What did you expect from Max4Live?

technog0d · Post by **technog0d** » Thu Nov 05, 2009 3:23 pm

Poster wrote:
technog0d wrote:Max and M4L is more of a programming environment. You need to familiarize yourself with the different objects and use them to build the components that do what you want them to do.
dunno what you exactly mean by this but you need to go through the exact same routine with Reaktor..
there's no 'instant familiarization' there either..

Agreed... the only thing i meant by that is that Reaktor provides a lot of high level objects that enherently do, "something". in Max you may need to create those higher level objects by builiding them from lower level objects. All environments definitely need familiarization.

Poster · Post by **Poster** » Thu Nov 05, 2009 3:33 pm

^ aah yes.. true..

Surreal · Post by **Surreal** » Thu Nov 05, 2009 4:46 pm

there are a lot of high level objects.

Max5 > patches >LiveAPI

Ralf · Post by **Ralf** » Thu Nov 05, 2009 5:08 pm

arachnaut wrote: I expected to be able to program modulations of all Live devices - Simpler, Flanger,
Granular Delay, etc, at a low level - inside a Max instrument.
I am very disappointed with the resultant implementation.

I don't know which kind of modulation you expected, but you could
consider to control these devices at engine level, sample-precise and
in realtime, using the live.remote~ object of Max. The modulations
from Live clips are then applied to the value you send.

A brief look at Flanger exposes the following controllable parameters:
Dry/Wet, Delay Time, Feedback, Polarity, LFO Amount, Hi Pass, Env. Modulation,
Env. Attack, Env. Release, LFO Waveform, Frequency, Sync, Sync Rate,
LFO Stereo Mode, LFO Spin, LFO Phase, LFO Offset, LFO Width.

Ralf

Ralf · Post by **Ralf** » Thu Nov 05, 2009 5:14 pm

Gregory Wells-King wrote: I didn't know there was a part of MAX to manipulate the Live program through itself. That sounds quite nasty, or a bag of worms I don't want to get into.

Any automation manipulates the Live program through itself.
Any digital filter manipulates itself through itself.
Even your subconsciousness manipulates your thinking
through yourself. The less you think about it, the better
the results.

Ralf

solconnection · Post by **solconnection** » Thu Nov 05, 2009 6:35 pm

Ralf wrote:
Gregory Wells-King wrote: I didn't know there was a part of MAX to manipulate the Live program through itself. That sounds quite nasty, or a bag of worms I don't want to get into.
Any automation manipulates the Live program through itself.
Any digital filter manipulates itself through itself.
Even your subconsciousness manipulates your thinking
through yourself. The less you think about it, the better
the results.

Ralf

lol, wise words

arachnaut · Post by **arachnaut** » Thu Nov 05, 2009 9:22 pm

I've read through a lot of postings by now and I think I have a slightly
better idea of what is intended with Max4Live.

Thanks to those who sent me links.

Just to know where I'm coming from, I'm not a DJ or into beat or grid
music/meter and I don't use a lot clips or clip automation nor do I need
much of that at this moment in my musical development.

Instead I tend to make complex patches which move sound in dynamic
shapes over time. I mostly do this manually through MIDI CC, but also
use Reaktor for some help in this.

When I started programming (1968) all we ever did was learn new
programs, processes and procedures. At every job there was a new editor
to learn for the programming, new languages and compilers, new command
lines in the OS to build our development and debug environments.

This is fun for a while, but after 40 years it's like brushing teeth or
vacuum cleaning - just one more of life's little nuisances.

Reaktor was a big learning curve for me - even after years of use there
are a lot of things I haven't tried. I know I could do them, but I'd
have to study and probably experiment, and maybe look into others work,
but I could do it.

Now I look at Max and see the same thing again. A big behemoth with a
lot of tabs and just a handful of objects, so it must have a lot of
methods.

I'm willing to invest time into this and you only really get when you
give, but life is getting shorter and time goes by faster, I don't know
how many more of these learning episodes I want to get involved in. This
is just a means to an end - making music. Too much time spent on
learning how to make something to make something else...

So any way, I'm a little less disappointed, so I'll start cracking the
books.

It looks as if live.remote~ and me are about to become friends.

pukunui · Post by **pukunui** » Thu Nov 05, 2009 9:48 pm

Hey Jim,

If you know a bunch of other languages you might be able to leverage that in Max.

You can extend Max in C , check out the SDK.

Also, it has native support for Java and Javascript extensions.Live API programming, for example, is much easier in JS than with objects. Have a bit of a nose around in the examples folder in your Max5 install.

Other languages which have ended up in Max are

ruby
chuck
python
supercollider
rtcmix~
lua

and probably loads more.

Generally max objects have a fairly limited set of methods, and you can usually find all these in the help patches.
There are hundreds of 3rd party add-ons, mostly free, check out maxobjects.com

Cheers

-A

LOFA · Post by **LOFA** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 10:21 pm

I expected more routing features.

