Ableton Forum

i know there are other threads about this but its more fun to speculate in this thread since it happened the day before the announcement
anyways i hope this meen's we can make soft since that sit nicely at the bottom of the live Gui with the rest of the live plug ins...

the only thing that bothers me is this might make me want to program more than make music.

nathannn wrote: then i lick on abletons website today

I'm glad i'm not the only one drooling and licking the screen.

Hoffman - thanks for those links. Reckon my sleep debt is about to increase at a silly rate (which always helps you to think in a straight line)

dCross wrote:

http://www.ableton.com/cycling-partnership?i=hp

So is this recent news? I haven't seen it before.

My mouth is watering from thoughts of OSC and modularity also on Live's side...

-M

OMFG, that is so cool! An Ableton/Cycling74 collaboration would be a
force to be reckoned with. Maybe they will recompile Live as a Max object.
Man, I am salivating just thinking about all the possibilities.
Full speed ahead!

voidseeker wrote:if only we could drop midi generating, modifying pluggos into the midi fx slots in live...

yeah wish that was easier... altho it is possible thru some ableton routing and building the pluggo as a vsti (synth). then u can at least load it into a midi track and send / output midi data.

j

I am about to buy either Sampler or Max/MSP for live sampling and manipulation. I'd also like to use in conjunction with LIve. Aside from the learning curve of Max/MSP and price differences, does anyone have advice on one versus the other?

scoopneck wrote:I am about to buy either Sampler or Max/MSP for live sampling and manipulation. I'd also like to use in conjunction with LIve. Aside from the learning curve of Max/MSP and price differences, does anyone have advice on one versus the other?

They're really two separate things, so you can't really compare them. I think Sampler's great, but would probably not have bought it at full price (got educational discount which is nearly 50% I think).

What do Max users think of alternatives such as Reaktor or Plogue Bidule (the latter in particular)?

I don't have Max experience, but I think bidule looks interesting.

fatrabbit wrote:

scoopneck wrote:I am about to buy either Sampler or Max/MSP for live sampling and manipulation. I'd also like to use in conjunction with LIve. Aside from the learning curve of Max/MSP and price differences, does anyone have advice on one versus the other?

They're really two separate things, so you can't really compare them. I think Sampler's great, but would probably not have bought it at full price (got educational discount which is nearly 50% I think).

What do Max users think of alternatives such as Reaktor or Plogue Bidule (the latter in particular)?

Plogue bidule was fun. But I was missing the visual tools that max provides.
Reaktor was visually interesting, but didn't make the slightest bit of sense to me.
After gaining a little max experience, it still doesn't look simpler.

Max has the best tutorials I've ever used. I still haven't completed them all though. Just enough to start little projects like custom MIDI effects and such.
And you cant go wrong with giving max a spin. The resources are virtually unlimited. So are the possibilities.
30 days trial. Fully functional.. Right down to exporting pluggo's and standalone apps.

can you clear a few Max preconceptions up for me?

1: Pluggo things.
When you export a 'pluggo' is that essentially a plugin which needs to be run inside the pluggo runtime within the host?
Or can you export as VSTi directly? I find it very hard to get a clear picture.
To my understanding, after exporting something from Max the usage chain of that export would be Ableton Live -> Pluggo Device-> MyFirstPlugin.dll
is that right? Because that's my understanding, and pretty much why I went the route of SE and then SM instead of Max after trying both demos (a few years ago now)
I didn't want to say to people 'hey try this looper plugin, but just compile the xcode binary in pluggo with a -1 default hex algo reticulation stamp lo-cal moose option ticked'
Also, the Max interface = fugly, while the SM interface has vector goodness, nice GUI tools & a simple 'C' style code window.


2: 'Sound artists'
Also I got a strong impression that if I used Max my music would be required to go " bleep bloop , grik, snik snik snik , brrrrrrrrtttt, beeeep! "

Everyone I know who uses Max (and tries to coerce me to use it) is much more " IRCAM " than me. I want to make groovy tunes, while they want to make installations that investigate the meaning of meaning in a 3d soundspace with infra red motion tracking. Which is cool, but I know from hard experience that interpretive dance does not produce a funky bassline. The interface, teh history and the the users who I know all join together to produce an idea of the program which is less 'musical' and much more 'arts council funding'

Sure that's a shallow interpretation, but hey, I'm shallow what can you do?
this ...



just appealed to me more immediately than


I guess Max 5 may be a little less repulsive.

Angstrom wrote:can you clear a few Max preconceptions up for me?

