Get the Most Out of the Extras Menu

There is one area that is often overlooked by Max users: the Extras Menu. While it may not be home turf for flashy and exciting features, I think you will find tools to make your Max use more efficient and more enjoyable. With the release of Max 7, some of these tools now include refinements that can greatly enhance your Max development experience.

The Extras Menu is right there on the main menu bar - it contains a set of interesting Max patches that can save you precious time when patching common functions. Many of these patches have been tightened up for Max 7, including

• KeyMIDI: a computer keyboard-based MIDI generator

• DSP CPU Monitor: a patcher-based system monitor

• QuickRecord: an audio recorder patch to grab the output of your Max patch on the fly.

But perhaps the least well known and most important tool in the Extras menu is the Object Help Launcher. Most of us already know that Max help patchers provide great amounts of information for understanding an object, and - since help files are Max patches themselves - provide good example code to ‘steal’. The Object Help Launcher does something more significant: it categorizes the objects into high-level groups, then allows you to see all of the objects in a category and launch their help patches from a single source.

This is one of the most convenient ways to test-drive different objects, and it remains one of my favorite ways to do a little self-learning about Max, MSP, Jitter or even third-party package contents. Spending a few minutes diving into the menus will often provide insight into Max objects that you never knew of our thought about using, and will help you step outside of your usual patching routines. It’s been one of the most important tools for my own Max education, and I suspect you will find it helpful as well.