dan derks

There's magic in using a tool someone else made to address their 

 artistic needs. This magic is precisely Max for Live's strength. It allows a person with an idiosyncratic idea to avoid stumbling over lower-level challenges by providing them with the structure of a DAW. This enables the developer to dig deeper into the execution of their idea and, most importantly, add 

That's why one of my favorite devices I've found on maxforlive.com this year is 

lil-pup.png

Simply put, it's a gorgeous MIDI device that randomly generates deterministic and looping sequences with dynamic timing and velocity. Here's an early exploration I made for the Cycling '74 Instagram, which was fully improvised using two instances of 

 feeding one of Spitfire Audio's piano VSTs:

this is lil pup 1.0, a free #maxforlive device from @rjonline00 / @smartphones.amxd. 
⁣it generates looping melodic sequences that are *super* musical.⁣
⁣here, two of them play @oliverpatriceweder’s @spitfireaudio toolkit.⁣
⁣I don’t know how these lil pups do what they do, but I like what they do.⁣
⁣happy piano day tomorrow.⁣
⁣hope y’all are well.⁣
⁣⁣
⁣#piano #generativemusic #computermusic #algorithmicart #maxmsp #abletonlive #abletonlive10 @ableton #pianoday #pianoday2020 #generativeart #musictechnology #musictech #minimalism #minimal #melody #spitfireaudio #cycling74 #plugin #algorithmicmusic #composition #scoring #filmscoring

 piece on our feed, I ended up developing a friendship with its creator -- the brilliant, approachable, and endlessly motivated jr (or rj, depending on his mood). In the year since 

, he's developed an entire suite of devices called 

, which transform interaction gestures into pulses. These pulses are trafficked across the other devices through send-and-receive networks which can be used to trigger slewed envelopes, or streams of control data, or selections from MIDI note pools, etc. In short, 

 bring modular synth-style "patch programming" to Live and the results are absolutely compelling:

rjig1.mp4

I recently had the opportunity to speak with jr at length about his perspective as a designer and performer, how he got started with Max and Max for Live, and the importance of drilling down into what makes your work unique.

jr started his journey making music with computers when he was a teenager, building tracks in Fruity Loops and making his way to Ableton Live, where he recorded guitar tracks to take back to his metal band. Eventually, his road led where many journeys with Max seem to begin -- with Autechre. "

 is so pretty and I wanted to figure out how they did that!", he laughs. After reading online that Max was somehow involved, he dug into Sam Tarakajian's 

 off of those videos. Just reading text to figure out what something does terrifies me. That's [also] why I love Max -- I can 

After going through Sam's tutorials, it was clear to jr that there was still tons left to learn. Rather than get bogged down in what he 

 know, he just invested heavily in exploring the depths of ten objects.

 is the most useful. It's an if/then statement. That's really all you need. You gotta be 

. The less objects you know, the more resourceful you have to be with them. But they're just little tools, once you get good with them you know which when you need and when. Using those ten objects, I don't have to manage a whole bunch of shit in my head — a whole bunch of knowledge — so I can patch pretty quickly."

, jr knew he wanted it to create random timing. This repeating-but-non-deterministic approach led to even more interesting discoveries when he recycled that part of the patch to determine pitch.

"The idea is a hundred randoms walking through the steps, but the patch makes it loop. It's not how Autechre does it," he laughs, "but that's how I thought it should be done. I got really lucky with that, that was just how it worked. I guess it's obvious — I couldn't have done anything else, pitch would have to follow the same structure — but maybe it's not."

 is a fully generative tool (it requires only a single MIDI note to start), jr wasn't fully satisfied with the performance paradigms that typically surround Live. This led jr to develop what he calls "action-based sequencing."

"We're sick of launching clips!" he exclaims while laughing. "There's gotta be a 

. Where a fader doesn't just control one thing, but four or eight things. Traditional sequencing is steps on a grid in Live. The steps make stuff happen. With action-based sequencing, you have to physically make stuff happen. Things depend on other things to happen -- nothing happens without something happening before it."

