Max to Create Big Displays 4 Essential Live/FX Parameters?

[radionowhere]

Hi:

Apologies up front if this is a stupid/obvious question; I have some experience with Live and mapping Live controls to control surfaces, but know nothing about Max.

I'm a guitar/piano-playing singer/songwriter trying to hack together a Live-based rig that allows me to loop guitar, vocals, and keys, as well as get crazy with dub-style FX on all 3 instruments. I was watching this Moldover video, and between 4:10 and 4:19, he mentions and shows custom plugins that display essential information:

http://youtu.be/L2McDeSKiOU

My first guess is that this was done in Max for Live - does anyone know if that's true?

I'm interested because I'd like to do two things right now:

1) display a similar large metronome, which tells me which beat I'm currently on in a one-bar loop
2) create large displays showing the state of essential FX parameters (in this case, Audio Damage delays)

If anyone can tell me whether I'm on the right track with this, I'd appreciate it. Thanks!

[S4racen]

Yes you can do that, i havent watched the video but i know that Moldover in the past has used Reaktor for his GUI displays...

I'd argue it's much easier in M4L....

Cheers
D

[radionowhere]

Excellent - thanks, S4racen!

[S4racen]

No worries... You'll find it so easy to build a display and then use Live.observer to track the parameters you want!

Cheers
D

[friend_kami]

as a related note, how well does live and m4l fare with "odd" timesignatures and timesignature changes?
i do a lot of stuff that constantly changes from, say 7/4 to 5/4 back and fourther with occasional changes in between, as well as halftime beats and stuff.
also even more related, how does that work with time, rather than to display beats? haven't dabbled much with it, but from what i gather it's not exactly accurate once you stray away from the typical 4 by 4 standard?

[radionowhere]

I looked into this, and I don't think I can afford M4L right now.

Are there any other clever ways to handle what I'm looking for here?

Again, that's:

- large display showing which beat I'm currently on during a one-bar loop
- displays showing current status of delay FX (on/off)

Thanks!

[radionowhere]

Hi S4racen, everyone else:

So I downloaded the trial version of M4L, and...it's a little overwhelming, as you might imagine.

I think I basically understand the overall concept, the 30,000' view, but I'm finding that I seem to lack the right nomenclature to even search forums or the Web for the information I need. I can't even describe (to Google) what it is I'm looking for, if you know what I mean.

In addition, most of the tutorials and examples seem to concern the other types of things you can do with M4L - building effects, things like that.

So, I'm wondering whether someone has a minute to help me out by either:

1) Directing me towards some Max patches with functionality similar to what I'm trying to build, so that I can deconstruct them and maybe steal some components for my own patch
2) Letting me know what some of the M4L terminology describing the functionality that I'm interested in in would be, so I know what to search for

Again, I'm just trying to create a display that tells me two things (or two displays that each tell me one thing ) -

1) Whether the Arpeggiator effect preceding my Rhodes device is off or on
2) What the current state of my Looper device is (recording, overdubbing, reversed, playing, stopped, cleared)

Hopefully that makes sense. Any helpful advice would be incredibly welcome. Thanks!

[S4racen]

Ok... Here goes, i'm not at my computer with max on so try these instructions....


You need to have a live.path that has the address of the thing you are trying to observe, i would download the LOM Navigator from max4live.com as it's awesome! Live basically gives addresses to everything in live as id's

Start at the top with a live.thisdevice object and connect the left outlet to a message box, the message box should start live.path and then have the path you've found with the above....

With that path message sent into a live.path objects left inlet and the middle outlet sent to a live.observer objects right inlet you can send a message of property value into the left inlet...

From the left outlet of the live.observer put a "route value" object and after that you need to send that value into a dial of som description (this will be whats displayed in your device)

Thats the basic premise of M4L.... The property of the looper you need to observe is the State property...

After that it gets more complicated to create a floating window that displays your dials...

My advice, follow the lessons!

Cheers
D

[radionowhere]

Hi S4racen:

Thanks for all your help! This info (plus several hours of further googling and patch dissection) definitely got me a little closer to understanding what I need to do.

I'm still pretty far away, though. I built basically what I thought you were talking about in your post, but it doesn't seem to do anything. Clicking on the message with the Looper state (which I grabbed from LOMnavigator - thx for the tip) gives me the following in the Max window: "doesn't understand live.path". Here's an image of my patch:



I'm getting the feeling that I'm probably many days from understanding M4L well enough to build what I'm looking for, and thinking the best way might be to find someone who's open to building it for me (for $, naturally), so that I can then open it up, look under the hood and see what's happening.

Judging by your sig file and your other posts, I'm guessing you've got a little too much actual business on your plate to be taking on some random noob's M4L contract work, but is there anyone you'd recommend, or any particular site/forum where amenable programmers hang out? Thanks again for all your time - I really appreciate it!

[S4racen]

Ok, nearly there....

Your message at the top should read "path live_set tracks 0 devices 0 parameters 1"

Connect the middle outlet of the live.path object to an object that you type simply "t b l" into (this means it's a trigger object and it will send a list out of it's right outlet and a bang out of its left when it receives a signal) connect the right outlet to the live.observer and the left outlet to the "property value" message...

Then finally the route object needs to be a "Route Value" object instead, you can then hover over the outlets to see what this does best thing is to ALT+Click on everything to bring up the help file on every object...

And yeah pretty busy but i try and help where i can, Sheluser is probably the most helpful and his website is great for beginners!

Cheers
D

[radionowhere]

Wow - thanks again, S4racen!

Really, really appreciate your help on this. Here's what I've ended up with:



Again, though, I think there's something fundamental that I'm not getting here, as this doesn't seem to do anything either. I went through a bunch of Cycling's tutorials today, as well as some 3rd party stuff on the Web, but didn't learn anything that seemed to directly pertain to this type of application/use case.

I'm going to post this as a "looking for coder" project here and on Cycling's site, and hopefully will turn up someone who can build something like this. Again, thanks so much for taking the time to help me out!

[S4racen]

Have you clicked on the path message box at the top to send the path and trigger the call for the property value?

Cheers
D

[radionowhere]

Yes I have, both within Live and just within Max. It doesn't appear to have any effect. I added a print object to the end of the chain, thinking that then I'd see some type of output in the Max window when I clicked on the path message box, but no dice. Turning the dial does print values in the Max window, however.

[synnack]

Yes I have, both within Live and just within Max. It doesn't appear to have any effect. I added a print object to the end of the chain, thinking that then I'd see some type of output in the Max window when I clicked on the path message box, but no dice. Turning the dial does print values in the Max window, however.

rather than pasting images, paste the actual code. Use "copy compressed" and paste it here. much easier to get help with the actual code.

[synnack]

I'm interested because I'd like to do two things right now:

1) display a similar large metronome, which tells me which beat I'm currently on in a one-bar loop
2) create large displays showing the state of essential FX parameters (in this case, Audio Damage delays)

If anyone can tell me whether I'm on the right track with this, I'd appreciate it. Thanks!

Well I can't sleep so it's your lucky day.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18262281/radionowhere-1.amxd

That will give you a start on both of those things. You can easily float a window with this device that shows you where you are in a 4 bar loop, and select any device on any track and show if it is on or off.

Start with this, use "copy compressed" to paste things here if you still need help building it out.

I'm using Live 9 and Max 6.1 so if this doesn't work for you that's likely why. but give it a try.