| From the Manual: Introduction: What is Max?
"Max is a graphical music programming environment for people who have hit
the limits of the usual sequencer and voicing programs for MIDI
equipment." -Miller Puckette, Max Reference Manual, 1988
Max was developed at the Institut de Recherche et de Coordination
Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris, beginning in late 1986. The
principal author of Max is Miller Puckette, a native of Tennessee who was
trained as a mathemetician and has been at the forefront of real-time
computer music applications for a number of years. Originally a
non-graphical language intended to control IRCAM's powerful 4X
synthesizer, Max was later implemented as a graphical environment for
MIDI on the Macintosh. The present version of Max has been further
developed by David Zicarelli since July of 1989.
Max lets you control your equipment in any way you want. You can create
applications for composing music, improvising music, providing
accompaniment as you play, sending commands to synthesizers, modifying
synthesizer patches - anything you can imagine doing with a computer and
MIDI. Because Max turns all control information into a simple stream of
numbers, you can "patch" anything to anything else.
Max provides you with a high level graphical programming language that
takes full advantage of the Macintoshes graphic capabilities and
icon-based interface. Programs are "written" using graphical objects
rather than text. This reduces the need to learn a lot of arcane
commands and syntax, and it provides a clear and intuitive way to write
programs simply by connecting objects to each other.
Max takes care of all the low level programming tasks for you. It will
trigger events at any arbitrary time in the future, interface to MIDI and
other communication protocols, and perform useful logical operations.
Applications made with Max run in real time. Because of its speed, Max
enables you to write programs which generate music instantly based on
what you play, or which modify your performance as you play.
Max is based on the C programming language. Max provides a simple yet
versatile, high level, graphical language which is itself written in C,
but will be easy to use for those familiar with almost any other
programming language, or even those who have never programmed before.
For those who are fluent in the C language, however, Max can be combined
with C code that you write. So, if there's something you need to do that
Max can't do - and Max can do alot - you can write your own Max objects
in C.
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| I must add that when running on a Classic/Plus/SE Mac, as you build
programs that contain many objects and connecting wires (ballpark of 80
objects), manipulating these objects on the screen gets to be extremely
slow... I see a fast Mac in my future.
So far, I've written these "useful" programs:
Sixteen Sliders: Graphically display sixteen sliders each of which
reflect CC#7 values received on each of sixteen MIDI channels. Also,
display a "soft" LED for each channel which blinks to indicate a Note-On,
Note-off, or CC#7 message received on corresponding channel - an activity
indicator.
Echo/4: MIDI echo. Echo MIDI notes from one to four times. Use CC
sliders to set the delay and volume divisor for each echo.
Layer: Receive notes on specified channel and duplicate these out onto
one to four specified channels.
/Mitch
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