While this may sound like condition-based sequencing, many of jr's devices 

 require direct input from the artist in order to kick off a flurry of notes or automate a filter sweep.

 that best deliver on the rewards of this approach is the pairing of 

swpguide.png

ringguide.png

"You can do that in Ableton with automation, but it's like that every time. 

 you press play it sounds the same. With action-based sequencing, you can plan something out, but you never get the exact same thing happening twice."

If this feels modular synth-y, that's because it sorta 

-- it's patch-programming in a different context. At the heart of this kinship are the send/receive networks that make jr's smartphones entirely unique in the Max for Live space.

 feature text boxes which can direct, for example, the pulses from riding a fader over 

 network possible, resulting from jr's hope for more opportunities for device cross-talk which reaches outside Live's left-to-right signal chain.

 modules for Live, but they should start talking to each other. If somebody makes something super simple that can talk to [across devices], it can be one 20% useful block that could make the whole system do much more. I don't want to insist that it's text boxes, but if you have an already-made device just try putting a text box on a parameter. A lot of parameters in existing devices are sick, but [it'd be better] if something else could move them, or move them in a different way."

A few developers have taken jr up on this, like Jacob Sachs-Mishalanie:

Download here: https://jsmishalanie.com/spike

spike is a max for live midi device that creates random grace note gestures.

Max for Live Device: JSM Spike

By giving jr the keys to add smartphone compatibility to 

, an otherwise standalone device gains fascinating depth as a component in a larger network of responses.

"Controlling more than one thing with a knob or a fader is really fun. Just having three things move at the same point or different points — doing that with one fader, synchronized, there's something really cool about that you wouldn't get to [otherwise]."

When you watch the devices interact with each other, it's hard to not feel an excitement bloom. There's so much playfulness inherent in the toolkit jr's built, which is personified by his performance videos on Instagram.

This my new song🎵🎚🦷

Toward the end of our conversation, I'm surprised to learn that I'm the first person jr's talked about Max with for any length of time. Though he engages with folks through direct messages on social media, jr's never been in a Max class or attended a meetup or even been able to talk to somebody after a show. Some of this is due to the timing of the pandemic, but it also paints a very clear picture of how access to knowledge and resources has shifted in the last few years alone. It's also a heartening confirmation that people who operate from similar and idiosyncratic perspectives 

. These connections are crucial -- they bolster exploration and new expressions.

"I was going to build [smartphones] just in Max. They wouldn't have been [Max for Live] devices, they were going to be abstractions — but I saw how many people [on Instagram] liked 

 and I figured out how to make them into devices, which was 

For a peek behind the curtain at Cycling '74, we've been spending a lot of time recently talking about how we see our users, how they see themselves, and who they see as their communities. jr is my favorite type of user. He challenges all assumptions of "who Max is for" at blazing speeds and with infectious enthusiasm.

"Do you have to be this certain type of person to do this? I don't think so, because 

 can fuckin' do it. My devices are complicated, but a lot of people are making devices without going to school. If you do go to school for [music tech] you learn a lot about Max, which would be ideal, but you don't have to know everything about Max to get what you want out of it. I've got 5 different devices that all do different shit from ten objects! As much as I know about Max, it's not from learning about Max. It comes from all sorts of different stuff — that's where the mindset comes from."

Besides Autechre, one of jr's inspirations is Lil B, which feels pretty aligned with his perspective that Max isn't a tool for one kind of expression or type of art.

"It's so inspiring that [Lil B] can have fun with something that's supposed to be so 'serious.' And to make as much music as he does? That was my whole goal, to make a blueprint and follow that. When you have a recipe, you can make a lot of stuff with that recipe. He's one of the first people to do that, to get a certain way of doing things and just spam it and then switch it up and do that with something else. That's what I did with smartphones — I got the thing and I 

As we wrapped up our call, I asked jr what he thinks helps make Max stick for some folks, to which he offered a brilliant prognosis:

"You have to be extremely good at problem solving. Max is building a huge puzzle that you also put together yourself and navigate. Like, building a hundred tiny little puzzles you have to solve where everything's smaller pieces of a bigger piece. Objects turn into patches, patches turn into devices, devices turn into music."

