Darwin Grosse

Paul Théberge has taken on a pretty hefty job: documenting the history and direction of music-making and music-consuming technology. If this sounds like an academic tome of doctoral proportions, you might be right - it is clearly a heavily-researched and annotated text. But it's also a pretty interesting read if you are into music technology. Despite being written in 1997, Théberge is able to produce a fascinating ride for anyone interested in the systems behind both popular and experimental music creation.

There are several books that have discussed the development of the Telharmonium, but few have looked into the Electric Sackbut, and even fewer that found the development of Transoniq Hacker magazine as an important addition to the environment. This is also one of the few books that I’ve read that offers as much attention to Dr. T’s software as to the Synclavier. Any Sound isn’t focused just on the companies with full-page ads - it is also focused on the companies that changed musicians’ working lives.

It’s the job of historians to determine the winners and losers of history. This isn’t easy in the case of music technology, where very few of the popular devices of the 1980s (let alone the 1950s) bear even a slight resemblance to current technology. But Théberge pulls together strands of related technologies and the personalities behind them to create an interesting blend of technological history and pop culture.

Any Sound You Can Imagine
Paul Théberge
Wesleyan University Press, 1997
ISBN: 0-8195-6309-9


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Book Review: Théberge's Any Sound You Can Imagine

Julien Bayle

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Interactive Multimedia Programming with Max6 & Gen

Gregory Taylor

I've just finished a "birthday book" that might interest you--especially after I tell you what I think it's maybe not about.Franklin Foer, whose reporting I've seen and admired in places like The New Republic and Slate, turns out to be a fan of soccer, the world's greatest game. While I cannot possibly approach his level of devotion, one of the things I really miss about moving back to the U.S. from living in Utrecht during J.'s sabbatical year is easy access to FIFA and European Champions' League soccer on the telly. Oh sure, I can still get snatches of it on NOS Studio Sport from this Dutch and Flemish satellite channel we now get, but that's just not the same thing.


Foer's recent book "How Soccer Explains the World," was a great read, although it seems to me that it's perhaps hobbled by a title that looks great from a marketing standpoint, but winds up kind of overstating this modest little gem's intentions a bit. Simply put, it's a remarkably entertaining set of essays about how the sport provides interesting ways to consider how culture, "tribal" loyalties, economics, and politics appear in the humble guise of strikers, local teams and rivalries, team economics, and (of course) fans. If you're looking for interesting critiques of globalization, this might be quicker. Or, if PoMo stuff is to your liking, try this one for size (keep your dictionary handy). But it'd be a shame to pass this great little read by because you were expecting a manifesto.

You can read an excerpt from the book here about the now-dead Serbian paramilitary leader Arkan and his club Red Star Belgrade (here's how they describe themselves, in case you were wondering). Maybe it'll whet your appetite.

I've just finished a "birthday book" that might interest you--especially after I tell you what I think it's maybe not about. 

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Foisting books on a reading public (number ? in a series)

David Zicarelli

Francisco Colasanto, who works as assistant director at Centro Mexicano para la Música y las Artes Sonoras (CMMAS) in Morelia, Mexico, has released the first two modules of a new ebook about Max/MSP on the center's web site CMMAS.org. The first module is free (after registering with the site) and covers the Max interface. The second module covers additive synthesis and is available for $5.00. The book will soon be available for iPad and Android.

This publication is unique in that the text is illustrated with short videos that demonstrate the concepts being described. When talking about something visual and dynamic such as a Max patcher, this makes perfect sense. I could use words to describe right-to-left ordering until I'm blue in the face but once you see it in action, you'll understand it immediately.

Max/MSP: A programming guide for artists is off to a great start and I highly recommend you check it out and continue to watch as Francisco adds new modules.

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New Max/MSP ebook in Spanish and English

Eric Lyon, developer of numerous cool MSP objects including the FFTease series, has written an amazingly comprehensive new book on writing audio externals in C for Max and Pd. Eric takes you through a series of twelve examples to illustrate how to implement audio and DSP concepts in external objects. Learn more about Designing Audio Objects for Max/MSP and Pdon the publisher's web site or on Amazon.


