsp is pretty straightforward and you can use it in a variety of different ways...



link

elastic~ external for maxmsp

elastic~ is an external that can be used to independently control time and pitch within maxmsp. It is designed to work with the standard buffer~ object, making it easy to integrate into projects.

Unfortunately you have to pay for this external (£20), but it does show that there are some money making opportunities in producing new objects for maxmsp.

edit:
There is now a free alternative to elastic~ that you can download from here

Using MaxMSP to control your face!

Daito Manabe is using MaxMSP to trigger pulses of electricity to sequence muscle movements in his face.

wii-mote controlled guitar fx

via synthtopia
This guitarist has produced a patch in maxmsp that takes his guitar signal and processes it in various ways. He uses the accelerometer and button press data from the wii-mote to control the parameters of his fx processes.
Sounds quite good, and adds a performative element to the whole process.

Fish make music

Submersed Songs is an installation by Vivian Caccuri that uses 4 live fish in a tank to control audio manipulations and processing.
The piece uses MaxMSP/Jitter to track the individual position of 4 fish in a tank, the resulting data is used to control spatialisation parameters, distortion and some other effects.
The idea is that visitors to the installation select 2 tracks from a library of .mp3 files. These are then subjected to various manipulations in order to create a new piece of audio.

"This sound-installation, winner of the Rumos Arte Cibernetica Prize (Itau Cultural Institute - Sao Paulo), promotes an interference of four carp fish in a glass tank, over the sound output of mp3 players (iPod's and others) of the visitors. The animals' movements and the proximity among them work as a parameter for modifying and juxtaposing the audience's music tracks in real time. With this idea, new sound landscapes are created, not only from the interaction among the fish, but also from unveiling the intimate music archives, which are "submersed" underneath the mp3 player devices.

The visitor can connect his audio device to the interface, and chose a song of his preference. It is also possible for the user to record the track in the system in order to let the song be modified during the next visitor's interactions. The visitor will as well listen to the previous visitors' songs, as the system juxtaposes the previous visitors' tracks with the current visitor's song. Accordingly, the piece will be always meshing up two different songs.

The two tracks are submitted to different modification processes, both building a real time continuity between the swimming of the carp fish and the levels of distortion, which can vary from an intense reverberation to a simulation of the hearing underwater."

Submersed Songs | Canções Submersas from ∆LEX on Vimeo

Guitar Processing with MaxMSP

This article over at cycling74 is a few months old now, but is a pretty good intro to using MaxMSP apps to process "real" instruments (a guitar in this case).

It starts off with an overview of the hardware required - guitar (obviously), input device, mixer/pre-amp, etc...

It then takes you through the creation of simple, stomp-box like, effects. The first one is a chorus effect which you basically create by using the existing help files (just a bit of copy and paste).
Other effects created are an "auto-stutter" which samples small snippets of an incoming audio signal and an envelope follower which is used to control the settings for a filter depending upon the level of the audio signal.

johnny greenwood using maxmsp

a short little video of radiohead's johnny greenwood being all "crazy" and using maxmsp to process his guitar playing in a live performance.
It sounds like the software is sampling the signal from his guitar and chopping it into sections and then jumping around within these samples and repeating some of them to produce a kind of stuttering effect. Its obviously kept in time with the drums (drummer may be playing to a click track) to ensure that the loops and slices are in time.

The principles of the patch are not that complex, but to create a patch that can be used easily and reliably takes quite a bit of thought.

An Interview with Hans Tammen - Endangered Guitar

There's a good interview here on the cycling74 website with Hans Tammen who is an experimental guitarist who has been using MaxMSP for a number of years to process his guitar in live performances.
In the interview he discusses his early forays into processing using stomp boxes and how he moved into the world of Max.
Hans also works at the non-profit educational facility "Harvestworks" in New York where he teaches the use of Max for a variety of performance and installation purposes.

Worth a quick read to see how "professional performers" are using MaxMSP in their live setups.

jamie lidell

Jamie Lidell uses a custom maxmsp program to manipulate his vocals when performing live as you can see in the above video.
I like the video as it's pretty easy to see and hear what he is doing to his voice.

You can find plenty of videos of Jamie performing live on youtube.

There's a video interview of Jamie on the cycling74 website in which he discusses his use of maxmsp.

learning maxmsp blog

Chris Wickett (from musicradar.com) has decided to learn MaxMSP and is documenting his progress at musicradar.

