is it just me...?

Osborne Frit's icon

or is this patch: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Autechremax.jpg quite obviously a pisstake? seeing it on wikipedia was the final straw for me. has nobody got the joke?!

Dan Nigrin's icon

Here's the original Sound on Sound article, if that helps you decide:

Dan

--
Dan Nigrin
Defective Records
202 Hack / PC-1600 User / VSTi Host / OMS Convert / Jack OS X
http://www.defectiverecords.com
http://www.jackosx.com

Jean-Francois Charles's icon

Not in my dictionary, translation?

> pisstake

Drsbaitso's icon

hrmmmmmmmmmm, whats the joke?.. I give up. =(

icct5's icon
Peter McCulloch's icon

Well, they obviously don't believe in the comment object in either
case...

Osborne Frit's icon

they're making fun of the whole 'whoa....autechre use a crazy program called max/msp that's too complicated for me' thing, that non max users always spout. either that or they have ridiculously good memories. i just refuse to believe that musicians as notoriously withdrawn and private as autechre would be able to resist an opprtunity to make a joke like that. its exactly what i do when people wanted to see performance patches i've made

but anyway, i read an interview with sean booth, and he was bemoaning the fact that theyve ben labelled a 'max band' when he hadrly uses it anyway. apparently they only used max, not msp, mainly around the confield era.

oops, i hope this post doesn't turn into one of those 'commercial bands who use maxmsp' things.

pisstaking - taking the piss - making fun of :)

Mattijs's icon

I don't think you need to have a very good memory to be able to handle a big amount of UI elements, if that's what you mean.. The key is of course creating a logical structure that makes it unnecessary to link every separate element to a specific function. Eg. a 32-steps step sequencer doesn't force me to remember 32 separate functions. The same holds for 128 or 2048 steps.

Osborne Frit's icon

well yeah, i suppose. what i meant was more in line with peter's post. personally, i find that unless i comment number boxes, dials etc, i forget what the hell they do pretty quickly. but thats beside the point. you reckon the patch is real?

zoid's icon

is it real?
it's being talked about.
and that, maybe, is the point...

Drsbaitso's icon

well it certainly looks like it could be a functional max patch ;) A bit on the avant garde side though, doubtful thats its the CORE on Confield, but I would imagine that, if it were maybe just a midi controller for some synths routed through a sequencer or something.. I don't know. It does look overly "pseudo max" if you ask me. I see what you're saying now.

I used to listen to autechre a few years back quite a lot, had like everything up until drane and listened to them all quite extensively. drane (i think thats its name) could be a "max album", same with confield.... I don't think it was the core of their setup, though.

Mattijs's icon

I attended a performance they did here in amsterdam. It was a minimalistic set and it totally rocked. Of course we tried to figure out what they were doing (my friends are geeks too ;). One of them was clearly programming beat patterns and the other tweaking knobs, fx etc. Couldn't see who was who because during their performance all the lights were out, leaving only the sound and an occasional camera flash (so cool!)).

Anyway, this max patch looks very much suited for this type of performance. Of course it would have to be controlled by midicontrollers.

Another point: have you guys ever tried the Native Instruments 'Electronic Instruments' package for reaktor? That is far worse than this patch, but people use it!

Tip: zoom in on the 'Krypt' machine and try to figure out how it works. ;)

Mattijs

Wetterberg's icon

To me this looks like two things:
1) A "money shot", like the ones you always see in press releases - everything loaded up and brought to the front, displaying as much information as possible. Thing is, some people really dig that in a system, myself included - no mousing or window switching, if possible. This conversation would also make some sort of sense: "Could we show your max patch?" "Uhm, we have quite a few, buddy!" "Well... how's about bunching them together in one big patch?" - which leads to pt. 2:

2) It looks like it's too much work, too high in detail etc. to be a hoax - and if you look at the different sections they really do seem somewhat isolated: The bottom part (left+middle) is simple step sequencers, the upper middle part looks like some sort of synth (Additive/FM, with the tables displaying partials?) etc...

Oh heck, there I go, blabbing on about that patch.. haha, I've looked at that picture a gazillion times!