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Book on writing audio externals in C for Max and Pd now available

Andrew Benson

Francisco Colasanto recently published Max/MSP: Guía de Programación para Artistas, the first Spanish-language book devoted to Max.  In this interview, we get a chance to catch up with Francisco and learn more about his in-depth book as well as his work at CMMAS in Mexico and elsewhere.

Where are you from?  When you aren't writing books about Max, what else do you do?

Although my book about Max took almost 3 years of my life,  I'm composing music for mixed media when I'm not writing. I love exploring the interaction between acoustic instruments and electronics. I also work as a technical coordinator at CMMAS (in Spanish Centro Mexicano para la Musica y las Artes Sonoras, Mexican Center for Music and Sonic Arts), located  at the city of Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico.

How were you introduced to Max?  Did you learn from the English tutorials that ship with Max or was there something in Spanish that you were able to access?

I started working with Max in 1998. At that time I was working in a small electroacoustic music laboratory in Buenos Aires. I studied Csound a lot, and when I found Max it was like a revelation. I realized that I could create visual program routines using interconnected boxes. The first thing I did was to migrate all my orchestras from CSound to Max. I can remember myself spending many hours a day studying Max, and I did so for 5 years of my life.

Of course I used the tutorials in English. I've also read Todd Winkler's book, but that was all. There was no Max literature into Spanish, and in fact I think my book is actually the first Spanish book on this topic.

Yours is the first Spanish language Max book that I've seen.  Do others exist?  Did you feel in writing this that there was a strong demand for such a text?  Do you see a lot of Max usage in Spanish-speaking countries? 

As far as I know, there is no any other version in Spanish. However,  there is also not enough literature into English.

In my opinion, there's a strong demand in Latin America. There are many artists currently working with interactive techniques and many others interested in getting started. I've dictated several Max courses in Argentina, and all of them were always very crowded. The same happens in Mexico, we currently organize regular courses at CMMAS, and there are always many people interested in them.

I know several artists working with Max in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Chile and Peru. We can also include Brazil, as Brazilian Portuguese is close to Spanish, and many people will be able to read the book there. There are also many people doing things in Spain, of course.

Who is this book for? How would you describe the teaching methodology used here? 

My intention was always to write a book that could be used by anyone wanting to get started with this, so the first chapter introduces the first concepts of Max and its interface. In this way, I think that it can be adopted by anyone who does not necessarily have a background in MIDI or DSP. I also wanted to provide some literature on the subject that could be used by Max teachers in Latin America. 

The methodology I used was to build knowledge as a pyramid, reviewing past concepts as new ones are introduced, so knowledge is enlarged and solidified.  To do this, each new object comes with a sample patch using only the studied object and the objects that had been reviewed at the moment, so the student is able to confirm several times how these objects work in different situations.

Another CMMAS project is a website for dictating Max distance courses; we're also thinking about Spanish forums.

You focus a large portion of the book on Max objects and MIDI, leaving sound processing for the later chapters.  Did you feel that it was important to provide a solid foundation of message-based patching before delving into signal-processing? 

Yes. You can learn how to write in Max as you learn to speak another language.  You usually don't learn German by reading Goethe or Italian reading Dante; instead, you start with simple phrases, sometimes a bit dumb, and usually without a specific daily use. But this kind of phrases teaches us the structure of a language and how to build it. I think the same happens when you learn Max. That's why I think is critical to provide a solid base of the message-based patching before delving into signal-processing .

Are you planning to write other books on Max? If this book were the start of a series, how would you follow it up? 

In fact, in Max/MSP: Guía de Programación para Artistas, I've mentioned several times that this is the first of two volumes. The second will be entirely related to signal processes, i.e. MSP. I've already begun to write it.

What can someone expect to learn from reading this book?

You can expect a very detailed and step-by-step guide to get introduced in Max programming. After following all the projects proposed and when you finish the book, you should be ready to create complex and useful patches for the development of an interactive project.

We've seen some really phenomenal technology-based work and New Media institutions popping up in Latin America in recent years, but North Americans are largely unaware of these developments.  In your perspective, where is the most exciting stuff happening right now in the Spanish-speaking world?  Is there anyone using Max in really wonderful ways or people who deserve more attention?

