Cycling '74

At Expo '74 in Brooklyn this year, Max users exhibited their work. Electronic Experiments projects are featured in the third video of the Science Fair series.

Featuring Max Electronic Experiments projects from Tom Zicarelli, Michael O'Bannon, Kevin Holland, Benoit Bouchez, and Chris Coleman.

Electronic Experiments - Science Fair @ Expo '74 2011 - Brooklyn, NY

At the 2011 Expo '74, some Max users exhibited their electronic experiments.

science-fair-projects-part-3

Science Fair Projects, Part 3

Nathan Bowen

This is a bundle of patches intended to help get you off the ground in using mobile phones to control Max.  

As I like to have several phones connecting to Max in a network setup, I use of udpreceive and udpsend so that ports can be dedicated to specific devices.  I don't know how to make use of Bonjour, so feedback is welcome!

For Android users, I have created a patch that interfaces seamlessly with the TouchOSC 'Simple' layout, so even if you cannot add custom layouts, you can still make use of some these patches.  

Currently the best setup is either an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad on TouchOSC, but hopefully this will change as Android becomes more robust.


mobile-phones-max

Mobile Phones + Max

Maurice Methot

A set of five volumes, in comic book format, intended to introduce electronic music and inter-disciplinary thinking to students at the middle and high school levels (or for anyone who loves experimental media, post-disciplinary thinking, Max/MSP/Jitter, and comics!) There are five volumes currently available at this website - which can be downloaded as .pdf's or viewed as .html files in a browser. As shown at Expo '74 last weekend!


21st-century-maxmspjitter-comix

21st Century Max/MSP/Jitter Comix

Lilli Wessling Hart

Michael Sperone will be leading one of nine community-driven workshops at Expo '74 in Brooklyn this October. Read on for more information about his workshop and some history of his work.

Techniques for Extending Acoustic Instruments

Many composers of the 20th and 21st century - in order to create a new music, and a new sound - have  developed a range of extended techniques such as multiphonics, "growls", "pops", slides and glissandi, etc.  In this workshop, Michael will be discussing his use of Max to extend the acoustic instrument. He will feature examples on the glockenspiel with his patches for expanding the range, sustain, and tonal possibilities. Also, he will include examples with electric guitar, voice, and percussion.

Topics covered will include general effects and pitch detection, and ways to use
that information once Max has received it (resynthesis, harmonizing, etc.),
ways to interface with Max while playing your instrument, and other general
performance issues.

To participate in this workshop, you will need a laptop (Mac or Windows) with Max/MSP, an acoustic instrument (optional), and a way to get that instrument's sound in/out of Max (other than the laptop's mic/speakers).

My name is Michael Sperone, I am a composer, percussionist, and an electronic musician.  I compose music for Tintinnabulation which performs my pop music (and is releasing an album soon).  I started this group to experiment with my Max patches that integrate my glockenspiel and other external controllers.  I also compose concert music which has more recently incorporated versions of my patches I developed with Tintinnabulation.

I started using Max in 2006/2007 after learning about and using PD for a little while (after learning CSound in college).  I had an internship at Harvestworks and learned more about Max from the other interns and have used it ever since.

What technology or person's work intrigues you most right now?

I keep being impressed by the work of Levy Lorenzo and Eric Drasin.

What is the most exciting part of attending Expo '74?

The MOST exciting part of Expo '74 will be all the other Max/MSP nerds who I'll get to talk with and share ideas and patching techniques.

Michael Sperone talks about his Expo '74 workshop.

techniques-for-extending-acoustic-instruments

At Expo '74 in Brooklyn last October, Max users exhibited their work. Design and Research projects are featured in the fourth video of the Science Fair series.

Francisco Colasanto, Andrew Roth, Nicolas Marechal, Mattijs Kneppers, and Perry Hoberman show their projects at Expo '74 Science Fair.

Design and Research - Science Fair @ Expo '74 2011 - Brooklyn, NY

At the 2011 Expo '74, some Max users exhibited their design and research work.

science-fair-projects-part-4

Science Fair Projects, Part 4

At Expo '74 in Brooklyn this year, Max users exhibited their work. Musical performance projects are featured in the second video of the Science Fair series.

Featuring Max Music Performance projects from Elaine Thomazi-Freitas, Jeff Stone, Holland Hopson, Hans-Gunter Lock, and Richard Boulanger.

