Cycling 74 » Topic: How do you work with multiple patches for live performances?

How do you work with multiple patches for live performances?

DiGiTaLFX — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 23:50:53 +0000

A simple question here. Just wondering how people deal with switching from one patch to another during a live performance. This evening I found myself wanting to be able to quickly switch from one patch to another and realised I didn’t have any seamless way of doing this other than fading to black, freezing the projector and then loading up and unfreezing. Seemed very cumbersome so would love to see a thread of how people deal with this kind of thing.

Re: How do you work with multiple patches for live performances?

Bas van der Graaff — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 14:58:43 +0000

We run everything in the same patch, but we do load data in a ‘trackbank’, consisting of video’s, pictures etc. This takes a while though, depending on the amount of course.

Maybe it’s an idea to run different patches in different instances of Max? You can then stop the patch and cmd-tab, start to near-instant switch. You might just see the alt-tab icons for a sec if you hold the keys.

Re: How do you work with multiple patches for live performances?

Roman Thilenius — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 15:27:40 +0000

i am using a solo mechanism which is implemented in all open
patches and connected to [thispatcher].

you can klick a button or press a key in the frontmost patch which
makes the mechanism send “front” to [thispatcher] in the chosen
patcher.

with a fixed set of only 3 or 4 patches you could do even simpler
and just use send/receive in order to send a command to another
patchers [thispatcher].

-110

Re: How do you work with multiple patches for live performances?

DiGiTaLFX — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 19:58:53 +0000

What hardware do you run on Bas?

Roman, the solo mechanism sounds a good idea actually! Do you ever run into name conflicts when you open multiple patches?

Any other ideas still welcome :)

Re: How do you work with multiple patches for live performances?

Bas van der Graaff — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 23:52:38 +0000

I work on a MacPro, 8-core, with I think an NVidia 4850 but i’m not 100% on that. The computer that is used during performances is similar, but it’s slightly newer, and has faster cores.

Solo would work fine here…if I could load everything at the same time. We’re already battling the theoretical (32bit) 4 gb max memory address size, I’m currently preparing an editor to run in another instance of Max, which will hopefully allow us to keep going for a good while.

But with smaller patches, I’d definitely recommend a system like Roman is proposing. When doing video, I’d even recommend drawing everything to the same window, by manually banging or disabling objects. I’d giving all your ‘named’ objects (sends, receives, textures, GL objects, matrices etc) a prefix, like @name show1-myrendertexture. Might feel like extra work, but definitely keeps your patches organised.

Re: How do you work with multiple patches for live performances?

Roman Thilenius — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 01:08:12 +0000

no, i dont run into conflicts , i use abstractions or bpatchers.

take the attached bpatcher and put it in up to 8 patcher windows
of the same size, and always at the same position.

in the first patcher window, connect the first outlet to [thispatcher],
in the second patcher connect the second outlet to a [thispatcher]
and so on.

save the 8 patches.

now open all 8 files at once.

welcome to virtual desktops a la maxmsp.

i usually use such abstractions in fullscreen mode, looks real fun.

you might not want to see the GUI, so just use keyboard commands
instead.

in video or sequencer world [deferlow] might be a good idea.

-110

p.s. i dont run into conflicts because 2×8 monitors are usually enough
to patch quite some maxmsp stuff. :) and if you even need more than
8, just make a 20 desktops version.