LISP and Max

The only solution of which I was aware was Brad Garton's maxlisp object, which is very old. It might still work, it might not. Oh, wait - it's almost certainly a 32-bit external. Max 7 only, if so....

http://sites.music.columbia.edu/brad/maxlisp/

Thank you, Max. Your reply is actually what got me to go through the motions. I had seen Brad Garton's maxlisp and maxlispj pages, but I hesitated (well, the latest version of maxlispj is from 2011.) And well, the good news is that it worked.

Since I'm on Mac, I installed maxlispj on Max 7 — it's available here: http://sites.music.columbia.edu/brad/maxlispj/#download

For other Mac users, you have to place the BGabcl.jar file in: /Applications/Max 7.app/Contents/Resources/C74/packages/max-mxj/java-classes/classes/

I also placed the maxlispj folder in: ~/Documents/Max 7/Packages/ — the usual thing.

All the best,
António

Hi Antonio,

I had the same question so I found yours. I'm looking into the Bach library. Can be downloaded with package manager. It's based on the same tree-like lisp structures as Open Music.

I just started looking into Bach library, so I don't really know if it'll solve my lisp problems or maybe I go back to Open Music.

Best,
Maija

Hey, Maija - enjoyed your recent release on Ravello (played some of it on my radio program, even). Was this done with Max?

Hi Gregory, thank you for listening. Truly honoured to part of your show!

Yeah, most electronics done in Max. I use sound files as well as live processing. All live processing and most fixed parts are also done in Max or AudioSculpt. I'm a huge fan of SuperVP audio engine (or what would you call it?) that runs all the processing in AudioSculpt and also in some Max FFT-objects. For the most recent work I also do some physical modelling (Modalys) and concatenative synthesis (CataRT), again all in Max.

I'm curious to hear what is your favourite set of tools? Do you find yourself investigating and building new and different ones, or do you elaborate on and develop further the existing ones? I'm always trying something new and usually end up using a huge amount of time and accomplishing quite little. Still, it doesn't prevent me from trying again...

Hi Maija,

Thank you, bach is great. I've been working with it for quite some time now and it's definitely a great tool set, especially for anyone coming from OpenMusic or PWGL.

In my experience there's much that bach can indeed do, it's quite powerful, and porting OM patches to bach is in many instances effortless (there's even a bach tutorial on it), but I wouldn't expect it to be able to replace OM in my digital homestead.

All the best,
António

Hi Antonio,

Thanks for your reply–good to know that about Bach!

My current project is that I'm trying to import some text files, that seem to be in lisp, to notes on a Bach roll. Experimenting with Orchidea library, not in Max but with command lines. It sounds great! Now I'd like to see those results written out as score, not timestamps and sample names in a text file... I'll probably get there, sooner or later.

What kind of projects do you do with Bach or OM?

Best wishes,
Maija

Hi Maija,

I think there might be a "swiss knife" solution to what you're aiming to do, and you only need to have Orchidea and bach in Max. On Mac, it would go something like this:

1) Before opening Max, create a sub-folder in "~/Documents/Max 8/Packages/orchidea/media" called "command_line_orchidea" (or any other name you might deem more suiting.)
2) Change the file name from "filename.txt" to "solution.connection.txt" and move it to the sub-folder you've created in step 1.
3) You can then use the following Max patch:

And you're set. Hope this helps.

All the best,
António

Hi Antonio,

That's phenomenal – thank you!

I saw some bach objects appear in brown, but guessing it is solvable issue.

Carmine Cella, the developer of Orchidea, is my supervisor at UC Berkeley and he was of the opinion that he'd need to make a new patch to do the conversion. Then he's too busy to do that. I just started with bach and advanced to a point where I can import some data, but not all and not at all in a sophisticated way...

I will now test this. Again, thank you so much!

Best wishes,
Maija