The Learning Curve
Eptiar
7月 15 2024 | 9:43 午後
Hello everyone. So I've owned a Max license for quite some time and every 2-3 months, I have a few weeks of really trying to get my head around Max. However, I always feel defeated by the (to me) steep learning curve. Does anyone have some tips on just getting over the initial bump?
All the best
Eptiar
sousastep
7月 16 2024 | 12:02 午前
TBH I ended up going to school for it and paying for two semesters of classes and three semesters of one-on-one lessons, which worked great, but you really can learn Max just by working your way through the documentation.
Max app > menubar > Help > Reference > sidebar > Max > Tutorials
Eptiar
7月 16 2024 | 12:13 午前
Ah fair enough. I'm about to start a masters degree in electronic composition which has an optional module for learning max. Fingers crossed that helps haha. Yeah I'll definitely go through the documentation again. Thanks for the reply!
Wil
7月 16 2024 | 2:38 午前
The tutorials are always the best place to start. But there will always be a learning curve beyond that.
Max greatness is because it doesn’t propose that “you must do this in this particular way” like most DAW and Video programs.
Personally, (very personally :) since day one of owning Max it was always ask “what do I want to do that I can NOT do in Logic or Final Cut etc…”
Take in everything you learn in your electronic music degree- telharmonium, theramin, ondes martinot, musique concrete, reel to reel tape, multi track recording, Edison Phonograph, tape manipulation… all the millions of analogue work that was done— put between adc~/ dac~
We are an analogue species. We do not hear or see digital. So we are either inputting analogue -> doing something to it-> then outputting analogue,,, or— making something digitally and outputting analogue.
What do you want to see? What do you want to hear?
mizu
7月 16 2024 | 10:24 午前
Hi Eptiar, my 2 cents: Max helped me to really understand/see what happens in 3 integers MIDI messages, and use. As a patch is empty first, you can use only what you need. Prototyping, I use and abuse of message and print objects to see the order of execution : understand the right to left order, the trigger object is your friend (seems logic to declare the file to play before the play command ). Than i can delete prints and messages to optimise. Idem in help patchers (not allways so explicite ), you can edit/copy parts and explore what happens in the cords. In Max cords, data is sent only if it's "banged". In audio world, ( objects with a tild : ~) audio data are allways running, commands are in the Max scheduler, in ms.
Maybe too simple, but making a patch from an idea, i return allways to the help patchers to find the exact commands, my "curve to prototype" :-)
+1 about what i read here :-)
hth
michel z
Wil
7月 16 2024 | 4:33 午後
Button is your close friend
Andy Maskell
7月 16 2024 | 6:20 午後
I would strongly recommend that you open the Reference book from the Max Help menu, click on the Home icon top left, and then expand the Max list under "Getting Started". The various tutorials, topics and guides signposted are a great source of information if you are struggling at the bottom of the learning curve.
When I started using Max, whilst I had done a reasonable ammount of programming in various languages during the previous 40 years or so, I had never programmed using a "visual" or object orientated platform. The tutorials were an invaluable start for me and from there onwards I relied heavily on reading the Help and Reference documentation and looking at various examples to progress. The forum here has also been very helpful. Once I got my head around some of Max's foibles, such as processing object outputs from right to left, I found that I could get into programming quite complex algorithms fairly quickly.
florian1947
7月 16 2024 | 8:31 午後
Taking a course can't do any harm; Max takes a bit of learning and getting used to.
There are also some books.
I very much liked Andy Farnell's 'Designing Sound' - written with Pure Data in mind, but perfectly applicable to Max, including patches adapted online for Max - and also Cipriani & Giri's 'Electronic Music and Sound Design'.
But best teacher for me has often been curiosity and personal motivation: "what would it sound like if one did x and y with a bit of z ....", - driving me through help files and documentation.
slo ~|•
7月 16 2024 | 8:57 午後
Still lovely, still online. Obviously dated in many ways, but likely could be very helpful for someone, especially with regard to concepts: