Tutorial: Building a Max for Live Device
In this video we build a Max for Live MIDI device from scratch. We'll be releasing the finished device on Patreon soon, but in the meantime, you can download the rough device below.
00:00 - Intro
01:41 - Device Concept
02:28 - Generating sequences of numbers
10:18 - Creating MIDI messages
17:02 - Step sequence counter + timeline synchronization
24:43 - Pitch functionality
28:39 - Generating numbers with jit.bfg
36:58 - User Interface
40:06 - Step visualization
47:45 - Adding additional rate values
49:44 - Bug fixes + UI
Comments (8)
dang having trouble getting my octave selector working.. i made patches when i was in college but haven't touched max in years. so this was an incredible way to be reintroduced to it again. thank you for making this!
ahh nm didn't realize i needed to hit the bang to make it change. i think my favorite part about max is the instant change or data output to understand what's going on
I've followed the tutorial exactly up to only 6:59 and my numbers outputting from jit.noise to the jit.cellblock are only being received as a single number (for example: 0.70, 0.86, 0.53, etc), not as the red, green, blue, and alpha values. I have checked the inspector for each component, even the plane count set to 4, and it wont change the amount of different numbers in the cells. I tried turning up plane count to higher values than 4 and it still outputs the values as 0.67, 0.51, etc each in a separate cell. I can't seem to figure it out. Anyone have any tips?
By default jit.cellblock displays one plane only. You can send it the message 'plane -1' to show all planes. And also you can send the message 'colwidth #' where # is a number that defines the pixel width of each cell.
I've been using Max/M4L for years and I'd have to say that this is perhaps the best possible introduction to the platform, everything is explained very well. Great video!
Max is GOATed, with a single paywall you have access to what modular synthesis can do and so much more... There's the possibility of building a M4L device that can create entire songs, if you fall deep enough into the rabbit hole. Too ambitious for me, but that's a definitive possibility with Max/M4L, and a great theoretical example of its power
Some ideas for other features: built-in scale modes, grooves or delay effect affecting only certain steps in the sequence
Thank you for a great tutorial! I was just getting into max4live and browsing through some resources to get started. One thing I noticed is that multiple instances of the device will influence each other, when you change any parameter. After some digging around I found it's because of send/receive shares global names, to make them unique I needed to start the name with three dashes as 'send ---counter'