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Andrew Benson

Ben Bracken

An introduction to using Max/MSP for guitar processing

Max/MSP can be a very powerful tool for expanding the sound of a guitar (or any instrument for that matter), and for performing some truly unique processing on your guitar sound. I've teamed up with Ben Bracken for this simple tutorial that will get you shredding your shreds faster than you thought possible. This article will address the essential hardware concerns and introduce some basic concepts in designing guitar effects in Max. If you want to do more with guitar processing in Max, check out Darwin's series

which has been updated for a more recent version of Max - 

The first step in creating our guitar-processing rig will be to gather and assemble all of the necessary hardware. Depending on your existing setup, there are a few possibilities for hardware configuration. The basic theory is that you need some piece of hardware to accomplish each of the following roles:

 - If you are reading this, you probably already have one of these. For this tutorial, any electric guitar will work, or for that matter, an acoustic guitar with a pickup (but watch that feedback!).

 - We'll need something that takes the rather weak output from the guitar and amplify it to line level. You can use any device that provides some gain to your signal. If you are using an external audio interface, it may have at least one gain-enabled track for this purpose. There are also several affordable options, including basic mixers and amplifiers, available at your favorite music gear supplier. For our example, we'll be using a small mixer with AUX sends to do this work.

 - We need some way of turning the analog audio signal into a digital one that Max/MSP understands, and then sending our audio back out into the analog world. The easiest one is just to use the built-in audio jack on your computer. Although this may not have the most pristine quality, this should be sufficient for our uses. For those of you with more exacting standards for audio fidelity, there are a number of higher quality audio interfaces available.

 - If you are just playing for yourself, and recording to disk, any old pair of headphones will probably work for this. If you are performing for others, or don't like wearing headphones while you play, you'll need some sort of amplifier or PA. Once again, if you are reading this, chances are you've got a guitar amp lying around that will serve this purpose.

 - You will probably need a small collection of little adaptor plugs, depending on the types of connections provided by your hardware. For example, your audio cables probably are mono 1/4" plugs and the built-in jack on your laptop is probably a stereo 1/8" jack. Audio adaptor plugs are usually pretty cheap, and are the type of thing you always need more of. Stock up on some common ones for good measure.

Once you've got all this gathered into a room with your computer, you are ready to hook things up. Here is a diagram of the basic setup:

In this diagram we're using a preamp to boost the signal to the computer, and then sending the audio outputs from the computer to headphones or a guitar amp.

Ben suggests a more flexible and possibly more cost effective setup, involving a small multi-track mixer that features Aux Sends. What makes this setup more effective is that you can bring the computer output back as another channel in your mix, so you can mix the clean channel with your processed sound. A multi-track mixer also offers the possibility of incorporating other sound sources like vocals to your rig. Here is a diagram of the mixer-based setup:

In this setup, the guitar is jacked into a gain-enabled track on our mixer. The signal can be turned up by using the 'trim' pot usually located in the top of the channel strip. Set your channel fader at 'unity' (right in the middle) and then adjust your trim to the desired level. Many mixers also feature at least a basic tone control, which helps to reduce the amount of signal-conditioning we need to do in the digital realm. The Aux Send is then routed to the Audio Input of the computer. If you have a mixer that offers a pre-fader Aux Send, this is useful in order to control how much is being sent to the computer regardless of the channel's volume level. Pre-fader Aux Sends takes the signal from the channel just before the channel fader, and post-fader takes it just after. The volume of guitar signal going to the computer is controlled by the track Send knob. The Audio Output of the computer is then routed back to another track on the mixer. Many small mixers feature a stereo track pair that can be used if you will be doing stereo effects in Max.

The master output of the mixer is then routed to our amp or PA system, or headphones can be used if desired. If you are going directly into a mono guitar amp, you will want to make sure that the guitar and computer input channels are hard panned to either the left or right and that your line out is coming from that output channel. If you are sending to a stereo setup, you can leave your guitar panned in the center and your computer input either coming into a stereo channel, or pan one input to the left and the other to the right.

Download the Max 4.6 legacy patches and the updated Max 5 patches used in this article.

Once we have our hardware connections sorted out, we're going to get into Max to see about getting a signal from the guitar. For a quick sanity check, we recommend opening up the 

 patch available in the Extras menu. This provides a quick and easy interface for testing that your connections are all working. If you are using an external audio interface, you will probably need to get into the DSP Status window to make sure that your device is configured properly. For more info on setting up and troubleshooting audio hardware, see the Fundamentals PDF that comes with Max/MSP.