Well, I'd like to highlight the work we do at CMMAS since, besides dictating Max courses, we perform concerts quite regularly. Artists working with Max are able to present their job there as well as at "Visiones sonoras", our international music and new technologies festival that takes place every year in November. That's why Max is always present in our activities.

There are a lot of enthusiastic people in Argentina working in many of the universities in Buenos Aires, Cordoba, Santa Fe, and several others. In Patagonia, in fact, a multimedia course was founded at Rio Negro University, and they want to use my book as an important part of their literature.

Mexican Center for Music and Sonic Arts (CMMAS) Website

Purchase Max/MSP: Guía de Programación para Artistas from CMMAS

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An Interview with Francisco Colasanto

Brad Garton

Integrated text/music/image application developed using Max/MSP.

project5

My Book of Dreams

Andrew Pask

Author’s note: If you are annoyed by the clunky nature of scope in JS and you know what a closure is then this article is not for you!

A lot of us live in Max because we are not at home in text based languages. We love laying things out spatially (and using patch cords for connections) so we can visualize how it all works. Also, learning a text based language seems like a lot of hard work. Maybe we just want to get on with life and gigs!

Even though I learned PASCAL at college, I was always annoyed by it. Why do I have to declare a variable? That just seems like a waste of time. Working on Max is a breeze compared with trudging through syntax errors in a text editor.

As I progressed in my use of Max, I found myself running into patching situations which were really difficult. Trying to do anything procedural in Max is tricky. That game engine I tried to do was a buggy nightmare. The MIDI based melody harmoniser was a pile of spaghetti. When I tried to make a Max patcher for a show which had a large text element to it - creating sentences on the fly with dynamic content, I really struggled. These kind of procedural problems are much more easily and powerfully solved in text based languages.

Cue the JS object. I looked at some of the example code coming out of engineering, and it didn’t seem too bad, so I just dived in. I was told to buy one book: O’Reilly’s Javascript - The Definitive Guide. 

Here’s a picture of one of my copies of it.

You can see on this one I have got the “bathtub rings” off to a pretty solid start. It’s not anywhere as bad as the copy I had which fell apart. My problem is that I have the memory of a goldfish when it comes to syntax - as soon as something compiles ok and works, I forget how I did it.

I’ll admit that I actually use less than half of this book. There is so much in there for people writing JS for web pages which is not at all applicable for the use of JS in Max. So I only really use it to understand the way the language works, and as a language reference. Also some of the examples are pretty useful. You can start reading it from the front to get an introduction into the Javascript language.

You could also get started with JS in Max by bookmarking one of the JS reference sites, like MDN's JavaScript Reference.

But if you’re like me you still enjoy flicking through an actual book. It’s not the cheapest book in the world, but pre-owned versions can sometimes be found. I know for a fact that this book has saved me countless hours of wandering around in the dark, and that is what makes it worthwhile. I can get solid answers and clear examples of the things I am looking for - I trust it!

So, now that we have a good language reference, let’s started with JS in Max.

Open up a patcher and create a JS object, then open the help file for it and hit the “open” message.

Save the file jshelptest.js into a new folder with a new name. Then create a new patcher in the same folder as the JS file you created and make a new js object which contains your js filename as an argument.

Now you can start playing around with the patcher - look at how messages and objects you put into your patcher interact with the code inside the JS object. 

Now you can start to make modifications to the code inside your file and test the results in your patcher. You’re off and running! Stick some functions from the code examples in the Definitive Guide into your patcher and see how you can make them work for you.

One other very important information stack you will need is the Javascript in Max documentation.

These pages tell you how we have added Max specific objects and functions to the Javascript language in Max. There is a whole world of interactivity with the Max patcher and Max objects available from JS; it is an extremely powerful tool for enhancing your Max programming. For example, Javascript is the most effective way to program the Max for Live API, and it’s also the best way to deal with the volume of information you can get from the maxurl object.

If you want some more example code - and the chance to do some graphical output - you can check out the awesome Javascript code in the famous Mgraphics Patch-a-day series in the forum.

In no time at all you could be making your own JSUI externs for customising the look of your work. Believe me - it’s worth the effort!

