where is patchin' headin' at, really? (sort of 'off topic', but then it is not )

Um, have you, by any chance, been drinking? ;-)

Only kidding! We're all just using Max to have fun! And to prevent ourselves from wondering what happens after we die, but usually we're too busy with Max to notice that. Thank god (who may or not exist and whom we may or not meet after we die) for melted graphics chips, eh?

PS: This post has no relationship to my personal beliefs. Now, back to that patcher...

several years later we have that : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkUq4sO4LQM
the machines playing for realsies

and how do i deal with all that ? there is too much for one lifetime it's for sure - one needs to either know well everything to achieve spectacular things at amazing speed because he would take advantage of everything that exists ; or define his needs precisely to make his music ; or redefine his aims in light of what has already be done ; or toy/play wiht anything that goes under his hands
or be lost/give up
defining one's needs well seems good

Gotta agree with the "defining your needs" bit. There's way, way, WAY too much interesting stuff around - in my case, even within Max itself - so we can't get into all of it.

I'm working on a big patch consisting almost entirely of MIDI processing for a solo keyboard performance. There'll be a little bit of very basic MSP audio stuff - switching for some voice flute. But no Jitter at all.

Why use such a small subset of Max's capabilities?

1: it's taking FAR too long already.
2: I've got a few hardware and software synths, so no need for fancy audio stuff in MSP
3: It's primarily a keyboard performance greatly (I hope) enhanced by Max, NOT a demo of Max and/or how well I can program
4: If I get into Jitter it'll never get done. I'll probably end up with Arkaos Grand VJ or something instead.

There are examples of this sort of thing all the time in this forum, i.e. someone has a specific thing that they're working on in Max, it and seems to be all they're interested in. None of the millions of other interesting bits matter. (At the moment, at least!)

Well, I admit: that post was way too wordy ...

What I was trying to find out is: how other patchers are situating themselves in the controversial field of human vs technology.

It is of course a personal decision to find/make a place where one feels comfy, but then there is this surrounding notion of being degraded by the machine into a 'hamster state', pushing the wheel, aka buttons, and serving the movement of endless possibilities because of the movement that has to continue spinning (whatever is to come out, seems to be mostly hot air).

I am not well trained in philosophy (though it seems to be good enough for 'kitchen talks`), but it strikes me that there was the concept of truth and beauty leading the cultural production to be judged for its worthiness ...

As today we seem to be dumped into that infinite playground of seemingly endless possibilities to call another incident of 'oh, that's new, that's amazing' into existence for the 'society of rumpus'.

And regarding the 'hamsters wheel': I remember Robert Henke saying that every Max person should condemned to stop patching for 3 month a year and actually using their achievements to do something with them.

No harm intended, just a little critical thinking, peeing on the tree, still wondering how others can relate to that ...

@VICHUG: at least they are not trying to make the machines look like humans; also the approach reminds me of Conlon Nancarrows' player studies ...

Well that's sort of what i was trying to say : if you don't define your needs you take the risk to be a slave of machines ; but if you do then the machines may remain machines as finite as they are.
But this topic is discusisng a general trend in today's technologies which could go far beyond the sole max patching realm !... A lot of "fundamental" technics are in everyone's everyday life (i mean microcomputer, internet) and there is the feel that what remains to be discovered is either too complex for any human mind ; or in another shape really, like with Internet allowing connexions so fast between everything it brings new transversal science fields (hence data arts, programming). This is kind of true in a sense, if you ask a pioneer in computer music he will tell you that in the 70's, or earlier, everything sounded new. Of course it's also not true because a lot of everything remains to be discovered. But it is true that those new awaiting discoveries are less accessible form the ground - a lot of pioneers where there at the right time at the right place, now i think it's more difficult than this, each science field has become so specialized that if you want to truly innovate you have to work hard for a long time in a specific direction which is becoming harder and harder because of the serendipity habits we gained thanks to the internet.
That's my feelings only of course, but i definitely think part of this is true
or maybe i'm just tired, feeling old and unhelpful

Good thread. I just taught Conlon Nancarrow to my class here is Korea this past Friday. Oddly, when I was preparing the class (on sound recording) I found myself in the 9th century. The Bano Musa Brothers from Bagdad invented what is called the water flute (along with many other automated devices you find in the 'Book of Ingenious Devices') this is considered to be the first programmable machine (and for music!)

