1. Max Msp Free

This week I was gutsy, I did two MaxMSP tutorials. I know, brave. Sam’s tutorials on YouTube continue to be a fascinating way to learn Max, as well as yielding some interesting projects. This second installment this week is about building a vocoder. The audio effect now common place is still incredibly rewarding, especially when running through a mic rather than using a recorded sample. There is a strange pleasure in getting to hear the immediate effects of this on your voice, which is further compounded by the ability to add multiple ksliders (keyboards) to the mix.

Below is the tutorial I followed along with yesterday, and a resulting bit of fun that I had as a byproduct. Another MaxMSP tutorial from dude837 today in the afternoon. Today I the step sequencer in the video below. This seems like slow going, and maybe a little strange since I keep jumping around in this set of tutorials. This is a rough rode. Maybe it’s not rough so much as it’s slow at times.

I guess that’s the challenge of learning anything new, it always has times when it’s agonizingly slow, and times when ideas and concepts come fast and furious. The patience that learning requires never ceases to amaze me. Perhaps that’s what feels so agonizing about school when we’re young – it’s a constant battle to master concepts, it’s a slow road that never ends. Learning to enjoy the difficult parts of a journey is tough business. Anyway, enough of that tripe. On to another tutorial. One of the on-going semester projects that I’ve committed to is regular (read weekly) online MAX tutorials.

I’m currently enrolled in a course that’s focused on Media Installations, and while I have taken a semester of programming learning Processing I’m not proficient enough to rely on Processing for creating interactive programs. The Media Installations course has a heavy MAX component to it, but we don’t have much direct instruction in class about how to actually using Cycling 74’s software. Given this reality, I’ve leaning on the web to help me learn MAX. So far I’ve bounced between a few different sources for online instruction.

I started with set of MaxMSP tutorials which were wonderful. I’m currently about third of the way through his materials, and know enough to feel an itch for more complicated instruction. Thanks to YouTube’s recommendation bar I stumbled onto YouTube channel and tutorials. Dude837 has great material, it’s interesting, fast paced, and funny. While Batchelor’s tutorials are great, they do sometimes feel a little slow – don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of times when I need a slow tutorial.

Max Msp Free

Using both of these channels as resources has left me with a mixture of general and creative instruction – which has been a nice mix.