His first 2 posts can be found at:
http://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/maxmsp-diary-the-big-idea-171643
http://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/maxmsp-diary-part-2-getting-started-172998

"I've decided to share my experiences over a long-term blog, documenting the progress of an average music maker in learning what's regarded by many as the most powerful yet complicated music software in the world. I'll send back postcards containing everything for hints and tips, resources I stumble upon, stories of my failures and trophies of any success. My goal is to find out whether Max/MSP can be learnt by anyone, how easy it is, and, crucially, is it worth it?"

If you're new to Max or thinking of getting to grips with it, it'd be worth keeping an eye on Chris's progress as I imagine you'll find it interesting (not least because it'll be nice to know that other people find it difficult at first!!!) and useful if he keeps his promise of tips, etc...


Chris has updated his blog with his first ever max patch! He's produced a relatively simple theremin-style which is controlled by the x,y position of the mouse.
There's a video of his patch in action.

edit:
Chris has been working away on his theremin patch and has learnt about sub-patches, and the presentation mode, amongst other things. He offers a few tips on how he improved his instrument and provides some nice sounding audio examples of it in action.

Live Looper

Livid Instruments have released the Livid Looper, a freeware open source audio looping tool.
The Looper has been created in Max5 so it is possible to adapt and modify the original software to suit your exact needs.

taken from the website:

"Designed to emphasize simplicity and hands-on control, short loops of audio can be sliced, diced, scrambled, and transformed with built-in and VST effects. Gesture and Segment sequencers record synchronized loops of knob and button presses, locking effect changes to the loop. Quantized actions and automatic pitch shifting ensure all your loops stay in tempo. Interact directly with the waveform to sculpt your sound, or use the auto-segmenting feature to break it up into equal chunks. MIDI learn is available for any control, and simple knobs provide complete control over the sound of any loop.
Key Features
• Up to six files loaded in each looper for quick recall and playback
• Loop is automatically pitch shifted to match the BPM
• Automatic segmenting for slicing up a loop
• Interactive waveform display for arbitrary loop selections
• Assignable to crossfader
• Record live audio and instantly loop it
• Multiple audio effects, including a VST effect
• Granulator for scramble or time-shift effects
• Record up to 8 synced sequences of knob turns and effect changes
• Record up to 8 synced sequences of segment and file changes
• All actions are quantized to the master BPM
• Easy MIDI learn function
• Tight integration with Livid's Ohm controller
• Free of charge and open source (developed in Cycling 74's Max/MSP)"

Guitar processing in MaxMSP

There is the first in a series of articles over at cycling74 which take you through the creation of what the author calls a "guitar processor". The first artcile takes you through setting up the input and output stages and a compressor. Further articles will deal with distortion, EQ, delay and reverb.

Whilst the article is targetted towards guitarists there's nothing to stop you using the same (or slightly modified) patches to process any instrument (including vocals).


edit:
part 2 of this series is available here. The article takes you through the creation of an overdrive effect and a reasonable filter/EQ section.
The article also covers some of the strategies used in the programming and use of MaxMSP and the created modules.



edit:
part 3 is now available here. This addition takes you through the creation of a phaser effect, a modulating delay and also the organisation of the front panel.

MaxMSP article - LFO's

There is an article on the cycling74 website that explains how to set up a set of LFO's all of which run perfectly in sync with each other. The article also discusses other LFO related techniques such as recoginising when the waveform has restarted, summing all available waveforms together, etc...

There are example patches to download and experiemnt.
LFO's can be useful for creating rhythmical variations in your music/sounds.


edit:
The second installment in this series of articles is now available here. This article looks at using the LFO system created previously to actually drive parameters of a synth in order to produce sound.


edit:
The third installemnt in this series is now available here. This article introduces a few minor modification s that give the final patch more flexibility and variability. It also introduces some new objects that when used in conjunction with the [transport] object can be used to create time-specific changes within your patch.
The author also provides an .mp3 recording of his patch in action.

The Guitar Zeros

Cycling74 have an interview/article with/on Owen Grace, the fouder of the Guitar Zeros. The Zeros are a rock band whose guitarist and bassist use Guitar Hero controllers and MaxMSP patches.
The interview is more a background kind of thing discussing how he started using MaxMSP and what his inspiration for the project is.

There's a nice accompanying video in which Owen demos some of the features of his custom Max patch
.

The patch that the Zeros use can be downloaded from their website along with full instructions.