Max for Live Tips & Tricks

[stringtapper]

Wow, insanely useful. Thank you for posting that!

[Tone Deft]

wow. that's amazing. I'm still not comfortable with making Live API stuff on my own, that will help a TON.

Strings - thanks for the shit tip. yay!!

[gavspav]

Most of my problems seem to arise from ordering issues.

Watchpoints and the debugger are proving very useful to get my head around this, see Max Tutorial 5.

Maybe I shouldnt post in this thread saying "Read Tutorial 5" but I did the Tutorials a while ago and just went back to this one.

[jon_moore]

Most of my problems seem to arise from ordering issues.

Watchpoints and the debugger are proving very useful to get my head around this, see Max Tutorial 5.

Maybe I shouldnt post in this thread saying "Read Tutorial 5" but I did the Tutorials a while ago and just went back to this one.

I'd say going through the included tutorials is the best tip of all (at least twice for that matter)!

[mastahlee]

Man, this thread has exploded! Really good tips, guys, I've learned probably five or six new things reading through so far.

Most of my problems seem to arise from ordering issues.

Watchpoints and the debugger are proving very useful to get my head around this, see Max Tutorial 5.

Maybe I shouldnt post in this thread saying "Read Tutorial 5" but I did the Tutorials a while ago and just went back to this one.

I figured out the basic functionality of the debugger myself and was just going to post it. For those documentation-averse (yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll go through the tutorial after I finish this patch...) here is a quick-and-dirty that I figured out to get useful basic debugger functionality.

Why Use the debugger?
Having issues with your patch and not sure why? Getting an unexpected result, or can't seem to nail down those edge cases in your loop? Unsure about your message ordering or when a piece of data is getting to specific place at the right time? Want to inspect your objects at some specific point in time? The debugger can help you with all these problems!

Steps to Basic Debugging with Break Points
First, enable debugging by clicking "Enable Debugging" in the Debug menu. Easy!

Next, find a patch cord that you want to know what is going on at. Right click on the cord and select "Add Break Point". A red circle with a number in it should appear over the cord.

Now, do some action that causes input to go through that cord. The program will stop at that moment and the debugger window will open. Browse through the window to see your data at all the points prior to that moment. You can then either hit the continue button for your patch to proceed like normal, step through each following action one at a time, or abort the whole process.

When you're done debugging, be sure to click the "Disable Debugging" option in the Debug Menu. You can keep your break points if you want for later debugging sessions, or delete them by right-clicking on the patch cord and select "clear Break Point".

There is much more that you can do with debugging, but I haven't taken the time to figure it out yet and this one use case always solves my problem. Hope it helps!

[qzs3ESc7]

Sorry. In the last weeks I just used live for audi processing. That way I hear a lot without activating "play". When I first tried buffer shuffler I was very confused because I forgot about activating it ... just thought something similar might have happened to you.

[Machinate]

One thing that really helped me a lot was the now infamous yet top secret (lolwut) Max ToolBox:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcqF9hDNoJk
http://code.google.com/p/maxtoolbox/
Select a bunch of objects, hit a key command to connect them all to an object below.
Distribute and align, way superior to the built in system (which is still awesome)

It really helps your workflow that you don't have to do all the tedious stuff like dragging cables around.

Also;

[zl] <- I can't describe how many times I've been dealing with a list and been like "how the FUCK do I do this next bit?" and then the zl family of objects saved my ass.

[vexpr] which usually does all my "normal max-object needs, but for lists"

okay, these aren't specific to M4L, but I thought I'd share anyways.

[BOB Cooper]

I'm watching videos over here
http://darwingrosse.blogspot.com/

and as he draws wires I hear a click as he sets corners for the routing, how is he doing that?

Hold shift when you click an outlet to start drawing a cable. Then you can click at each point where you want the cable to segment after that.

OR you can have "Segmented Patch Cords" chosen in the Options menu which will let you do it without holding shift first.

Also comm + Y to get 2 corners on your wires.

[LOFA]

Style/Workflow-tip. Make things float by encasing them in a patcher with at least a dummy inlet inside it, so that you can attach a pcontrol-object to it. Then use a toggle/live.button sent to a select with the attributes 0 / 1, connected to the relevant messages "open" and "close," leading into the pcontrol.

Here is an example; a floating "Buffer Shuffler"

[prebentious]

Here's an abstraction (that I called Interval) that I made that might come in handy. It's a counter for various metrical intervals. If you want to know how many sets of 7 16th notes since the beginning of the set, or how many sets of 4 measure phrases since the beginning of the set, or just want a bang every three quarter notes, this will do the trick.
There are two arguments and two inlets, which feed the numerator and the denominator. If you want to count every three eighth notes, put in 3 8 as the argument, or send a 3 in the first inlet, and an eight in the second. If you want to count every four measures, put in 4 1.
Make sense?

Here's how to use abstractions:
http://cycling74.com/docs/max5/vignette ... tions.html

<pre><code>
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-----------end_max5_patcher-----------
</code></pre>

[Resident Emil]

Here's my "interval" which I call Timer.
It outputs numbered (0-15 int's) 16'ths from left outlet, synced to Live. Stoping & Starting Live resets the counter to 0, SHIFT-SPACE starting continues where it was stoped.
From the right outlet it outputs "sub-beats" which are 16'ths counting from 0-3 for each beat (something I needed for a patch I recently built).
It should be quite easy to adapt this to work with other time signatures than 4/4.

Please repost or mail me any improvements.

<pre><code>
----------begin_max5_patcher----------
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eJx880B
-----------end_max5_patcher-----------
</code></pre>

Regards,
Resident Emil

[LOFA]

NM. Can't get it to work correctly in mfl.

[Machinate]

it's not.

[LOFA]

edit.

[S4racen]

Style/Workflow-tip. Make things float by encasing them in a patcher with at least a dummy inlet inside it, so that you can attach a pcontrol-object to it. Then use a toggle/live.button sent to a select with the attributes 0 / 1, connected to the relevant messages "open" and "close," leading into the pcontrol.

Here is an example; a floating "Buffer Shuffler":

<pre><code>

Code: Select all

----------begin_max5_patcher----------
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bzkyvQqbuANo37UCt+KIMIxSdN9P7+vrEqqt
-----------end_max5_patcher-----------
</code></pre>

Hi Ian,

I think i'm lost with this patch, i just have three unconnected items that do little when clicked?

Cheers
D