Cellular Automata project
Hi, I am making a generative music patch in max using cellular automata as part of a uni project (just so you know I can seek as much help as I want, it is not cheating, its not about how good at max you are).
What I would ideally like to do is to have CA rules play out in a matrix window so I can use each row and column to control specified musical parameters. What I really dont know is the best way of going about doing this.
There is the wolframatic example patch that outputs the wolfram rules onto an lcd but I dont know how I could go about making use of this patch in what I want to do. Would the game of life rules bet better than the wolfram ones?
Does an object exist that will output CA rules into a matrix? I havent found any yet...
Once I can get to the CA data in a way I can use then I should be fine, its just getting over this hurdle.
Thanks for any help anyone can give me
Cheers, Tom
P.S. I am using max5.
Have a look at the [jit.conway] object.
lh
So if it's a University project and you can get all the help you want, what sort of mastery of anything are you actually demonstrating? Sounds like playing tennis with the net down. Maybe I should go back to school and get my doctorate.... :-)
Both the Wolframatic and jit.conway objects *are* working with matrices already by definition. If what you're talking about involves extracting data from a matrix, you should probably take a look at Jitter tutorial 14, and also have a look at the jit.submatrix and jit.spill objects - that should give you some background into how to grab a row of column of a matrix and turn it into a list of values that you can then scale or otherwise modify for your own use.
When it comes to mapping that neutral data to some musical feature, you're on your own when it comes to choosing what to map where (pitch/velocity/duration/spectral content/panning, etc.). As my pal and colleague Luke Dubois says, "Mapping is everything." It's the secret sauce, and there IS no single way or single best solution to something like that. The good news is that you'll have lots of time to think about that stuff since we're giving you advice on the Max programming. :-)
Thanks for the reply Greg I will get to looking at what you have suggested as soon as I can.
As far as getting advice on the project anything goes as long as you credit people for work you didn't do. The idea being that its not about how good you are at Max, its about organising and completing the project and all that jazz.
What I meant by a matrix was a control matrix object. I was wondering if I could get the CA into one of these but I am gunna take a look at your suggestions. I have never touched jitter before and was afraid to use it. Mainly though I was concerned it may use a little more CPU than I need it to compared to non jitter based objects. I could be totally wrong in this however.
This patch - http://www.johnmayrose.com/MaxMSP/CellularAutomata.zip
from John Mayrose seems quite interesting and maybe I can make use of this. I have only briefly looked at it but it seems to just use standard max/msp objects to draw wolfram CA onto an LCD.
Like you said (and have been told by many people now) its all about the way you map the data but first I just need to get the data how I want it. I am fine with all the synthesis based stuff.