Modular Algorithmic Composition System?

there are tons and tons of abstractions for these sorts of things over at maxobjects.com, and many a device at maxforlive.com that can be broken apart for these things, but generally I find that you can get really great aleatoric niceness with 10-or-less objects in vanilla max...

I'm a bit surprised that Andreas (of all people!) would have neglected to mention the BEAP stuff - Vizzie-like modules used to teach analog synthesis at Berklee [a search on BEAP and MSP will prolly bring it right up]. They're a real pleasure to work with, and just bite-sized enough to be algorithmically satisfying in the way that analog patching can be.

Thanks guys. That BEAP looks cool - though not quite what I was looking for. I'm always interested in modular synthesis pedagogical tools. I'll give it a try with my MOTU and one of the Doepfers at work. Be interesting to compare it to EuroMax.

i´ve built something like that, it is older than vizzie, but still not officially distributed somewhere. :)

oh damn, yahoo removed my pictures from the yahoogroup. lets see where i can have them.

ah ja.

http://linkspartei-frankfurt.de/test.html

actually there are 2 times more modules as of today.

btw, i wouldnt say that vizzie is a higher level of abstraction. of course things like "player", "recorder" and "mixer" are unavoidable, but the more you try to get away from the hardware unit paradigm, the more inspiring things are.

dont forget that for composition you are basically just working on numbers. in opposite to working with video, it is easy to invent totally abstracted processes for notes and control data.

Roman that looks awesome. Are they for personal use only?

Maybe I'm not using the term "abstraction" correctly in this case.
If you have a look at the manual for music wonk you can see (in "Modules") they are mostly just mathematical functions but I guess the difference is they are geared towards a specific purpose - creating a value useful for MIDI output. Max/MSP is so diverse while it might be obvious that it can work in a specific context, finding how to get it working in that context is the real challenge for me.
I've been working with Max for years but primarily with signal so using the data elements for MIDI is quite new.

there are some old downloads in that same archive, but i am not sure if it is the version with 5 pieces missing and 37 major bugs or the version with 19 pieces missing and 13 major bugs.
also, its build for OS9 and has +5 more major bugs in max 5 and is (at least to my knowlegde) untested in max 6. and of course there is no manual, but you can contact me any time.

there is no versioning and the building and repairing concept seems incompatible with relaesing a working version. i´ve stopped promising a checked&stable version to the world about 5 years ago.
it is, secretly, still on my to do list, but no more promises.

in OS9 it supports multimonitor-fullscreen and background pictures. :)
http://laut8leise.de/_modular/fullscr-1.jpg

oh yeah wonk, sureley a different beast, but in about the same category of applications i´d say.
after looking at ist modules i see many things which look familiar, but there are also basic math objects just as we have in max/msp.

for example XOR, greater as, or "testbit" are not really a musical function themselves. you kind of have to "program" with these modules, which is why in max we would call that an object.

even * is not really interesting for making music. of course, in 110.modular and some other of my systems i am also using *, for example when transposing for one octave, or for calculating overtones. but i dont see the need for a multiplication module in a musical context. :)

my first idea for the sequencer was to break the "classic" sequencer into three parts:
where in a doepfer there is a clock, a counter, and switches/knobs, which are all hardwired, in 110.modular you have a clock module, a counter module, and a "sequencer gate" module which lets a number either pass or or not, so that you can combine different clocks, different counters, and different switches/gates/knobs – and insert additional processes between these.

i call it additive/substractive composition.
you can start with bach and modify it, you can start from nothing and let modules generate events, or you can use 8 copies of the "notecloud" module to generate millions of notes and then filter them down to something which you like.

-110

@Roman, How are the modules connected - ie how did you achieve the modular bit in Max? Also, what passes between them, - are there some that just deal with lists, ie note data, some that just deal with floats 0.-1., signals or what?

Nice to see another Wiggler here...

I'd take a look at Nodal... http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~cema/nodal/

But also Karlheinz Essl's RTCLib... http://www.essl.at/works/rtc.html