Isabel Kaspriskie

Last up in this series of explorations of the Package Manager, I thought I’d jump into one of my favorite tools: Ease. It’s a package maintained by Cycling ‘74 which implements Robert Penner’s brilliant 

My favorite part of the Ease package is how easy it is to use in unusual ways. (Pun intended.) The functions are such a simple idea, but they open up the door to many satisfying audio and visual tricks. Let me take you through a few examples of where Ease can be utilized!

If you want to scale inputs, but you want more than a linear remapping, 

 offers a quick way to get many kinds of variations on the 

 object, but if you don’t want to deal with setting up the correct expression syntax, the event-rate 

 object is one way to quickly switch between different exponential, polynomial, as well as more unusual scaling functions.

Screen Shot 2021-09-21 at 9.15.04 AM.png

Shown in this basic example patch is a helpful 

. With this abstraction, you can visualize the function shapes you’re selecting.

Similarly to rescaling, sometimes you want more than a linear output of a common object like 

. One way to start getting new and unusual results is to send 

Screen Shot 2021-09-21 at 9.32.00 AM.png

A patch that recently sucked me in was the 

 patch. The idea: instead of using ADSR envelopes use 

 envelopes to control filters, pitch, and amplitude. The results range from subtle to extreme. (Try out the bounce function on pitch!)

Screen Shot 2021-09-21 at 9.40.56 AM.png

Of course, I would be amiss to skip the obvious utility of Ease in Jitter since easing functions are built for animation!

A screenshot doesn’t do the animation justice, so I recommend checking out the help patcher for 

 to see how satisfying the results can be.

Screen Shot 2021-09-21 at 9.46.56 AM.png

Besides animation, the rescaling features are also handy in Jitter for manipulating color, too.

Screen Shot 2021-09-21 at 9.48.24 AM.png

These quick examples of Ease simply touch the surface, and I encourage you to look through the package’s documentation for more ideas.

With that, thank you for joining me in a summer of Package Manager explorations. I hope you continue to check out the different offerings of objects, examples, tutorials, and more provided by Max users like you! Happy patching!

Last up in this series of explorations of the Package Manager, I thought I’d jump into one of my favorite tools: Ease. It’s a package maintained by Cycling ‘74 which implements Robert Penner’s brilliant easing functions for Max, MSP, and Jitter.

If you want to scale inputs, but you want more than a linear remapping, ease offers a quick way to get many kinds of variations on the scale object. Of course you can use an expr object, but if you don’t want to deal with setting up the correct expression syntax, the event-rate ease object is one way to quickly switch between different exponential, polynomial, as well as more unusual scaling functions. 

Shown in this basic example patch is a helpful bpatcher abstraction included in the package, ease.chooser. With this abstraction, you can visualize the function shapes you’re selecting.

Similarly to rescaling, sometimes you want more than a linear output of a common object like line. One way to start getting new and unusual results is to send line output through ease to see where it takes you.

A patch that recently sucked me in was the ease.synth_example patch. The idea: instead of using ADSR envelopes use ease~ envelopes to control filters, pitch, and amplitude. The results range from subtle to extreme. (Try out the bounce function on pitch!)

A screenshot doesn’t do the animation justice, so I recommend checking out the help patcher for jit.ease to see how satisfying the results can be.

ease_example.jpg

Ease is a package maintained by Cycling ‘74 which implements Robert Penner’s brilliant easing functions for Max, MSP, and Jitter. My favorite part of the Ease package is how easy it is to use in unusual ways. The functions are such a simple idea, but they open up the door to many satisfying audio and visual tricks.

Take It Easy with the Ease Package