Music Performance - Science Fair @ Expo '74 2011 - Brooklyn, NY

At the 2011 Expo '74, some Max users exhibited their musical performance work.

science-fair-projects-part-2

Science Fair Projects, Part 2

Alex Harker will be leading one of nine community-driven workshops at Expo '74 in Brooklyn this October. Read on for more information about his workshop and some history of his work.

Convolution and Impulse Response Workshop (using HISSTools)

The workshop will present a new set of tools for working with convolution and impulse responses in MaxMSP (HISSTools impulse response toolbox). Rather than than being simply an exposition of these new externals, the aim of the workshop will be to provide participants with some theoretical background to impulse response measurement, as well as tools and practical skills to work with convolution for a range of applications (reverb, creative effects, measurement, speaker and room correction etc.).

The exact nature of the workshop would depend on the available resources, but areas to be covered include:

Impulse response measurement of real spaces / electronic systems

Speaker / room correction from IR measurements

Deconvolution and inversion of impulse responses

Participants will have a chance to investigate the objects and techniques in small groups or individually, depending on the equipment available.

Participants will require a reasonably fast computer running MaxMSP. Soundcards / mics / hardware to measure etc. also useful but non-essential.

I'm a composer and programmer based in the UK. I write music for various combinations of instruments and electronics, both fixed and live (see some recent work). As a programmer, I spend a lot of time developing externals for MaxMSP. Most of my external development has arisen out of creative projects that I couldn't realise in Max alone, but it has become a pretty serious occupation in itself. I recently released a set of 82 externals written during my PhD study at the University of York.

Currently I'm working as a Research Fellow at the University of Huddersfield, creating a set of tools primarily for MaxMSP called HISSTools. This workshop is based around the first set of objects from this work which are focussed on impulse response measurement and manipulation.

I started using Max in 2004 as part of University course I was attending during my Masters programme at the University of Birmingham. I have a fairly extensive background in music technology and I already had an interest in how audio processing worked, so using Max was a totally logical step. It probably took off a lot faster than I would have guessed, and I got into coding externals within a few months. That was partly because I was really interested in spectral processing, and it is a lot easier to do some of that stuff in C than with native objects only.

I'm getting back into the idea of sines + noise + transient modelling and returning to spectral processing (partly due to doing a fair amount of it for HISSTools). I did a whole lot of reading up on this model a couple of years back, and then it didn't really fit into the project I was working on. It was also hard at the time for me to figure out how to implement that kind of approach entirely within Max. Now I have a slightly different take on it though, as I'm interested in abstracting a "model" of a sound that can be used quite malleably, rather than getting a realistic reproduction of the original. I'm hoping to achieve what I want without the need for too much complexity.

Perhaps ironically, given that I'm presenting on convolution which for a lot of people is mostly about reverb, I'm also really into algorithmic reverb at the moment. I'm using Aether by 2caudio, which I've been really really impressed by in terms of flexibility and sheer sound quality. I'm very interested at the moment in finding really high-quality DSP tools and I'd love to know more about how to make an algorithmic reverb of this kind of quality. However, I'm aware that this is the kind of area that can become a black hole in terms of time, so for the time being I'm leaving it to the experts...

Like everyone else, I'm most excited to meet people in the community, see their work and discuss ideas. It's nice to have an excuse to visit New York for the first time also!

Alex Harker talks about his Expo '74 workshop.

convolution-and-impulse-response-workshop

Convolution and Impulse Response

Nathan Bowen will be leading one of nine community-driven workshops at Expo '74 in Brooklyn this October. Read on for more information about his workshop and some history of his work.

Mobile Phones and Max: Simple Ways to Make Interactive and Collaborative Music

This workshop aims to introduce some simple applications for smart phones that integrate very well with the Max environment.  In the days prior to smart phones, getting keypresses from phones to integrate with Max required a lot of extra programming via Asterisk or other telephony platforms. With smart phones now featuring WiFi capability, getting your phone to talk to Max via a WiFi LAN is now very simple to do.  This opens the door for the phone to serve as a controller, and via OpenSoundControl, there is a very low latency.  In this workshop we'll create a network band driven by mobile phones.  TouchOSC, OSCemote, c74, and other apps will be featured.  As TouchOSC is available for both iOS and Android platforms, this app will be highlighted.

To participate in this workshop, you will need a laptop with Max and, optionally, a smart phone (iPhone or Android phones work best) with TouchOSC app (downloaded onto your device) or comparable OSC-equipped apps.

