One Button Patching Challenge

Sometimes the possibilities of using Max are so broad that we love a creative constraint as a way to get us focussed and thinking of new patching ideas. What if your patch only had one button in it to interact with? We invited three artists from the Max community to take the challenge and show us what they came up with. Here are the results of that challenge, with downloadable Max patches included…

Michael Reichmann (@_wellenfront)

oneBang is an interactive audiovisual patch. I wanted to create something that looks and sounds organic. It takes on a life of its own: engagement is encouraged but not essential. The movement (sonic and visual) is driven by a jit.bfg and gets transformed by a push of the button.
Find more of Michael's work on Instagram

Matthew Davis (@nervousplaything)

“One_Button_Ocean” generates three audio layers, with accompanying video streams. It contains white noise lowpass filter swells, impulse clicks and background noises. It randomly selects the speed between the clicks, the frequency of the background noise and the frequency/volume of the white noise low pass filter. The simple low-fi visuals of cyan “spurts” are generated by the clicks, light blue “triangle waveforms” are created by the background grumbles and dark blue “sine style waveforms” are made from the white noise swells. The results are a digital ocean.
Find more of Matthew's work on Instagram

Ben Johnson (@ersatz_ben)

This patch is based on the idea that an mc.comb~ object can be repurposed to create polyphonic Karplus-Strong synth chords. The ‘one button’ creates a stream of midi notes (taken from a chord stored in a table object) which are then converted to delay times for the mc.comb~ Karplus-Strong synth. To add some tonality, the resulting stereo signal then is fed through some buffir~ objects with continually updating source buffers – this sometimes gives the synth a piano-like timbre. A simple reverb, made from another mc.comb~ object with a ‘harmonic’ mc wrapper message, gives some dimensionality to the sound. Many of the patch’s parameters are randomised with each press of the ‘one button’, creating a different vibe each time.
Find more of Ben's work on Instagram