1: Pluggo things.
When you export a 'pluggo' is that essentially a plugin which needs to be run inside the pluggo runtime within the host?
Or can you export as VSTi directly? I find it very hard to get a clear picture.
To my understanding, after exporting something from Max the usage chain of that export would be Ableton Live -> Pluggo Device-> MyFirstPlugin.dll
is that right? Because that's my understanding, and pretty much why I went the route of SE and then SM instead of Max after trying both demos (a few years ago now)
I didn't want to say to people 'hey try this looper plugin, but just compile the xcode binary in pluggo with a -1 default hex algo reticulation stamp lo-cal moose option ticked'
Also, the Max interface = fugly, while the SM interface has vector goodness, nice GUI tools & a simple 'C' style code window.


2: 'Sound artists'
Also I got a strong impression that if I used Max my music would be required to go " bleep bloop , grik, snik snik snik , brrrrrrrrtttt, beeeep! "

Everyone I know who uses Max (and tries to coerce me to use it) is much more " IRCAM " than me. I want to make groovy tunes, while they want to make installations that investigate the meaning of meaning in a 3d soundspace with infra red motion tracking. Which is cool, but I know from hard experience that interpretive dance does not produce a funky bassline. The interface, teh history and the the users who I know all join together to produce an idea of the program which is less 'musical' and much more 'arts council funding'

1.

pluggo's are compiled as a kind of VST, which can also be converted to AU. it's not quite the same as compiling a normal VST plugin, because it uses the pluggo runtime backend... however, there is no pluggo shell before the host. think of pluggo as a code library required to run these plugins.

you can make max interface as ugly or as over designed as u want. the reason why some are ugly is cos ppl focus on the code and the tool, not so bothered about aesthetics whilst making music.

2.

that is typical of the current "sound art" scene. "i use max therefore my work must be meanfingful, intellectually stimulating..." truth being, majority of them dont use max as they cant be bothered to learn it. they just get arts council funding to pay someone else!

if you want to make funky basslines, u might be better off with a bass and some pfunk backing trax... if u want to get into stuff like max u need to approach it with an idea of what you want to do. and in some ways it's best if that idea isnt already achievable thru some more direct tools. so use max if you want ur bass to be physically modelled and maybe some generative funk sequencer.... just a brief idea to illustrate the point.

j

Yeah. How max looks as compared to something more pretty..
Its all down to how you design it.

You can use pictures.. Draw out shapes and interfaces on a LCD object.. Load up java gui elements. Download customized objects...

But most people dont seem to use that stuff. They get by with the standard palette of objects available.

I'm new to max though. I think Java GUI's are relativly new to max too.

We still don't know what the collaboration is about. For all we know, Ableton is doing the interface for max 5.
And they got some Cycling dudes in Berlin to point at the impulse and say "WTF is this?".
Or they're making a monster hybrid.
The front side is Live and still looks like Live.
The back side is a maze of wires and objects that relate to your session or arrangement.

Or maybe its something silly like a granulized beat repeat slice player synth...

justin wrote:
that is typical of the current "sound art" scene. "i use max therefore my work must be meanfingful, intellectually stimulating..." truth being, majority of them dont use max as they cant be bothered to learn it. they just get arts council funding to pay someone else!

heh, rather typical of my friends as well TBH.
I have a loose association with the arts world, listening to some toff announce the next performaer as 'like a fine wine' and then he starts to make irritating random 'snork bleeeeeee sssssssss krrkrkr ' noises in Max for 2 hours. Well, perhaps that's whatput me off.



I'll definitely be taking another look at it though in light of the new mystery partnership. I keep having ideas of what would be great to come from this deal, then realising I am almost inevitably wrong.

We'll have to wait and see I suppose. I guess the Beta is the first we'll know.

Angstrom wrote:

justin wrote:
that is typical of the current "sound art" scene. "i use max therefore my work must be meanfingful, intellectually stimulating..." truth being, majority of them dont use max as they cant be bothered to learn it. they just get arts council funding to pay someone else!

heh, rather typical of my friends as well TBH.
I have a loose association with the arts world, listening to some toff announce the next performaer as 'like a fine wine' and then he starts to make irritating random 'snork bleeeeeee sssssssss krrkrkr ' noises in Max for 2 hours. Well, perhaps that's whatput me off.



I'll definitely be taking another look at it though in light of the new mystery partnership.

You gotta split up the 3 things. It makes a difference costwise anyway.

Max: Data 250$

MSP: Audio 250$

Jitter: Video 395$

I'm still fine wth just max. And i can run msp patches in the runtime.

Max is used to make all sorts of things.
Like probably every max user, I've dabbled with a sequencer.
It was fun, but kinda pointless if you have a dude like Andreas on the other end of the line.
Anything i've done. He's done in a more elegant way.
But it proves that there is more then one way to reach your goals.

And its an inspirational process.
I've never worked on an idea without getting new ideas. And learning a thing or two along the path..