tutorials

Between the tutorials, Jitter Recipes, and all of the example content, there are many Jitter patches floating around that each do one thing pretty well, but very few of them give a sense of how to scale up into a more complex system. Inspired by a recent patching project and Darwin Grosse's guitar processing articles, this series of tutorials will present a Jitter-based live video processing system using simple reusable modules, a consistent control interface, and optimized GPU-based processes wherever possible. The purpose of these articles is to provide an over-the-shoulder view of my creative process in building more complex Jitter patches for video processing.

Introduction

In the last article, we added some basic tonal effects: distortion/overdrive and EQ/filtering. This time, we will expand our virtual effects rack to include both a phase shifter and a full-featured modulating digital delay. As we add these effects, you will begin to see why a DIY effects system can trump any commercial product.

The third installment of Jitter Recipe Collection.

More snacks for the Patching Enthusiast! Stay tuned for new entries to your favorite cookbook.

Now that I've got a nice generative patch and a way to hear it, I thought it'd be nice to make a few improvements and extensions that would let me begin to specify larger structures - to generate instructions to my generative patch, as it were. While I'm sure that the world is full of people who want ways to have the same thing happen again and again, I'd like to do this in ways that offer a little more freedom than that. This short tutorial will add a modest number of these kinds of changes.

Those of you who are paying close attention already know that Max 5 includes a database that manages all the files in the search path and makes handy things like the File Browser possible. To enable this functionality, we wrote an SQLite object to do all the important work under the hood. However, the SQLite object in Max isn't really something that you can type into an object box, and it doesn't come with any help files or documentation. In this article, we'll look at ways to interface with this mysterious "no box" object using JavaScript, so that you can build, query, and edit your own databases in Max.

Introduction

In the last article, we did a lot of setup - we got input/output handling in place, and added a compressor to the processing chain as an example of an “effect module”. In this article, we will continue adding effects, including a dual overdrive module and a three-stage EQ/Filter module. With these additions we will further explore Max 5’s user interface options, as well as taking a look at some of the “tweaks” that make Max/MSP functions a little more guitar-faithful.

Last time out, we created the LFOur, a generative patch composed of a quartet of synchronized LFOs whose output we can use to make noise. While it's interesting to watch how the different LFO configurations make combinatoric waveforms and it's restful and instructive to watch the sliders flick and rock, it would be nice to have something to connect it to. This tutorial includes some patches that will do just that.

Customizing the Max UI

As we were preparing Max 5, we strove to make things as pleasurable for every user as we could. One of the ways we did this was to permit the customization of the way Max looks and acts, so users could adjust their experience to individual tastes and needs. In addition to an unprecedented number of configurable settings, Max 5 also provides a more navigable structure for making choices about your environment. In this article we'll discuss ways you can tweak the settings in various places to make your time spent in Max 5 more comfortable and fulfilling to your aesthetic requirements.

Introduction

In an earlier article, Andrew Benson and Ben Bracken went through the process of connecting a guitar to a Max-based processing system, and creating a few guitar-oriented effects patches. In this series of articles, I will be building a Max-based guitar processing "rig", and will give you the opportunity to look over my shoulder as I design and implement this system.

As a Max programmer, I spend quite a lot of time making patches that some people might find a little odd; rather than a large "instrument" that I toil over at great length or "the patch is the piece" outings, I love to make Max patches that don't make any noise or play any movies or create OpenGL scenes. Instead, I make things that are generative - working from the idea that Max is really just about messages, numbers, and lists and how you move them about; I love creating ways of generating and organizing variety, and then exploring what those generative structures do when hooked up to audio or video or other outputs.

When we left off in the last article, we had created a new color scheme and layout for our old patcher using presentation mode, translucency, improved color controls, and embedded hints. We could certainly leave this patch alone, but we're going to take the interface to another level, making it a little more interactive and interesting, while providing more intuitive controls. The techniques discussed here should open the door to much more fun and useful interface designs for your patches.

Converting a "pluggo ready patch" into a "poly~ abstraction"

A common concern for many advanced Max users is the ability to load new sound modules into a running MSP patch without causing discontinuities in the sound. Many people worked around this by creating Pluggo plug-ins of their sound modules that could be loaded dynamically inside the vst~ object without breaking up the signal in the main patch. Another feature of the Pluggo engine was that it automatically generated the handy "egg-slider" GUI from the parameters specified in the patch. As exporting plug-ins is not currently available for Max 5, we will look at another alternative in this article based on a new feature of the poly~ object, which allows you to dynamically load new abstractions without recompiling the DSP. To help users explore this new alternative, we will demonstrate different ways to convert a Pluggo-ready patch made with MaxMSP 4.6 into a patch that you can load as a poly~ abstraction. Using the scripting capabilities of MaxMSP, we will also see how to automatically generate a Graphical User Interface for the newly converted poly~ abstraction. As this is a fairly advanced tutorial, you may need to consult the documentation browser for more details about the concepts and techniques involved.

I have to confess that I always found UI design in Max 4 to be a little too cumbersome, and would almost always wait until a patch was completely written and debugged before bothering with any layout of UI elements and color. The design process was usually confounded in the end by the fact that it seemed no matter how hard you tried, it still looked like a Max patch (for better or worse). Or, you end up going to great lengths to build a UI and unlock your patch to find a complete mess of patching. I, like many other Max users, convinced myself that I liked the old Max 4 look and that I could deal with the limited color palette and pixelation. I could just build functional patches that did their job and didn't need any polish. That was then. Now, along comes Max 5, with its more user friendly interface-building tools, and I'm starting to think it's time to put a new face on all those old patches. This article is an exploration into my process of breathing new life into some dusty old creations.

An introduction to using MaxMSP for guitar processing.

The ReWire concepts we've discussed in the previous ReWire articles were based on the typical needs of most users -- piping information between Max/MSP and a ReWire host or client application. However, ReWire can also be used to take otherwise upstanding audio applications and use them for unconventional purposes. The key to this is the hostcontrol~ object, which allows a Max patch to exert control over the transport of the ReWire host. Combining this with some common Max techniques can turn the most staid audio app into a subservient audio zombie.