When I tried to make a Max patcher for a show which had a large text element to it - creating sentences on the fly with dynamic content, I really struggled. These kind of procedural problems are much more easily and powerfully solved in text based languages. Cue the <strong>JS</strong> object.

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The O'Reilly/Rhino Book and Using JavaScript in Max

Lilli Wessling Hart

Francisco Colasanto -- an Expo '74 exhibitor and skilled Max user, teacher, and technical coordinator at CMMAS -- has released the second volume of his "Programming Guide for Artists" books. His first volume was the first Spanish-language book devoted to Max. The second volume is an eBook and takes advantage of video and sound available for the medium.  Available in English and Spanish, the second volume focuses on the Max 6 interface. Both volumes appeal to people who want to learn about Max, and are also resources for people who want to teach Max.

If you want to learn more about Francisco and his work, check out our 2010 interview with him. Find links to his books and others on our Resources page.


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Next up in the "Programming Guide for Artists" series

One of the blessings of love is what others bring into our life. Or rather, what others may leave lying on the coffee table for us to stumble across. 

J. is doing something new this year--working with a program that encourages undergraduates to investigate the larger world. To that end, she acquired a book I'd heard about during the year we were living in Utrecht by Geert Hofstede.

The original context in which I'd encountered him was a discussion of the differences between Dutch and Flemish culture. J. met a scholar on a train who was talking about dealing across the cultural divide, despite the fact that the Dutch and the Flemish share a language. What I didn't have was a way to map it, or think of mapping it. Until now....

Hofstede's known for studying how values in the workplace are influenced by culture. The original research, done between '67 and '73 (to quote from his website):

"From 1967 to 1973, while working at IBM as a psychologist, he collected and analyzed data from over 100,000 individuals from 50 countries and 3 regions.

Subsequent studies validating the earlier results have included commercial airline pilots and students in 23 countries, civil service managers in 14 counties, 'up-market' consumers in 15 countries and 'elites' in 19 countries.

From the initial results, and later additions, Hofstede developed a model that identifies four primary Dimensions to assist in differentiating cultures...."

Later on, further research resulted in adding another dimension--apparently, the original set of parameters missed a bit of the framers' cultural biases.

The results of the research show up in several books: the more general management-oriented Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, and Culture's Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions and Organizations Across Nations--the one J. picked up. It's huge and chock-full of graphs and charts and anecdotes and methodological stuff. While that might not interest you, I'll cut to the chase: Here are are the dimensions Hofstede uses as an aid to describing a culture:

Power distance: the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions accept and expect that power is distributed unequally.

Uncertainty avoidance: the extent to which a culture trains its members to feel either uncomfortable or comfortable in unstructured situations.

Invididualism vs. collectivism: the extent to which individuals are supposed to look after themselves or remain integrated into groups.

Masculinity/feminity (obviously, a tricky one): the distribution of emotional roles between genders

Long term/short term; the extent to which cultures train their members to accept delayed gratifications of their material, social, and emotional needs. (That's the one that got added later).

While cultural stereotyping is a pernicious thing to engage in, I find these axes an interesting way to begin thinking about how different sets of bias sets interact. I suppose it's a side effect of my interest in parameter spaces.And lots of people seem interested in applying this stuff. Here is a practical version that dates from his earlier 4d mappings, with countries listed along with scores and how they might be understood. The lodestone is probably Hofstede's own website, which contains the management skinny. Simply choose your country and read on.

As you might expect, the work isn't without controversy. I suppose you can always expect that whenever cross-disciplinary or cross-cultural stuff is done. Turf-o-rama. So here's an interesting take on the work - along with some critiques and supplementary readings. Interestingly, the best source for some pretty savage critique is to be found on a pro-Hofstede website here and here. Interesting, huh? Another interesting feature of the book's success or predominance in the discourse was the discovery that virtually every "review" of it on the Amazon website was someone listing its failures and ranting about how much they despised the it and/or its methodology. So it's the best of both worlds--something interesting to consider, and a possible future conversational gambit that could result in a little edification (simply ask the person who decides to diss the work the ever-popular why question and take notes).

One of the blessings of love is what others bring into our life. Or rather, what others may leave lying on the coffee table for us to stumble across...

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