If you can't wait to start playing with these devices, jr has a number of lite versions 

, with full versions between $10-$25 available on 

To learn your way around, I highly recommend watching jr's recent livestream, where he demonstrates how to structure a Live Set around 

Smartphones livestream 10/3

And if you want to get your own devices onto the 

 network, scroll down to grab example devices for both send and receive. Connect a pulse from your own devices to send to any smartphones receiver with the same name, or replace any bangs or clock signals with pulses from smartphone transmitters.

smartphones-recs.amxd

smartphones-sends.amxd

There's magic in using a tool someone else made to address their own artistic needs. This magic is precisely Max for Live's strength. It allows a person with an idiosyncratic idea to avoid stumbling over lower-level challenges by providing them with the structure of a DAW. This enables the developer to dig deeper into the execution of their idea and, most importantly, add personality to the resulting device.

That's why one of my favorite devices I've found on maxforlive.com this year is lil pup:

Simply put, it's a gorgeous MIDI device that randomly generates deterministic and looping sequences with dynamic timing and velocity. Here's an early exploration I made for the Cycling '74 Instagram, which was fully improvised using two instances of lil pup feeding one of Spitfire Audio's piano VSTs:

After sharing my lil pup piece on our feed, I ended up developing a friendship with its creator -- the brilliant, approachable, and endlessly motivated jr (or rj, depending on his mood). In the year since lil pup, he's developed an entire suite of devices called smartphones, which transform interaction gestures into pulses. These pulses are trafficked across the other devices through send-and-receive networks which can be used to trigger slewed envelopes, or streams of control data, or selections from MIDI note pools, etc. In short, smartphones bring modular synth-style "patch programming" to Live and the results are absolutely compelling:

jr started his journey making music with computers when he was a teenager, building tracks in Fruity Loops and making his way to Ableton Live, where he recorded guitar tracks to take back to his metal band. Eventually, his road led where many journeys with Max seem to begin -- with Autechre. "Oversteps is so pretty and I wanted to figure out how they did that!", he laughs. After reading online that Max was somehow involved, he dug into Sam Tarakajian's Delicious Max tutorials.

"I learned everything off of those videos. Just reading text to figure out what something does terrifies me. That's [also] why I love Max -- I can see what's going on."

After going through Sam's tutorials, it was clear to jr that there was still tons left to learn. Rather than get bogged down in what he didn't  know, he just invested heavily in exploring the depths of ten objects. 

"gswitch is the most useful. It's an if/then statement. That's really all you need. You gotta be clever. The less objects you know, the more resourceful you have to be with them. But they're just little tools, once you get good with them you know which when you need and when. Using those ten objects, I don't have to manage a whole bunch of shit in my head — a whole bunch of knowledge — so I can patch pretty quickly."

As he began building lil pup, jr knew he wanted it to create random timing. This repeating-but-non-deterministic approach led to even more interesting discoveries when he recycled that part of the patch to determine pitch. 

While lil pup is a fully generative tool (it requires only a single MIDI note to start), jr wasn't fully satisfied with the performance paradigms that typically surround Live. This led jr to develop what he calls "action-based sequencing."

"We're sick of launching clips!" he exclaims while laughing. "There's gotta be a deeper way to perform [with Live], more interactive. Where a fader doesn't just control one thing, but four or eight things. Traditional sequencing is steps on a grid in Live. The steps make stuff happen. With action-based sequencing, you have to physically make stuff happen. Things depend on other things to happen -- nothing happens without something happening before it."

While this may sound like condition-based sequencing, many of jr's devices actually require direct input from the artist in order to kick off a flurry of notes or automate a filter sweep.

Some of the smartphones that best deliver on the rewards of this approach is the pairing of swp + rng:

swp has two individual sliders which can be controlled simultaneously by a meta-slider

rng holds pools of notes which play when a pulse is received

the artist sets up to 4 crossing points on each of swp's two sliders, which send pulses to rng when crossed

the artist can also assign up to 4 multiples of each of swp's two sliders to control other parameters in sympathy 

"You can do that in Ableton with automation, but it's like that every time. Every time you press play it sounds the same. With action-based sequencing, you can plan something out, but you never get the exact same thing happening twice."