Once you have verified that everything is working properly and the levels on your preamp or mixer are correct, it is time to get patching! The first thing you'll want to do is plop an adc~ or ezadc~ object into your patch. The ezadc~ object is nice because it provides visual feedback that the audio is turned on. This object provides our audio input to Max/MSP. From there, I would recommend using a gain~ slider to provide input level control. Go ahead and route the output of the gain~ slider to a dac~/ezdac~ object, and voila! We have the most basic signal path possible. Now once you are done rolling your eyes, turn on your audio and listen to see if you hear your guitar signal. This should sound like a clean guitar signal. If you hear any clipping or distortion, it means that the levels are too high and you need to turn down the levels on the preamp stage. Congratulations, you just made your first guitar patch.

Now that you have got the basic structure of your rig in place, it is time to start playing with some effects. A good exercise to begin with is to replicate some classic stompbox effects, many of which can be implemented with just a few MSP objects and very little effort. To see what I mean, drop a teeth~ object into your patch and bring up the help patch. Now, since all help files are Max/MSP patches themselves, there is nothing stopping you from opening that help patch and copying out all the good parts for your own patch. To grab yourself a readymade chorus/flanger effect just select the stuff in the lower portion of the help patch and Copy. Now you can go into your simple I/O patch and add this stuff to your signal path by pasting the contents of the clipboard and making the proper connections. Try playing with the parameters of this little patch snippet to get different sounds.

You may decide that this effect is nice, but you really want to filter the sound a little bit to alter the tone. MSP features a number of useful filtering objects such as lores~,svf~,onepole~, reson~, and cross~, all of which come in handy in different situations. I recommend looking at the reference and help patches for each of these for a better idea on how to use them. For our example, we're going to use the filtergraph~ object connected to a cascade~ object. This combination of objects allows you to manipulate a graphic representation of a number of different filter styles. The cascade~ object allows you to set up multiple filters within your filtergraph~ object. To try this out, open up the patch 

. To alter the sound of your filters, try moving the filter bands around with your mouse. Dragging on the edges of the band will change the bandwidth of the filter.

One of the great strengths of creating effects in Max/MSP is the ability to analyze the incoming signal and make logical decisions based on various qualities of the sound. In this patch, we'll measure the amplitude of the guitar signal against a threshold, and use that to trigger a "stutter" effect using the, er, stutter~ object. Open up the patch called 

You will notice the incoming signal is routed to both the stutter~ and peakamp~ object. The peakamp~ object here measures the amplitude of the signal every 500 milliseconds. We then use some basic logical operations to determine if the level is above the threshold value (0.3 by default), and if so pass a bang. This bang then triggers a new random number, which is used to set a new length for stutter~'s playback memory and trigger it to save the last snippet of audio. The phasor~ frequency is automatically calculated to maintain a constant playback rate. For more info on using stutter~, check out the help file and reference page.

Another way to use the input signal for control is to do what is called "envelope following", which involves smoothing an average amplitude value over time to measure the dynamic changes in your signal. This envelope signal can then be used to drive the parameters of other MSP objects. In our example, we'll be using the envelope to change the center frequency and Q of a reson~ filter object. Open up the 

 patch. In the Stutter example, we used peakamp~ to follow the amplitude of the signal. In this example, we need a signal-rate MSP object to do the envelope following.

In this case we use the average~ object in "rms" mode to calculate a running average of the amplitude. The signal coming from average~ is most likely going to be fairly noisy, so we need to use slide~ or rampsmooth~ to smooth out the transitions in the control signal that we are creating. We then scale and offset this signal to send on to the frequency and Q inputs of the reson~ object. In this example we use two cascaded reson~ objects to give the filter extra resonance. The effect is finished off with a tanh~ object to provide a little soft-clipping for a slightly overdriven sound. Increasing the gain on the filter will intensify the distortion of the output.

Many of the signal-processing objects in MSP take a signal input as a parameter, so this technique of envelope following can be used with any number of effects and processes.

Using the basic techniques presented in this article, you should be able to get started exploring the almost limitless potential for new guitar sounds available to you in Max/MSP. The MSP Reference Guide and object help files will be invaluable tools as you explore different objects to accomplish various signal-processing tasks.

I've teamed up with Ben Bracken for this simple tutorial that will get you shredding your shreds faster than you thought possible. This article will address the essential hardware concerns and introduce some basic concepts in designing guitar effects in Max. 

expand-your-guitar-vol-1

Expand Your Guitar, Vol. 1

Marsha Vdovin

Hardware Controllers
Adaptable, minimalist interfaces
Interview by Marsha Vdovin and Ron MacLeod for Cycling '74. Video by Monome.

