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In addition to the smoother look and feel of Max 5, there have been a number of enhancements to the user interface that will help you to maximize your creative productivity and minimize the time spent performing repetitive and annoying tasks. In this article, I'll talk about a couple of the features that have really improved my patching workflow.

Introduction

Sometimes when you are programming, you need to be able to configure some information about how your computer will do its job. Over the years, programmers have come up with a number of different terms for these little pieces of information -- parameters, properties, fields, etc. In Max, we call them attributes. Attributes were first introduced in Jitter, where they make it convenient to manage the state of complex objects such as jit.qt.movie. In Max 4.5, a few Max objects such as pattr (which is short for "patcher attributes" by the way) and js began to make use of attributes.

Episode 1: The redecorated interface and the defaults system

The first thing you might notice about Max 5 is the new look of the objects. We've redecorated with a new appearance to ensure you can immediately identify the basic elements of a patch. It doesn't try to be photorealistic, primarily because the interface scales so you can look at a patch at any resolution. That includes zooming out as well as zooming in.

My friend Mike Metlay recently asked me to perform with him on a live StillStream webcast scheduled for June 30, 2007. I enjoy working with him, and this sounded like an opportunity to get out of the "office" and work up a decent performance system. Rather than using one of my normal systems, I decided to build an instrument from scratch, and also chose to put some specific stricture in place -- hoping that some limitations would help spur a new creative direction.

Bert Schiettecatte is the founder of Percussa, a music hardware and software company located near Leuven, Belguim. The company's first product is Audio Cubes, a beautiful and unusual controller system that can be used in powerful ways in conjunction with Max/MSP and other software.

If someone asks you to explain what the AudioCubes are, what's the first thing you say?

A tool for creating and performing electronic music and sound, which aims to stimulate creativity and lower user interface barriers.

Voiceband Jilt, the CD of my work released on the c74 label last year, took as its source material a set of recordings called the "Invalid Object" series. It was a project of the Irish label Fällt, originally released in the form of 24 3" CDs, each of which took their title from one of the "reserved words" in Java. The liner notes for the CD included a weblink to a location for the original recordings in MP3 format, in the hopes that you'd go and find the original material that inspired me so. However, the Fällt website was down for redesign and retooling for quite a lot of the last year, during which time the recordings were unavailable for your perusal.

Version 2.1 of Tap.Tools has been released by Electrotap.

This version of Tap.Tools offers a variety of enhancements and bug fixes to users. The update is free to registered users of Tap.Tools 2.0

DSPaudio, Inc. announces iCE, a new set of necessary externals for Max/MSP.

iCE allows users to build composing frameworks, data storage and processing systems, and user interfaces for all manner of sequencing directly within Max/MSP. iCE is the Swiss army knife of sequencing and it's stylish too. Use iCE to quickly build your own fully working sequencer to your own specifications and never touch Logic, Cubase or Pro Tools again. *Note, DSPaudio is addressing multi-tracking in the future, so get ready to work entirely in Max/MSP.

iCE 1.0 externals for Mac OS X are:

• ice.key -Reports all keystroke information and provides useful features similar objects do not
• ice.pump -Message router for developing UI's
• ice.lattice -Read slowly (2x) "The best data storage and retrieval system we've ever seen" ice.mux/demux -Enhanced pack/unpack keeps lists tidy by preserving relative position of list elements
• ice.xxx -Additional objects under development which deal with issues cool people care about

iCE allows composers to sequence entirely in Max/MSP employing both old and new paradigms. Embedded sequences (sequencers sequencing other sequencers) are easy to accomplish "a la" OpenMusic or Vision while tracker based pattern sequencing is inherent. Creating your own timeline, poetry sequencer or hybrid tracker is now possible with a minimum of effort.

Wesley Smith writes:

The xray.jit objects were created to extend the functionality of jitter for particular projects I have worked on. As such, some of the objects are quite specific to my needs at the time. There are, however, some objects that are good for everyday patching. The objects I use the most are xray.jit.timecube, xray.jit.grid2tri, and xray.jit.quicksort.

I have divided the objects into several broad categories pertaining to Geometry, Data, Video, and Simulation. The Geometry objects deal more with OpenGL situations. The Data objects operate on jitter matrices without consideration for what that data necessarily represents and are more geared toward the general matrix format. The Video objects on the other hand mostly deal with data that is in one of the common video formats such as 1 plane char or 4 plane char. Finally, the Simulation objects do physical simulation of some sort.

You can find them (and an example makefile for Windows developers) @ http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~whsmith/xray.html

The Jamoma Project recently released version 0.2 of its modular framework for Max, MSP, and Jitter. Despite the low version number this software is actually quite mature, which years of development and experience forming the basis of the framework. Given that this is a significant release in Jamoma's roadmap, I thought I would talk about both Jamoma and it's development.

FTM is a shared library for Max/MSP providing a small and simple real-time object system and optimized services to be used within Max/MSP externals.

FTM = data structures

• visualization/editors
• file import/export (SDIF, MIDI, ...)
• operators (expressions and externals)

The basic idea of FTM is to extend the data types exchanged between the objects in a Max/MSP patch by complex data structures such as sequences, matrices, dictionaries, break point functions, tuples and whatever might seem helpful for the processing of music, sound and motion capture data.

FTM home page: http://www.ircam.fr/equipes/temps-reel/maxmsp/ftm.html

FTM intro: http://www.ircam.fr/equipes/temps-reel/maxmsp/ftm.intro.html

Sukandar Kartadinata writes:

please note the website update regarding the gluion sensor interface: http://www.glui.de/prod/gluion.html

The gluion interfaces sensors to your computer via OSC so can be used with Max/MSP, pd, or SuperCollider (among others). One special feature of the gluion is its ability to connect digital sensors - be it simple rotary encoders, ultrasound distance measurement, or intelligent sensors with serial interfaces. The gluion is now available in limited quantities. Pricing depends on enclosure version and starts at 444 Euros.

jasch writes" i'm happy to announce the release of version 0.2.1 of my externals and the port of the objects to windows.

• get them here: http://www.jasch.ch/dl
• the release notes: http://www.jasch.ch/code_release.html
• the complete list of objects: http://www.jasch.ch/code.html

Juha Vehviläinen writes "Fingerworks have released a new firmware and sdk for their multi-touch devices that allow output of raw finger position data. I've made an external to grab this data, available here:

http://pinktwins.com/iGesture.zip (OS X compiled)."

Related links: http://fingerworks.com

http://pinktwins.com

Recently there's been a lot of talk about this new multitouch LCD controller. JazzMutant website.

"LEMUR is a handy and modular touchpanel based controller designed for audio and multimedia real-time applications. Our technology associates multitouch capabilities with visual display. LEMUR is provided with an extensible library of User Interface Objects such as faders, switchs, pads, keyboards, strings, etc."