modulate vet parameter with LFO

Alessio Cazzaniga's icon

Hi everybody,
I'm new in Max, I'm very excited and happy to begin this journey. I ask you sorry if my question has already been answered previously, but I don't know the sensitivity of the community to beginners. Here's my question: how do I control a VST (or device) parameter with an oscillator? I tried using cycle followed by vst's parameter name but nothing happened.
Please help me to begin. I'd also appreciate some indications towards good general tutorials.
Many thanks

Max Gardener's icon

The vst~ object expects to receive values as messages rather than signals. You're going to need to take the output of your oscillator and sample the really fast output to a stream of floating point number values - you'd use the snapshot~ or number~ objects for that. In addition, if your LFO output is a signal, it'll be a different range than the vst~ object expects (audio signals are in the range -1.0 to 1.0, and the vst~ object expects parameters in the range 0. - 1.0.). You should investigate the scale object's help file for how to make that conversion.

Finally, as the VST help file points out, parameters may be identified by number rather than by name (since I don't know what plugins you're using, it may vary). The Parameters tab of the vst~ object's helpfile should offer you some guidance with whichever way you want to do it.

Max Gardener's icon

One of the best places to start is to simply type whatever you want to do into the bubble in the upper right hand corner of any patcher window (for example "vst parameter") and hit the return. A window will open that has everything related to your search. You can use the sidebar and click on a word ("tutorial", for example) to refine your results. Between that and what is in the helpfiles, you should have a good place to start.

Alessio Cazzaniga's icon

thank you very much, I'll investigate on your suggestion and use the bubble for sure!