programming with max/msp - Virtual Sound

Electronic Music and Sound Design - Introduction
algorithms from scratch, the replacement of parts of pre-built algorithms, and
reverse engineering (in which the reader listens to a sound and then tries to
invent an algorithm to create a similar sound).
These activities and tasks are intended to activate the knowledge and practical
skills of the reader. When learning a foreign language, there is a gap between
what one knows and what one is able to use in practice. It is common for a
student’s passive vocabulary (the total number of terms that the student can
recognize) to be much larger than the active vocabulary that he or she can actually
use while speaking or writing. The same is true of a programming language:
a student can understand how algorithms work without being able to build
them from scratch. The activities in this book that concentrate on replacing
parts of algorithms, completing unfinished algorithms, correcting algorithms
with bugs, and reverse engineering, have been included in order to pose problems
to which the reader is encouraged to find his or her own solutions, causing
the learning process to become more active and creative.
When learning a foreign language, students are given replacement exercises
(e.g. “replace the underlined verb in the following phrase: I wish I could go
out”), correction exercises (e.g. “correct the following phrase: I want to went
home”), and sentences to be completed (e.g. “I’d like to ... home”). In this
context, it is vitally important for the student to work at these activities in order
to avoid an excessively passive approach to learning. Our approach, likewise,
not only involves interactions between the perception of sounds and the knowledge
deriving from reading the book and doing the practical activities, but also
interactions between these two factors and the user’s own skills and creativity.
This method is not based on a rigidly linear progression, but is rather a
network that enables the reader to acquire knowledge and practical skills
through an interaction of four separate dimensions: learning of the theoretical
concepts, learning to use the Max/MSP program, interacting with example
material, and constructing algorithms.
MAX/MSP
The practical parts of this book are based on the software Max/MSP. This
program, written originally by Miller Puckette, was extensively revised and
expanded by David Zicarelli, and is published as a supported product by Cycling
’74 (www.cycling74.com). Max/MSP is an interactive graphic environment for
music, audio processing, and multimedia. It is used throughout the world by
musicians, composers, sound designers, visual artists, and multimedia artists,
and it has become a de facto standard for modern technologically-enabled
creative projects in both the musical and in the visual spheres.
It is a graphic programming language, and is therefore relatively easy to learn,
especially given its great power and expressivity. In Max/MSP one creates programs
by connecting onscreen graphic objects with virtual cables. These objects
can perform calculations, produce or process sounds, render visuals, or be
configured as a graphical user interface. Using its sound synthesis and signal
processing capabilities, one can fashion soft-synths, samplers, reverbs, signalprocessing
effects, and many other things.
from “Electronic Music and Sound Design” Vol. 1 by Alessandro Cipriani and Maurizio Giri
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