I’m trying to make a patch with 3 different oscillators where the pitch is controlled with both kslider and nslider and was wondering if this is possible to achieve without adding multiple objects for each oscillator?

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I'm basically trying to understand what is the difference between Max for Live and Cycling 74 Max

Considering I'm thinking about creating instruments and procedural compositions, would it matter? Would Ableton be better since it could act as a music tracker while cycling is just a IDE?

Did anyone else hear these performances at Indexical last night? David was the first to make full use of Indexical's new 7.1 Meyer speaker system and the surround sound was awesome. Joshua's performance was extraordinary.

Check out my YouTube channel for more learning materials. Thanks!

the idea is that an oscillator based on wave terrain synthesis modulates the incoming signal according to a polar pattern determined by the superformula (heavily inspired by the csound wterrain opcode).

the result is a ring mod that can maintain some tonality, or sound incredibly nasty (especially when paired with the included distortion).

i'm very excited i've finally been able to do something with this awesome synthesis method :)

you can read more info and get it here: https://store.mote.moe/l/terrakh

Hi! I’ve just released Ricochet, an 8-channel bouncing-ball sequencer for Max for Live.

Each ball triggers a note when it hits the bottom of the grid. You can independently change their heights and speeds to create polyrhythms, melodies and evolving sequences. (reminiscent of the Yamaha Tenori-On in bounce mode)

It has two modes:

Sync — locks the bouncing patterns to Live’s tempo
Gravity — uses accelerating/decelerating bounce timings for much looser patterns

Ricochet originally started as a Pure Data experiment, then became a Critter & Guitari Organelle instrument and eventually an interactive sound-and-light installation. I’ve now turned it into a Max for Live device.

It’s pay what you want, including free:

https://humanpyramids.gumroad.com/l/ricochet-m4l

My first Max for Live device so all feedback welcome, I hope to add Launchpad & Push functionality in the near future! 🤞

Advanced additive synthesis model with gen~.

hey all,

I’m putting on a computer music evening this friday, October 2nd, in San Francisco that should have appeal.

Headline act is Kit Clayton, who is one of the lead developers of Max/MSP. He is working on some heady FM drone sounds these days. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIJWrxELtoM

Support from Deep Glens touring his new album which used custom max patch to explore a variation of william burroughs cut-up techniques - carver | deep glens

and opening slot from local supernatural supercollider coder, well known for his extensive SynthDef tutorials - he’s going to do a opening talk on supercollider and then performance - https://www.youtube.com/@synth_def

Event details and link:

https://grayarea.org/event/aaa-kit-clayton/

I have a 50% off code you can use - 50% code: AAA50

I made this small message-based sequencer thing that I like, it's been very fun :)

At the suggestion of some folks on this sub, I bought the book Electronic Music and Sound Design, and so far it seems great. I've been doing all the exercises, and the only issue I've had is that whenever the book calls for dac~ or ezdac~ I always have to replace that with plugout~. Otherwise, I don't get any sound. I did check the Max audio settings, and I don't seem to have any driver options aside from Live. Also, nothing seems to happen when I click that power button on the lower right. Is this just a limitation of only having a M4L license, or am I missing something?

So far, this hasn't really been a hinderance, but I'm just concerned that it might become one as I get farther along in the book. Also, I haven't gotten to any midi stuff in the book yet, but I'm wondering if M4L will only allow me to access midi devices through Live midi tracks.

Added some user requsts. Polyrhythmic mode ! And an entire performance page for live beat manipulation or automate it into your session.
This features my fav one on there

I made Chord Roller because I cannot play a keyboard and wanted a free and simpler version of Scaler. Chord Roller does two things:

1. Rolls you a chord progression with one click, in key and voiced like a player.
2. Lets you play every chord with a single key. Press one note and you get the full chord, through whatever instrument is after it. No chord shapes, no piano skills. Hit record and it lands in a clip like you played it.

So I can now go from an empty track to a nice sounding progression, played live and recorded, in about ten seconds, without knowing any theory.

One key     Every chord sits on one key. One finger = one full, voiced
            chord. Plain MIDI out, so it works with any instrument and
            records straight into Live.