If this feels modular synth-y, that's because it sorta is -- it's patch-programming in a different context. At the heart of this kinship are the send/receive networks that make jr's smartphones entirely unique in the Max for Live space.

Each of the smartphones feature text boxes which can direct, for example, the pulses from riding a fader over swp's crossing points. This makes the smartphones network possible, resulting from jr's hope for more opportunities for device cross-talk which reaches outside Live's left-to-right signal chain.

"Max for Live devices are modules for Live, but they should start talking to each other. If somebody makes something super simple that can talk to [across devices], it can be one 20% useful block that could make the whole system do much more. I don't want to insist that it's text boxes, but if you have an already-made device just try putting a text box on a parameter. A lot of parameters in existing devices are sick, but [it'd be better] if something else could move them, or move them in a different way."

By giving jr the keys to add smartphone compatibility to spike, an otherwise standalone device gains fascinating depth as a component in a larger network of responses.

Toward the end of our conversation, I'm surprised to learn that I'm the first person jr's talked about Max with for any length of time.  Though he engages with folks through direct messages on social media, jr's never been in a Max class or attended a meetup or even been able to talk to somebody after a show. Some of this is due to the timing of the pandemic, but it also paints a very clear picture of how access to knowledge and resources has shifted in the last few years alone. It's also a heartening confirmation that people who operate from similar and idiosyncratic perspectives can and will find each other. These connections are crucial -- they bolster exploration and new expressions.

"I was going to build [smartphones] just in Max. They wouldn't have been [Max for Live] devices, they were going to be abstractions — but I saw how many people [on Instagram] liked lil pup and I figured out how to make them into devices, which was perfect."

"Do you have to be this certain type of person to do this? I don't think so, because I can fuckin' do it. My devices are complicated, but a lot of people are making devices without going to school. If you do go to school for [music tech] you learn a lot about Max, which would be ideal, but you don't have to know everything about Max to get what you want out of it. I've got 5 different devices that all do different shit from ten objects! As much as I know about Max, it's not from learning about Max. It comes from all sorts of different stuff — that's where the mindset comes from."

"It's so inspiring that [Lil B] can have fun with something that's supposed to be so 'serious.' And to make as much music as he does? That was my whole goal, to make a blueprint and follow that. When you have a recipe, you can make a lot of stuff with that recipe. He's one of the first people to do that, to get a certain way of doing things and just spam it and then switch it up and do that with something else. That's what I did with smartphones — I got the thing and I spammed it."

If you can't wait to start playing with these devices, jr has a number of lite versions available for free on maxforlive.com, with full versions between $10-$25 available on his website.

To learn your way around, I highly recommend watching jr's recent livestream, where he demonstrates how to structure a Live Set around smartphones:

And if you want to get your own devices onto the smartphones network, scroll down to grab example devices for both send and receive. Connect a pulse from your own devices to send to any smartphones receiver with the same name, or replace any bangs or clock signals with pulses from smartphone transmitters.

jr-feature.png

There's magic in using a tool that someone else made to address a very specific artistic need, that grows exponentially the closer you get to the artist. Looking closer, you can appreciate both the approach and personality of the idea's manifestation as a usable tool. I ended up getting to know jr  -- the brilliant, approachable, and endlessly motivated creator of a suite of devices called smartphones, which bring modular synth-style "patch programming" to Live. I thought you’d like to get to know him, too.

an-interview-with-jr-smartphones-maxforlive-device

It would be interesting if you guys got Autechre themselves for an interview about their working methods, they are your biggest promotors

In any case where someone well-known makes use of an instrument or a certain set of tools, I'm generally leery of the implicit (or explicit, if it's done poorly) suggestion that an artist's creativity and vision reduces to the set of tools they use. My sense is that the multiverse is littered with Autechre variants who have acheived awesomeness with any number of other tools. It's the person who wields the tool, not the tool.

 notice the presence of the new MC stuff on SIGN, right? :-)

In any case where someone well-known makes use of an instrument or a certain set of tools, I'm generally leery of the implicit (or explicit, if it's done poorly) suggestion that an artist's creativity and vision reduces to the set of tools they use. My sense is that the multiverse is littered with Autechre variants who have acheived awesomeness with any number of other tools. It's the person who wields the tool, not the tool.

