predictably, here i am.

whilst i agree that structured gen tutorials are missing to date, it really is possible to get going.

you know, contrary to popular belief, gen~ is (well, i believe) easier to patch in than max&msp. this is because it has been built recently, from the ground up, all at once, is logical and 'clean' for it, and no concerns about schedulers or vectors, at least in its immediate environment anyway.

also, "hacking and trial and error", which you are so good at, is the reason max, and gen~, exist, as they excel at that for people like us. all with the audio 'always on'! a creative dream. i been with gen~ a while now, my brain is rubbish (i mean super really rubbish), but it easy to take to.

step one: go to Cycling '74 > examples > gen. spend a day with that folder getting your mind blown, in the knowledge that these are only basic examples. in fact some of those patches remind me of a couple of your youtube msp patches (i mean in a good way). if you cannot resist, do the same for the jitter gen examples folder.

then start hacking away at them. in the process you should read the excellent docs that cover gen~ and jit.gen etc and GenExpr. slowly you get there. we hack, just like in max land. btw, alt-click any gen object in gen land and you'll get taken straight to the docs.

of course there are quirks to pick up (handling buffers etc), and must-understand objects ([history], [delay], etc), but things work in terms of logic remarkably like msp. they have done a really good job on this.

one more advice: using gen~, don't think you have to change the world. sometimes gen~ justifies its existence with simply a single object in it, or a single simple mathematical expression, fitting into the rest of your msp workflow. only max knowledge is required, no background in C or anything else.

also, hopefully, one of the cycling gen folk will pop up here soon with much better, cooler advice. brenden, please flood the gen list with loads of questions and hacking. you are surely the man to do it. i'll pop in sometimes. although i don't want to be responsible for screwing up your phd.

p.s. - max 5 is still cool...

"Predictably", perhaps; but valuable? Oh yes.

Your advice is very positive (and generous too). I recall a recent conversation with Andreas Wetterberg, Luke Woodbury and a few others gathered around the table (Leicester M4_U), and the consensus as I understood it was, depending on task context, to upgrade and/or re-skill only when necessary (whether that is M4L, JS, Jamoma, Clojure or whatever); for me Max5 still does everything I need without restriction - except for single-sample level processing - and I haven't even begun to look at Jitter (a la Jean F Charles stuff). In my current work this is acceptable.

I'll give the demo a tickle and look in the examples folder :)

Best wishes pid

Brendan

Well I still must admit that there are soo many workflow improvements, that, while you may not "need" the new features, it's just sooo much more comfortable to work in, in my opinion.

i tend to agree with that, "upgrade and/or re-skill only when necessary" - that way the technology is never in control of you, too. however, sometimes a good reason may just be needing a kick up the arse to inspire some creativity, or to do something different (like after finishing a phd?!). i am extremely lucky in that separately M4L and Gen came at just the right moments for me personally in this regard. (p.s. - jitter is cool for visual stuff as well as spectral processing !). good luck.

oh, i agree with wetterberg today as well.

plus upgrading to v6 is good for apple, because oyu must buy a new computer because of all the CPU leak :)

@Roman

yes, installing Max6 on a 5-yr old 1.6GHz Core2 Vista machine might be like painting go-faster stripes on a Renault Clio :-)

Brendan

gen~ (and gen in its Jitter incarnations) is a work in progress, and there are more materials to help "the other N%" of you out there get started - I'm working on a "do not panic" jit.pix tutorial even as we speak.

In the whilemean, perhaps these two links may be of some small help while the rest is in progress.

More to come, and I/we thank you for your patience.

gregory