live.grid - how to make it step in time when I press 'play' in Live?
This is a very basic question.
I have placed a live.grid into an M4L device.
What do I have to hook up so that when I hit play in Live the grid will step in time?
look into things like the [metro], [transport] [counter].
the help files do, well, help a lot for this.
plus have a look in the forum for things like sequencers.
its simple when you find out
hope this helps you on your new journey into max. don't worry, we all had to start somewhere :D
lewis edwards
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smokingbunny.co.uk
Thanks lewis :)
I posted the question thinking it was going to be a very simple answer - I was under the impression that live.grid (and indeed all the live.* objects) is a 'plug and play' object, but perhaps I'm wrong.
Well, I've already worked out how to make live.grid do a few cool things so I guess I'll just get stuck in to this!
aye [live.grid] is one of my favourite objects for building sequencers. much better than [matrixctrl] for some things and visa-versa.
here is a demo of my latest creation, using [live.grid]. even for quick things, its what i go to. i love it that it shows you on the grid your steps.
http://vimeo.com/35691246
have fun
l
Wow, love your demo video/audio lewis! Especially when you start changing the length of the loops. Must show that to my composer friend, I think he would like it. Is it available for download?
But back to my live.grid project - I'm still having trouble seeing quite how it knows when the 'play' button has been pressed in Live - even when looking at a ready-made device like the Buffer Shuffler, which ships with M4L.
I'll paste the device here for the convenience of anyone who might want to look at what I'm about to describe, although if you have M4L you probably already have it:
If I open this device for editing I can see that the two live.grids each have a [receive] object leading into their first inlets. I am assuming that a particular message passed to this first inlet of a live.grid will be what specifies which column should be currently highlighted.
So I double click on the first receive object and can see 4 send objects from where this information could come. I can see messages for multiple functions: changing the number of steps, freezing the grid, changing the grid mode, randomising the steps... but nothing about specifying the current step!
According to the live.grid reference, the currently highlighted step is set by sending an int to the left inlet (see the first entry in the table at https://cycling74.com/docs/max5/refpages/m4l-ref/live.grid.html). I can test this by hooking up a number box to that inlet and changing the number.
But where is that int coming from in the Buffer Shuffler patch? I guess I'll need to hook up a watchpoint to figure that out...
alright man,
here is a very small demo that you can edit as you please. uses [counter] [metro] and also the global transport
also have a check on my step sequencer max for live devices.
they are free downloads and can edit to how you want
http://www.smokingbunny.co.uk/downloads/maxforlive/
hope this helps
lewis
Thanks dude, I'll take a look at that.
I figured out how the Buffer Shuffler patch I gave above is syncing to Live's transport - the control is coming via a [chucker~] object that is also in the patch. In turn, the [chucker~] seems to be receiving control from a [plugin~] object. As my patch won't be using either [chucker~] or [plugin~], I'll need another method.
'Global transport' sounds like what I need.
Got it:
By default, all transport objects in Live devices (those without names) synchronize to the Live transport.
So I just need to add a transport to my patch.