Is there any good book about Max For Live to recommend?

[Stepper]

Is there any good book about Max For Live to recommend?
...or maybe nice chapter about Max For Live in other Ableton books?

Kindly Regards!

[Tone Deft]

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[Stepper]

Hi Tone!
My purpose is like an amateur, for example write some very easy code in Visual Basic, the satisfaction to turn of the surroundings for a while, relax with a small little goal. When i start using Live late version 9 I bought a few Live9 books and they are still great on the summer beach. I have really notice the interface of Ableton Live and how easy it s possible to communicate and also find tutorials and i don,t doubt Max.

Now i would go out to my little hoard which I convert to a studio and put up the second layer plaster on the walls. I working to get it really soundproof.

Thanks Tone for your reply!

[Tone Deft]

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[ecuk]

you're in luck! max/msp is fun to sit and code with. my only gripe is that it doesn't use any transferable skills to my professional life because you can only encapsulate Java into max modules. (I might be off on the exact details, it's been a few years), I wish it worked with Python or at least C/C++.

Max also supports JavaScript (now including Node for Max) and Gen (which is based on LLVM and therefore generates native code that runs as fast as code written in C/C++).

When these aren't enough, there is always the Max SDK, with which you can develop your own Max objects in C/C++. These are no different from the 800 or so standard objects which come with Max and MSP (and Jitter for video and other fun with matrices).

And all of this is available from Live as little more than a DAW user interface front-end…

[Tone Deft]

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[Tone Deft]

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[ecuk]

First, and before I too forget, there is a great two-volume set of books about Max/MSP (as opposed to the Max for Live subsystem): Electronic Music and Sound Design. They are by same folk who are behind Amazing Noises, makers of some of the best Max for Live devices available.

https://contemponet.com/en/

As for how to get started with Max object development, I myself use the standard Max SDK with Xcode as a C compiler, but this is only because I am on macOS. The page in the SDK docs entitled Development System Information recommends Visual Studio for Windows. I just looked, and it recommends VS C++ 2013, but I suspect that later versions would work. In any case, Microsoft usually has a free version available — scroll to the bottom of this page and look for the button to download the ‘Community’ edition:

https://visualstudio.microsoft.com

For C++ there is now a wrapper which as far as I can tell is still a bit limited compared to the C API, but I freely admit I haven’t felt any strong desire to do anything more than to look at it. I am guessing, however, that by using the C++ standard template goodies you could do some pretty amazing things with it:

https://github.com/Cycling74/min-devkit

[Tone Deft]

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[ecuk]

Lol…

And if you haven’t yet really looked at Gen in Max, I strongly recommend doing so. For signal rate audio it is often far, far simpler to create what you want in Gen than to develop objects with the SDK. It even has GenExpr and the ‘codebox’ object, which are great for those of us who are perfectly happy with plain text coding instead of patch cords. And because it uses LLVM for compilation, the code really does run as fast as doing it all the hard way.

https://docs.cycling74.com/max8/vignettes/gen_genexpr
https://docs.cycling74.com/max8?content ... =vignettes

That said, there is something about playing with the SDK and the C API that is both satisfying and visceral. You feel less like you are merely using Max and more like you are programming it internally and behind the scenes, if that makes sense. ’Tis the stuff of the true Max ninja.

In any case, enjoy!

[Tone Deft]

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[Stepper]

I understand its not only the advices itself who are great, thanks!

[Tone Deft]

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[ecuk]

Cool, I hadn't seen that one, probably because it is clearly rather recent. I would still kinda wonder about performance with Python. I cannot imagine being able to do audio rate signals (i.e., MSP) with it.

I also found this page which I hadn't noticed before on the Max website:

https://cycling74.com/products/extendmax

Toward the bottom it mentions a Python 2.x extension (amongst some for other languages):

https://github.com/grrrr/py

Another language which I have thought might be fun with Max (other than C, which is pretty much my ‘native language’ from many years of systems programming) is Julia. Sadly, no one else seems to have written a bridge between Max and Julia, and I myself don’t have sufficient passion to do it given that I am perfectly happy with the likes of C and Gen.

Also, being a Lisp hacker (in the good sense), I rather like Extempore for live coding. But its timing model doesn’t at all mesh with either Max or Live.

And when all else fails, there is always creating your own VSTs with C++ and JUCE…

[Tone Deft]

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