Cycling74 Perspectives: Monome

Interview with Brian Crabtree and Kelli Cain from Monome

Brian Crabtree (who performs under the name tehn) and his partner Kelli Cain are collectively known as 

. They design what they call adaptable, minimalist interfaces. The musical instrument industry calls them alternate controllers. There are currently three models that interface with a computer. There is no hard-wired functionality; interaction between the keys and lights is determined by the application (such as Max/MSP) running on the computer. Basically the monome units can do whatever you program them to do and serve as alternate controllers for not just music but games, lights, video etc. Monome is fantastically successful. I found their story inspiring and exciting -- they represent a new breed of creative entrepreneurs who are environmentally and socially conscious.

Where are you from? Where did you grow up?

Brian: I grew up mostly in Southern California. We lived on the edge of town, which meant spending a lot of time in the hills and creeks with friends. Wilderness served as a sort of blank slate for inventing projects (divert a stream) and games (rock stacking) and architectures (tree forts). We lived in a subdivision where you had to drive to get anywhere and neighbors rarely came outside, (which I could likewise be accused of as I discovered computers much too young).

Kelli: I grew up in a small post-industrial city in Southern New Jersey that was central to a huge agricultural community. It was the kind of place where you could go horse back riding in the country, pass through a field of soybean plants, cross through the woods, and end up in the drive-thru of a fast-food joint. There was a fair share of abandoned factories to explore, train tracks to wander, and spots to go fishing (or watch people fish).

When you were a kid (elementary school), what did want to do when you grew up?

Brian: I luckily don't feel like I was ever pressured or preoccupied with this thought. Even through grad school I didn't have much of an idea what would end up being a career, instead focusing intensely on whatever was interesting to me at the time. Since elementary school this has been a mix of computers and music, later I found out I could unite these explorations and also add electronics. There were of course diversions into early computer RPGs (for future nerd credibility) and skateboarding and climbing on whatever in general. Part of "growing up" always seemed to feel like some sort of arrival, like a plateau. I'm glad to have a sense that we're still learning everyday, invite new research enthusiastically, and try to be adaptable in complicated situations.

Kelli: I had so many interests as a kid and a fairly large imagination when it came to wondering what adults actually did when they got to be adults. I was pretty serious about ghost busting. A lot of thought went into that potential career path. There are many others of course, but sucking wandering spirits into a vacuum-like apparatus and helping them find their way to some kind of afterlife. That was one preoccupation.

Brian: Very early on (wearing my mom-made superhero cape) I carefully assembled a habitat for caterpillars whom I perceived to had fallen out of trees. I cried inconsolably after accidentally stepping on one who had jumped ship.

Kelli: I had an early obsession with pretending to be blind and/or having only one arm ... it sounds strange and amazingly insensitive, I mean I know my parents were probably confused by it, but I wore this scarf over my eyes and tied my arm to my waste and just hung out around the house.

Both: architecture, the natural sciences, irony, pure math, agriculture, well designed manuscripts, Jane Jacobs, Charles and Ray Eames, John Cage, Louis Kahn, Masanobu Fukuoka and many others.

Tell me about your college and grad school experiences?

Brian: Hopefully our first lessons are to learn how to learn. School is expensive and you don't actually buy knowledge anyway. You buy access to instructors, peers, and tools-- but most importantly time. Honestly I'd like to see the emergence of a new generation of modern farmers with enormous libraries and workshops.

Kelli: School is pretty much what you make of it and how well you manage to take advantage of the time and resources presented to you, and you may even find that after you've done all that you still feel a little short changed when you’re still paying for it twenty years after the fact.

Post formalized education however, I'm amazed at just how much I continue to learn and experience for free or for what feels like a donation to someone or something I believe in... I see the re-emergence of community based educational opportunities via cultural institutions, non-profits, and independent and creative well-learned citizens as a total step in the right direction. I can't help but think that just like most everything going on now, we need to take the BIG business aspect out of education.

Brian: At UCSD, after deciding to dedicate myself to computer music/art. Despite my extensive background in computer science and modern music technology, Max/MSP opened worlds of possibilities with shocking ease. Max allowed endless flexibility to create precisely the live performance and composition environments I imagined, where commercial hardware had failed in various ways.

Kelli: Brian introduced me to Max/MSP through some of his early music performances... for me it was like watching Brian give the tin man a real, bloody beating heart — half-magic, half surgery...

Brian: I was attracted to Max/MSP for a live performance setting. All of my life-performance work was confined to different ways of trying to fit commercial gear into doing things they weren't supposed to do. So by being able to program our own systems, we could determine exactly the way that we wanted to perform and try to express ourselves with computers, which are traditionally very not expressive tools. So that enabled us to strip away a lot of those layers.