Andreas

hansmitten01@yahoo.com's icon

does it really matter whether it's bogus or not?
It doesn't make their music any better either way...

HM

Osborne Frit's icon

oooooh flamey!

to be honest, i have no idea. i started the thread because i was bored and lonely, and it worked. it voicd some interesting opinions, as always on this list

i forgot sean booth isnt liked on here too much. haha :)

i happen to love confield - it does things to my head

Roman Thilenius's icon

the comment object does not exist, everyone knows
that it is a hoax.

but why would anyone create a fake picture of
a realistic looking max patch and put it in a
wikipedia article? to fool professor osborne?

Osborne Frit's icon

well you've completely missed the point of what i was saying, cheers for that useful reply

nothing fools professor osborne

Roman Thilenius's icon

you missed the point that max _is a weird app which
is used only by some crazy underground artists and
which _is too complicated for most people.

did you just call ae a "comercial band" ? :)

serious now, it is more useful for the max religion
if we show people what we _actually do with it, and
not make it look simple.

otoh, everyone is free to post silly jokes to wikipedia,
has advantages and disadvantages ...

-110

Drsbaitso's icon

well in regards to the lack of comment objects...., the obvious comes to mind... ever heard of the hint object ;P?

Wetterberg's icon

Exactly! Besides, if you have the screen-space for comments then your patch isn't complex enough! hehe.

Roman Thilenius's icon

why make any buttons and sliders when you can
as well have a cool performance patch consisting
only of comments and hints?

Max Patch
Copy patch and select New From Clipboard in Max.

Osborne Frit's icon

well i get it, but when did i ever mention anything about comment boxes?

it would have been funnier if you'd have wasted even more time making a hugely intricate impressive looking max patch that sparked a debate as to it's authenticity. then i could have shown all my friends and said it was mine

Mattijs's icon

I believe you are right.

Max Patch
Copy patch and select New From Clipboard in Max.

Roman Thilenius's icon

i have not yet found a way how to control what impresses
people, mainly because i did no research in that field yet.

people usually adore my crap work and make fun of my masterpieces.

if i wouldnt waste so much time in forums maybe i would
find the time to use MAX again and finish my current app
GUI, which is lcd-only.

which brings us to the question how "authec..." pardon: "authentic" a MAX patch screenshot would be where you can
see 100% quickdraw commands or 100% 242.ekran playing mpegs
from disk.

vade's icon

hahahaha

*high five*

As they say on the internets : pwned @!$

v a d e //

www.vade.info
abstrakt.vade.info

vade's icon

is this patch authentic ? This is what ive been working on for some
time...

v a d e //

www.vade.info
abstrakt.vade.info

lists@lowfrequency.or's icon

totally f**'n fake

Osborne Frit's icon

definately fake

vade's icon

fuck you all :D

v a d e //

www.vade.info
abstrakt.vade.info

nick rothwell | project cassiel's icon

I think it's authentic. The font selection makes the text illegible,
which I've always found to be a good indicator of full-on Max
patchcraft.

    -- N.

nick rothwell -- composition, systems, performance -- http://
www.cassiel.com

dlurk's icon

I'm convinced by the tone of the comments. Very familiar.

Roman Thilenius's icon

there are no comments in MAX.

ComfortableInClouds's icon

that patch definitely isn't a joke, since it's not funny. jokes are supposed to be funny. that just looks really interesting. in the sound on sound article that picture comes from, Ae says they started using Max in 1997 and instantly found all kinds of great uses for it. They must also use MSP, since there are filtergraphs on that patch.The sound on sound article also has another picture of a jitter patch of Ae's. cool stuff, those guys are brilliant.

ongo73's icon

what's even more interesting for me , is the fact of just having a glimpse of Autechre programming wizardry (real or not) becomes a subject by it's self

icct5's icon

hmmmm looking at the patches again I start to believe that:
1. It is fake in the sense that it have nothing to do with there music making at least not in a direct way.
2. that it contains hidden messages for us to find, that will reveal the true nature of the patches. and possible a deeper understanding of their music making.
for instance two of the matrixctrl objects spells out ae in both upper and lower case....
and look at the applications that are running Max and Messenger..... coincidence I think not......

does anybody have a high rez version of the picture for further analysis