Missing Music Modernization
There has been an active community of Max Patchers online for about 30 years. And, as part of his Music Technology / Software Archaeology Project “Missing Music,” musician Suren Seneviratne has cataloged more than a few classics from the earlier eras of Max.
We reached out to Suren to ask him to pick a few of his favorite Old School Max Patches. We then reached out to their authors to ask – would they be interested in updating these decades old patches (and standalones) for modern systems, and contemporary users? They all, graciously, agreed.
Below you will find updated patches – the originals old enough to vote, drink, almost old enough to run for president – by jasch, jhno, Leafcutter John and Lewis Keller. Some required only minor adjustments; some, a bit more effort (CDMF did, after all, require the use of an optical drive). You will also find contributions from some of our favorite Max artists, using these patches (or combinations of them) in their work today. As could you!
This project has been almost two years in the making, and quite the undertaking to get together; thanks to Suren, jasch, jhno, John, Lewis, Alex, Matthew, Seb and Tom for all their hard work.
The Patches
Erratica by jasch
A symphony of glitchy tones. Envelope controlled sine tones with randomized frequency changes, panning and a delay line with feedback. A threatening swarm of thumps, a hundred clinked crystal glasses, a calming rainstorm. 16 presets included to get you started.
looper.1.5.1 by jhno
Record, loop, automate. A three-voice async looper which allows randomized control over volume, pan, filter cutoff and resonance, speed, rerecording and more. Record directly into it or load pre-recorded audio. Slow the tempo way down and smoothing way up for long, evolving textures or turn all the knobs to 127 for pure chaos. Open the patch up, and feed one “tape head” to the next. Your next ambient tape and/or harsh noise set awaits.
punkin300_2026 by Lewis Keller/glewlio
A Pure Vibes Generator. Dub techno in a box. Generative chill. Lofi drum sounds, delayed vocal samples, delicate squelches and chirps, like you’re sitting on a beach currently disintegrating with time itself. Lewis said in a recent Office Hours that “the patch is the piece,” and this is no exception. A fully realized sound environment.
CDMF2026 by Leafcutter John
Have you seen those videos online of the high speed vegetable cutting machines? CDMF is that, for your sound files. Totally rewritten in gen~ (and no longer requiring an optical drive), you load a folder of files into CDMF, and you get out perfect, beautiful slices, every time. Drop in a folder of stuff you made with the three other patches, and put it up on Bandcamp.
by Andrew Benson on July 31, 2026
❤️ 💻 👽 So thrilled to have this out in the world!
Excited to try these out!
still remember trying these back in the days.
Some twerk patches would have also been cool like drool string ukelele or camel toe.
thank you to all the artists and max team 💚
So glorious that we can 'Stand on the Shoulders of Giants' in the digital world, but very sobering that it took two years of effort ! Going forwards do people (far more knowledgeable than me) think that there is any way of creating 'archive versions' of software that we author after we create it, so that whilst we 'use' a version optimised for todays platform, we can still load and learn from these old beauties?
John Williams, I should clarify that "two years" is not so much a technical effort but more that sometimes it takes some time to coordinate people with otherwise busy lives. Max generally has a pretty good reputation for opening and running ancient patches, and in some cases the updates end up being about revisiting past decisions with fresh eyes and adapting to a new Max UI.
Amazing patches! I was honored to have my "groovebox" Cptrl from 2006 included in his research. I have just recently started to porting it to RNBO for Raspberry Pi.
So cool. I remember one patch called ‘drool string ukulele’ I think that’s what it was called. There was another one that you could just click on and it would create unique generative ambient vibes. Wasn’t there another one called Redial or Radial? I used to play with that for hours.
Muy interesante , cool patches ......
Radial was an old C'74 DAW but eventually got integrated into ableton's live view functionality! You can still find the original files online, but I haven't been able to find a modernization that doesn't require a powerpc emulator.
Pluggos Revival?
Burnt Toast?
Thank you! Beautiful blast from the past :)
thanks to everyone who worked on these
I would love to see someone recreate Drunken Sailor from the Hypno Suite… such a great Granular plugin!