From there we went through the barrel organ, barrel piano and ended the first half of class at the demise of the player piano in the 1920's with the advent of electronic music and amplification. I explained to (a partially bored class) that the player piano basically killed 1000 years of invention when it died... then I did the cheesy Apple thing and said "oh, except this one more thing"... and I played a video of Canon X by Nancarrow. (Class wakes up really fast!!)

I am first a classical (albeit extremely experimental) composer who writes chamber and orchestra music. I have been working with electronic music for quite some time. From the get go (more than 10 years ago), I wondered why do something electronic when acoustic instruments sound so much better and richer? i.e. why record a Violin, or why (forbid) try to simulate a Violin with midi? Then I discovered people like Nancarrow and Elliott Carter.

I am sure there are many who feel the same, but as we push the envelope of what is possible for humans to do, we search for other ways to do it. Acoustically, when I figure out muti-temporal solutions that do not need 3 - 5 (or more) conductors. they are still usually super simple, but I can achieve the desired effect. But it will be impossible to make an acoustic piece of music that pits the number e against the number pi temporally (Nancarrow study 40). This is where Max comes in.

Its out of necessity. I do things with max that I cannot, will not ever, be able to do with real performers. It ends up leading to many fascinating solutions that I would not consider when composing for acoustic instrument alone. Some in fact, are super simple, yet physically impossible otherwise. For the piece I just finished for a friend in Seoul every note played on the piano triggers a set events that records the note to a buffer, begins playback and then multiplys the playback by a hanning window to create volume swells of the note that was just played. Real simple, but impossible to push a piano key in the real world and have it crescendo. Now, (and my girlfriend compared it Sartre), I am using this simple 'motif' in thousands of various ways for other pieces.

Just that much is enough to give purpose for a program like Max in the world of human vs. technology. (we can talk about pitting pythagorean tuning against tempered tuning to get those beautiful wolf tones another time)... or all the other zillion fun (not so conservative like myself) things people are doing with Max.

History takes time to judge. One of the first times the word 'terrorist' was ever used in print was to describe Beethoven's music while he was alive. Look now!

@CTRLZJONES @VICHUG - yes, the videos of machines doing things that humans can already do are not helping things at all. Already here in Korea the performers are becoming 'too good' and whenever I go to a Jazz bar in Seoul I am astonished by how perfectly 'cooky cutter' the Jazz bands sound... super boring and lifeless!

Thanks Wil - I reckon you've taken the thread to an even higher level of interest! :-)

So many topics you touched on would make a long, interesting thread on their own, and most of 'em would greatly interest me. Nancarrow - much life and innovation left for the "humble" piano with the assistance of creative use of technology. (Similar to ideas in my performance, actually.) Super-slick jazz being lifeless and boring. Great tidbit of info re Beethoven's music - thanks, I'll remember that one! Alternate tunings, etc. etc.

The player piano hasn't died, btw, but has been transformed by tech: http://www.qrsmusic.com/

Arggh! I could chat about this all day but, funnily enough, I've got a couple of hours of keyboard practice to do, mostly classical piano. So I'd better tear myself away from the computer… Ouch!

My thoughts after reading this thread in detail:

When I first encountered Max nine years ago I did little else but patch, building synths, realising dreams through typing and mousing (and there is also nostalgia for the Max 4.x minimalist look and feel). But now I spend most of my time building circuits and code, and less time patching. I need to feel my instruments.

Penfield's cortical homunculus illustrates our need for rich tactile as well as visual input-output, but Tom Igoe's representation of how the computer 'sees' its human operator (Physical Computing book, p.xix) indicates how impoverished our interactions with computers are. Simple touch input and increasingly rich visual output.

There is hope though; Hiroshi Ishii and so many others, bringing bits into the physical world.

>defining one’s needs well seems good

It's critical for us in order to take our patches beyond the explorative phase. It's taken me many years to get to that point.

>I remember Robert Henke saying that every Max person should condemned to stop patching for 3 month a year and actually using their achievements to do something with them.

Yeah, he's really wise about patch theory in that sense. He also advocates for smaller patches that "do their job and nothing else". Thing is, you'll never reach that goal unless you've defined your needs.

Software programmers call this "specification", and I'm suuper strict about it in terms of max. What do you want your patch to do, and how? Until you can answer those two question it's the patching leading you, not the other way around.