For example, I expected to be able to send audio and signal accurate changes between devices, regardless of what track they are on.

I am not extremely disappointed because there is so much that is available, but I am still more than a bit bummed.

stefan-tiedje · Post by **stefan-tiedje** » Sun Nov 08, 2009 5:50 am

arachnaut wrote:I'm willing to invest time into this and you only really get when you
give, but life is getting shorter and time goes by faster, I don't know
how many more of these learning episodes I want to get involved in. This
is just a means to an end - making music. Too much time spent on
learning how to make something to make something else...

We are humans and as such we are learning machines...
We will never be able to stop learning, and in my experience its fun too. I learned programming a bit later than you, but came across Max way earlier than Reaktor even existed. This totally switched me from lines of code to visual patching in Max, I rarely went back. I am still learning Max, and the way I think in creating music is very different to what most people do. The tools we use do influence our way of creating music. Sequencers and DAWs are all around, and that is what we hear in the majority of music produced nowadays. M4L will open up some doors and I hope we get more musicians explore what is beyond the fixed timeline...

I did like your music, it is definitely different to the usual beat driven mass market stuff. I bet you will have fun to explore this new toy, and it will give you soon new ideas which are beyond the imagination possibly limited by your old tools...;-)

Don't miss the Max forums at cycling'74, you'll get all the help you need. Learning Max is a challenge, but if you simply run through all the tutorials, which might take a week or two, you'll be able to jump off. I've seen great musicians trash their huge collection of vst's including Reaktor for a pure Max based rig within a few months of maxin'...

Stefan

housemusiclover · Post by **housemusiclover** » Sun Nov 08, 2009 7:30 am

I certainly expected more content and most importantly a decent stepsequencer to use with the APC.
The included one integrates quite nicely with Live but is really, really simple.
For now i won't buy M4L but i'll certainly check again in 2 months or so to see what the community has come up with.

I really wished there'd be a cheaper runtime version, as i have no interest (or wits) to program my own patches.

I hope M4L works like other Live instruments (ie put Live in demo mode, save disabled, free to try out)?
Or do i now have 30 days to try and that's that?

edit: does M4L offer some kinda workaround to record automation data into clips (in session view)?
edit2: yes, it is

damn, gotta find some money...

Martyn · Post by **Martyn** » Sun Nov 08, 2009 2:14 pm

I also expected more content, what's there is interesting but nothing at all with the wow factor.

The main thing I was expecting was a set of lessons for the complete beginner, the ones included don't help me at all. I need something that helps me break through an initial 'unable to grasp the paradigm' phase but I really don't know what that could be. I tried making a simple gain control but couldn't figure out even how to make the cables disappear, got extremely frustrated and very nearly uninstalled it all.

Is this intended for people who can already use Max or know an existing programming language? If so I think it should be sold as such, or lessons and tutorials created for people like me who have no experience of such things. I need lessons that teach with example in a step by step way. 'open this, then drag this into here' 'this word means this' etc.

Disappointed, frustrated, underwhelmed.

*edit* Just watched this tutorial http://www.max4live.info/content/tutori ... max-part-1 which has taught me more in 5 mins than I learned in the whole of yesterdays head scratching over the included lessons. More like this please Abes, or employ this guy to make some lessons for you.

arachnaut · Post by **arachnaut** » Sun Nov 08, 2009 11:28 pm

pukunui wrote:
...

Generally max objects have a fairly limited set of methods, and you can usually find all these in the help patches.

...

Sorry, I meant 'messages' not 'methods'.

andrewbenson · Post by **andrewbenson** » Mon Nov 09, 2009 12:16 am

Just as the software is in Public Beta, you might also consider the documentation that ships with Max for Live to also be Beta. We'd love to hear any specific ideas about how the current documentation could be improved. Is there something specific that is omitted? Is there any difficult language that could be clearer? As with a bug report, we are much more likely to fix something if you can help us to find exactly what is broken.

Best,
Andrew B.

arachnaut · Post by **arachnaut** » Mon Nov 09, 2009 12:39 am

andrewbenson wrote:Just as the software is in Public Beta, you might also consider the documentation that ships with Max for Live to also be Beta. We'd love to hear any specific ideas about how the current documentation could be improved. Is there something specific that is omitted? Is there any difficult language that could be clearer? As with a bug report, we are much more likely to fix something if you can help us to find exactly what is broken.

Best,
Andrew B.

The very first thing I encountered when I started Max for Live was bizarre.
I started the Live lessons, loaded the Big3.als set and was confronted with the BufferShuffler.
I clicked the edit button to start the editor (which probably should be called the patch button to start the patcher) and
I saw the live.grid object. When I looked into it's documentation it references a chucker~ object which is tightly coupled. Opening the reference to chucker~ shows basically empty document filler. So I couldn't begin to figure out how the first example worked.

I think it might be better to start with an example that is more fully documented (or document chucker~ and live.grid better).

What did you expect from Max4Live?

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