Your mileage may vary, of course. 

But I suppose you did notice the presence of the new MC stuff on SIGN, right? :-)

Of course the tool doesnt define the artist, I was just refering to the quote in the interview:" Eventually, his road led where many journeys with Max seem to begin -- with Autechre. "

I'm not acquainted enough with MC to recognize it's sound(does it even have a "sound" of it's own apart from creative de-tuning?). Can you refer me to specific spots in the album where it's obvious and why is it obvious?

If you've looked at any of Sean and Rob's patches, I'm sure you can imagine why being able to fan out control signals at low frequencies might be beneficial.

these patches are all LIES! has anyone ever seen Sean or Rob actually post those patches, themselves? didn't think so. can't prove anything. i bet they don't even use max/msp, they just go to their friends, 'Messrs. Boards Of Canada', and ask them to give them sounds that sort of blur the realm between analog and digital, but sound digital-enough to pass off as Max/MSP, and 'Messrs. Boards Of Canada' simply reply with: "actually we don't even use analog equipment like VCRs and such, we just take everything and put it through a 'onepole~' object in max/msp, give it that softer-analog sound"... to which Sirs Autechirs reply with, "DUDES! we been telling everyone we use max/msp, you mean you've actually been doing so?!" at which point they all come here and have a good laugh at all of us(such mean people😭)

🙌 i like that instagram post of jr's 'performance capture', the performance feels very organic(i mean from my standpoint as audience), like he's coaxing different sounds into existence, and each gesture breeds a new, individually diverse form or existence all on its own. plus the music has that beautiful wash from minimal to maximal in textures and loudness... words fail me, but it's good to see something so meticulously and uniquely crafted 👍🍻

☝️
these patches are all LIES! has anyone ever seen Sean or Rob actually post those patches, themselves? didn't think so. can't prove anything. i bet they don't even use max/msp, they just go to their friends, 'Messrs. Boards Of Canada', and ask them to give them sounds that sort of blur the realm between analog and digital, but sound digital-enough to pass off as Max/MSP, and 'Messrs. Boards Of Canada' simply reply with: "actually we don't even use analog equipment like VCRs and such, we just take everything and put it through a 'onepole~' object in max/msp, give it that softer-analog sound"... to which Sirs Autechirs reply with, "DUDES! we been telling everyone we use max/msp, you mean you've actually been doing so?!" at which point they all come here and have a good laugh at all of us(such mean people😭)

what were we talking about again? oh! LIL PUP, smartphones, and jr! 🙌 i like that instagram post of jr's 'performance capture', the performance feels very organic(i mean from my standpoint as audience), like he's coaxing different sounds into existence, and each gesture breeds a new, individually diverse form or existence all on its own. plus the music has that beautiful wash from minimal to maximal in textures and loudness... words fail me, but it's good to see something so meticulously and uniquely crafted 👍🍻

let´s use some copies of mc.button and forget about all this.

and in general, if you put a max patch in a hotline site, dont mix up "greetings from H2O" with "greetings to H2O" - and no, warp~ is not the signal version of a pop label.


lol raja.

let´s use some copies of mc.button and forget about all this.

and in general, if you put a max patch in a hotline site, dont mix up "greetings from H2O" with "greetings to H2O" - and no, warp~ is not the signal version of a pop label.



I wanted to thank you for this great read!! I definitely enjoying every little bit of it I have you bookmarked to check out new stuff you post.

I wanted to thank you for this great read!! I definitely enjoying every little bit of it I have you bookmarked to check out new stuff you post.
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An Interview with jr: Smartphones and Beyond