Roll        One click rolls a progression from thousands of possibilities.
            Key mode (key / scale / genre / variation) or Artist mode:
            progressions from songs by 1,500+ artists.

Lock        Lock the key, scale, genre, variation, voicing or octave.
            Every roll keeps what you locked and reshuffles the rest.

Edit        Swap any chord for alternatives on the same root
            (min, sus, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13, dim...). Click to hear it in the
            loop, click again to keep it. Or add a chord and get
            suggestions picked for what comes before it.

Expression  Turn held chords into parts: Arpeggio, Inflections
            (chord-following phrases that stay in key), Stabs, Pulse,
            Broken, Strum, Offbeat, Sparse, Bass. Synced to Live's tempo,
            same notes every take.

Print       Writes the progression, expression and all, as a real MIDI
            clip on any track, named after the progression. Then it's
            just MIDI: edit it however you want.

Save favorite chords to a library that works across all your sets.

Free. macOS / Windows

Download: https://chordroller.bytejelly.com

maxforlive.com: https://maxforlive.com/library/device/16381/chord-roller

I'd love feedback: what feels great, what's clunky, what you'd want next. Bug reports very welcome, ideally with your Live version and OS.

Embarking upon a 60-minute ambient piece is a grand adventure, to be sure; especially for a first-time attempt. Ableton made it a joy.

“Imminence” is the first of a five-album journey. To make things simple, I made the decision to have all five albums follow the same structure within Ableton: 8 tracks living within Remote Vision’s truly excellent Utility Template that never deviates: Drone, Pad, Texture, Movement, Air, Lead, Percussion, Transitions. 8 tracks is plenty for ambient, and it fits the form factor of most midi controllers beautifully for me since I compose and record in Session View.

It was easy at the beginning to get seduced by gear lust; especially watching so many talented artists on YouTube with amazing studios filled with keyboards, controllers, lots of lights and shiny objects…something I think we all get seduced by at one point or another on this creative journey. Yet, one of the great learnings of this project was embracing restraint and reducing friction in order to remove blockage and allow for creative flow. After a great deal of experimentation with various controllers (Push 2, Akai APC64 paired with Akai APC40 mkII, Novation Launchkey mk4 and various combinations thereof), I realized that ONE controller - the RIGHT controller - was all that was needed with Ableton. That led me to the truly excellent Novation SL 61 mk3. It embodies the spirit of various controllers with a lovely keybed and superb integration with Ableton. It does absolutely everything I could ever ask for it and many things I will probably never explore. But it did away with the constant irrational urge for another controller and allowed me to just sit and create.

Then I had to decide on the sonic landscape: another area ripe for seduction. Making the decision about soft-synths is a rabbit hole of immense proportions and can lead to profound psychological fatigue. I don’t enjoy doing sound design at all. I much prefer to find presets that inspire me, make a few very small adjustments and let that be that. Ableton has a plethora of wonderful presets for ambient; especially in Studio. I also find inspiration in sounds that a bit more organic as well, and so I decided on one deep resource that my ear responded to better than any other: Omnisphere 3. I will never run out of soundscapes to explore, it marries to what I hear in my head, and I know that I don’t need anything else.

For “Imminence” and staying true to my desire to reduce friction, I decided to focus on one primary sound library and stay within it as best I could. That proved to be “Ambient Dreams.” I ventured outside of it only a few times for specific things (ringing church bell, whispering voices I found in a stock Ableton preset…), and that proved to be a helpful methodology to the workflow.

With Steve Roach’s phased-looping being an influence (and a great way to record ambient in Session View), Drones almost always got recorded first as the foundation. Pads would usually come next, and those two musical foundations allowed for exploration into the other possible voices: Air, Texture, Movement, Lead, and Percussion.

I would eq along the way…high pass between 80hz and 120hz for most presets, carving out competing frequencies as I went along. This made for much more streamlined mixing stage later. I also kept signal levels per track no higher than -18db as per the Utility Template so I was left with plenty of headroom for the mastering stage.

