Where do I begin?
Hello,
A rather absolute beginner in MAX here.
I've been really tantalized by MAX's apparent capabilities that I've seen from Youtube or tried out by downloading patchers.
But the thing is, I really don't know where I should begin. I've tried out following several tutorials, such as https://cycling74.com/tutorials/the-video-processing-system-part-1/. The tutorial patch is definitely working on my computer but I can't understand many of the functions being used in the tutorial that the uploader seems to be assuming as something familiar to the readers.
I also tried out other tutorials in this Cycling '74 website, YouTube, and the ones included as default in MAX 7. However, most of them had similar problem as what I described above.
Where do I begin? Where can I slowly start building an actual working knowledge of MAX, MSP and Jitter?
Thank you so much in advance.
Sung Hyun
Hello Sung, welcome
What helped me out a lot in the beginning were the videotutorials by Baz and cycling's own good buddy Sam. Start out with Baz and follow up with Sam's videos and you should be good.
Luvulongtime!
Also - with most programs, checking the helpfile is something you do very seldom, and out of desperation. Max is different - you would be insane to try to learn the program without using these resources. ALT-clicking on any object will bring up a helpfile with a working example of the object built-in that you can play with/ pull apart and read about.
Also - the tutorial/ patch you linked to is probably one to save for later - some of it is a bit complex if you are still completely new to this ( i suggest sticking to audio and avoiding jitter when you are brand new - come back to video once audio makes some sense)
Good luck.
Hi,
you say you've tried out "some" tutorials, but - at least with max - they're sequential, and you can't just dive in at the middle.
The max tutorials start out slow, and the first one deals with only the object box, message box, and comment box.
Seriously, so much care and effort have gone into the way they're constructed, it's almost a crime NOT to do them.
@Sung Hyun Lim
"so much care and attention has gone into the way [the Max tutorials] are constructed it IS a crime not to use them".
The tutorials allow you to do simple things with simple tools, if you are a patient person, they are the best place to start. If you are NOT a patient person, there are other resources too, like Cipriani and Giri's Electronic Music and Sound Design book. Christopher Dobrian also put a lot of work into these:
Brendan
to reiterate what wetterberg stated, start at tutorial 1 and do each one in order-- even though you may not be interested in audio or MIDI, the principles for using Max properly are still relevant
It's about time that *someone* makes a comprehensive page in the wiki aimed at max for beginners, with all those good advices and list of available tutorials :)
"Where do I begin" is essential at first. Over time I found out much harder is: "When will I ever stop"!
that is a wellknown problem when beginning: whenever you want to learn about an object, you look into its helpfile, and the object is explained in conjunction with other objects, which you also dont know. :)
everyone learns different(ly?).
if you find that tutorials and helpfiles do not work for you, you could try it from the other end: have an idea of a little project you want to create, and then try to build it. whenever a question occurs, search for the answer in the tutorials, examples, google it up, or come back to the forum community.
@all:
the problem with "tutorial 1" is that it does not explain you what a floating point number is, wether your audio settings are saved when you close the app or not, what a search path or a subpatcher is, or how you can go to edit mode without clicking the mouse.
most tutorials require either basic knowledge of midi and signal processing in order to learn programming - or the other way round. if someone is new to both, he has no chance.
what i liked most in the beginning was the object reference pdfs. it is very linear and organized. the tutorials are not.
-110
As quite a new Max user myself I'm doing two things.
1. Working through all the tutorials in the Help documentation. It's not a good idea to just work through these though. Without application it does not really go in. Learning happens best as follows:
learn > APPLY > learn > APPLY > learn > APPLY etc etc (learn a little, apply it immediately) rather than
learn > learn > learn > APPLY > APPLY > APPLY (learn a lot and try to remember or apply it all)
i.e. always play about with the Help patch for each tutorial. Try your own things with them. Play. Make a mess. And try to figure it out why things don't happen as expected. That's where learning occurs.
So when I get bored of this, I move on to the second thing ...
2. I have a couple of projects in mind, which is why I got into Max in the first place. I get as far as I can, and then have to go looking for more info, or work through examples of similar patches to get a feel for how things work, and then try to bring that back to my own growing patch.
It's necessary to work through tutorials, without which certain very basic things might be missed e.g. that sending a message to the left inlet of an object also sends a "bang" which forces the object to perform its action and update its output, or adding a dot in a numerical operator forces floating point operation and so forth.
Still early days for me, but beginning to get a bit more of a feel of the overarching concepts now and how things fit together, but still an awful lot to learn.