Brian: The whole thing came about initially as a device that I designed for myself for performing music, which was enabled by my discovering Max/MSP, basically. Being able to have my hands on a device that was really adaptable, that could change depending on what parameters I wanted to have control over was really the key. So an open grid of buttons where the LEDs didn't match specifically into toggles, hardwired, was really the goal. Then I got it in the hands of some friends who performed and toured a bunch with it. Enough people had asked me to basically build one for them, that it was an intangible thing to hand wire so many things, so that's when the first thoughts of making a very limited run, which was never initially conceived as just being a business. It was more of a sort of project that we could potentially sustain ourselves for a little while. And at that time, Kelli and I were making a lot of mechanical installation art, so it seemed just an extension, like the next project that we were going to do. And what was really exciting is that by getting this adaptable, open-ended interface out into the community, there wouldn't be a reliance on just the patches that I had written. Basically, since it could do anything, it would foster everybody writing their own patches and then sharing them with other people. So it would be a generative process, where people would contribute back their work and then inspire other people to maybe modify it or do something different, and then continually share. I think the sharing component is what's made it really successful, and also kept people really engaged, in that it constantly renews itself.

Our approach has been about sourcing everything very locally. For example, the keypads are made right outside Philadelphia, the aluminum plate is sourced out of Maryland. The wood frames are also now made right outside of Philadelphia, the lumber is actually black walnut from forests in Pennsylvania, and the circuits are made in Colorado. All the assembly is right in middle Pennsylvania. So we can actually go and visit all of these different factories and companies, and meet the people who are involved, and that creates a really good bond, so you understand whom you're paying, and who's working on your project, so you can really trust them and talk to them in person.

Do you make everything in your loft, or do you actually go other places to do certain tasks?

Brian: We literally build and test everything in our loft. That is not to say that everything is fabricated in our loft. Like I said earlier, the plates, for instance, get machined down in Maryland, or the keypads get compression molded out of silicon at a facility outside of Philadelphia. But we literally get boxes full of these components, and then we put everything together and test them laboriously, and then do all of the finishing. We do all hand finishing on the wood, and package them up. Shipping them out is a tremendous amount of work that we never would have imagined. When it comes down to it, the development and the design of the circuits, all the things you imagine being hard, are actually quite simple compared to just the sheer man hours of assembly and finishing.

Kelli:    And designing packaging, and printing.

Brian:    That's the fun part, though.

Kelli: It's tremendously fun, but it's the stressful part. It's the part that takes a lot of consideration. Because it has many more implications.

Brian: Right. Decision-making is always complicated, but that's part of our attraction to hyper minimalism, is that embellishment is more often than not excessive or distracting.

Since making monome your business do you still have time for creative work?

Luckily, monome as a project fulfills many of our creative needs, though we're looking forward to spreading our time between more new projects very soon. Additionally monome has been a wonderful platform for us to promote many topics we care deeply about, including sustainability, local economies, and open-source.

What are some of your favorite Max/MSP objects?

Brian: random, of course! Then there's expr and sprintf, for their flexibility. udpsend and udpreceive, to get data in and out of Max in a manner superior to MIDI. multislider, for its minimal elegance and adaptability.

Brian: It's evolved organically since 2000 and I don't think I could describe it in words. Since I had all sorts of "real" programming experience before learning Max/MSP, I spend a lot of time trying to make patches have the look of sequential operation, as if they were typed out code. This is often impossible, so the compromises appear as strange-looking nuances. Modularity is always a goal for re-usable patches, but I normally forget what I've already invented and re-invent things in a new and possibly more or less effective method each time. I don't use segmented patch cords. I use as many shortcuts as possible to patch as fast as possible. It's a bit of a mess.

Do you use host software such as Live or Logic?

Not so much for my own composition-- I've tended to create patches in Max/MSP that do everything I want, which is a drawback in some ways because there's always something new one might want. Instead of actually making music, you go program a bit longer, until eventually you're more obsessed with making tools than using tools. What matters is acknowledging that this is not a bad thing-- Max Matthews and Miller Puckette as testament.

Is the monome your main/only controller? Did you use other controllers prior to creating the monome?

Get the Latest on Max and our Community

Expand Your Guitar, Vol. 1

A Video and Text Interview with Monome

The Adaptive Use Instruments Project

Max 5 and Attributes

A First Look at Max 5

Max 5: What It Is (and Isn't)

An Interview with Vlad Spears

Interview with Leafcutter John, Musician

Q & A with Amoebazoid

Cycling '74's Office Relocation, Part 2