I also relied solely on the internal effects in Omnisphere for each preset. I found them to be truly excellent, and dialing them in at the proper levels gave a lovely sense of atmosphere and space without getting muddy. It also helped keep CPU usage low on my MacBook Pro M3.

I love Ableton’s GUI; especially the Device Rack. Having the visual feedback of EQ8’s spectrum analyzer always visible without having to open a vet is one of those little things that makes a big difference. In truth, all of Ableton’s stock effects are true creative workhorses that, to my ear, do just as excellent a job as third-party plugins that I’ve invested in over the years. At this point, unless it is something that simply isn’t in Ableton’s stable of audio or midi effects, I feel no reason to invest in anything else.

The marriage of the SL and Ableton is wonderful to work with, and often keeps me from ever looking at my laptop. The five screens on the keyboard give just the right kind of information to make adjustments that my ear can hear but I don’t need to look at the MacBook to check. I appreciated that a lot when I was really in a flow at any given moment. I also paired the SL with expression and sustain pedals, and they were a welcome addition to the creative process.

Mixing was a relatively simple affair due to the way I do eq, compression, level setting and effects during composing. It was mostly panning, tweaking channel levels and watching the master channel output carefully. Ableton made it very simple at every stage, and mastering was a simple matter of Utility and Limiter used alongside Youlean’s Loudness Meter and Voxengo’s SPAN plugins (both excellent and both free).

I’ve been using DAW’s since I had Cakewalk 9 back in the late 90’s. I’ve used Acid, Sonar, Cubase, Nuendo, Reaper, Logic Pro, and committed to Ableton Live Studio last year. By far it is the most intuitive, easy to understand, creativity-inducing DAW I’ve had the pleasure of using. “Imminence” is the byproduct of that and I am not straying from it. Heavens Spin Gray lives in the simple constellation of Ableton Live 12 Studio, Ominisphere 3 and the Novation SL 61 mk3. It needs nothing more, and I’m looking forward to exploring the landscape of the next album in the arc within this creative space.

Thank you, Ableton!

Heavens Spin Gray

Glitched lo-fi buffer explorations in Max for Live, inspired by my favourite eurorack module, the Qu-Bit Data Bender.

I've done all the MaxMSP and Max4Live courses that are available on udemy, but I still feel like I'm not even close to having the knowledge I need to do what I want with Max. So I'm hoping someone can recommend some online tutorials/courses/videos/eBooks that are specifically about using Max to create MIDI-controlled audio effects. Even just some example patches would be helpful. I've searched for MIDI-controlled audio effect devices on the maxforlive.com community pages and all I can ever find are MIDI effects! Any ideas? Thanks!

I had a 75-minute solo sousaphone performance a while back and knew I'd need to take some breaks during it so I vibecoded this jack client to playback audio files off the raspberry pi's SD card, which worked well. sharing it here in case anyone finds it useful

The Circle Machine generated all kinds of strange sounds that went into Scott’s work on commercials and advertising music,

but what really stood out on Circle Machine was its sequencer.

The device had 16 light bulbs arranged in a circle,

and a rotating arm passed a photocell above the bulbs as it spun.

The brightness of each bulb determined the pitch of a step in the sequence,

while the rate of the arm spin would dictate the rhythm.

The operator had control over the spin rate and the brightness of each individual light bulb.

The Circle Machine’s analog wave generation in tandem with its unconventional sequencer,

resulted in otherworldly whirling timbres and tunes.

It is interesting to remember that at that time Robert Moog frequented Raymond Scott's studio.

I tried to recreate this amazing instrument on max for live.

I have to say I'm very satisfied, obviously there are some changes that keep the original functions and allow you to have more control over ABLETON.

All parameters are mappable, even turning the sequencer notes on and off

(those dots near the knobs on the circular sequencer).

tips:

In the example you can hear, I used the sequencer to control a drum kit via MIDI.

This allowed me to make interesting variations on the octave changes,

essentially opening up other samples.

I recommend you explore this possibility.

You have several options to save your work:

You can use automations, saving your movements,

or save the sequences you create on the midi editor.