I'd say that I am foremost a composer, but since being introduced to Max I've also become an instrument builder.  In my graduate work at the CUNY Graduate Center I began to focus on the use of mobile phones as performance devices, particularly in non-linear networked and collaborative situations.  In looking for ways to engage non-musicians in some way other than through passive consumption, mobile phones seem to have unique potential as controllers because nearly everyone has one.

As of late I've been pretty consumed with my dissertation while also teaching fulltime at Moorpark College.  Here and there I've done projects with MELD Danceworks, the Handcart Ensemble, the Intermedia Arts Group, 60x60, and have served on the staff of NYCEMF.

I started using Max in early 2006.  I was intrigued by the prospect of realtime performance being incorporated into my compositions.  At the time I was studying composition with Amnon Wolman at Brooklyn College via the Graduate Center, and he had me get in touch with Hans Tammen at Harvestworks.  I served as an intern and took classes from Matthew Ostrowski, Luke DuBois, and tried to sit in on any other activities going on there. Right from the start I was blown away by the artistic potential Max had. 

I've been pretty keen to watch what's going on both at Stanford and Michigan with their respective Mobile Phone Orchestras, so Ge Wang and Georg Essl are pretty intriguing to me.  Atau Tanaka has been very kind as a contact and I really admire his work and dedication in mobile arts.  Frauke Behrendt has done tremendous research in mobile music as has Sumanth Gopinath.  Kiri Miller's research on Rock Band and Guitar Hero is fascinating too.

I'm just now trying to get a grip on musical gesture research and how to make use of accelerometers and other sensor data in meaningful ways.  I feel like I have so much to learn, and there seems to be a large corpus of work that's been done. 

Kinect hacks also are pretty tantalizing.  I'm very excited to see what people are doing with it in the coming years.  I love the collective effort to help make digital music-making a physical experience.

I'm mostly excited to see what else is going on, in hopes of absorbing as much knowledge and inspiration as possible.  Though I don't post on the Max forum often, I have benefited so much from the wisdom of others, so  I'm hoping to contribute to the community at Expo '74. Also, Max 6 sounds great, so I'm looking forward to a solid intro.

a class="button" href="https://cycling74.com/articles/announcing-expo-74-2011/">Events and  Details


Nathan Bowen talks about his Expo '74 workshop.

mobile-phones-and-max

Mobile Phones and Max

Ben Houge will be leading one of nine community-driven workshops at Expo '74 in Brooklyn this October. Read on for more information about his workshop and some history of his work.

While attending Ben's workshop, you will build a simple music engine, similar to the one he used to prototype the music system of Tom Clancy's EndWar at Ubisoft. Focus will be on a cell-based system, flexible enough to turn on a dime in response to game events, with no loops and no fades. To participate, you'll need to bring a laptop with Max 5 (including MSP) installed.  Ben will provide some sample data, or you may bring/create your own.

Well, it sort of depends on when you catch me.  My career for the past 15 years has been audio design for video games, having spent 7 years at Sierra (working on Leisure Suit Larry 7, King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity, Half-Life: Opposing Force, Arcanum, and others) and 4 years at Ubisoft (most of which was spent as audio director of Tom Clancy’s EndWar).  But for most of the past 3 years I’ve been focusing on finding ways to apply organizational concepts from the inherently indeterminate medium of video games in a broader cultural arena, in particular exploring physical spaces through the medium of sound installation.  I’ve also been investigating applying the same non-linear principles to visual data.

I’ve recently been busy with projects at the Boston Cyberarts Festival, the Axiom Center for New and Experimental Media (Boston), e4c gallery (Seattle), and the San Diego Museum of Art.  I currently teach video game audio at Berklee College of Music and Boston University Center for Digital Imaging Arts.

I came very close to taking a Max class at IRCAM in 1995 while doing an exchange program in France, but fate intervened.  So I know I’ve been aware of and curious about Max at least since then.  I started using it around the time it was ported to Windows, 2002 or so, as I recall.  I did my master’s at the University of Washington from 2002-2004, after I’d already been making games for a while, taking advantage of Sierra’s continuing education program, which was great in that it helped me articulate more succinctly the questions I wanted to address with graduate study.  Max figured prominently into one class in particular, Sensing and Control Systems for Digital Art, taught by Bret Battey, and I also did my master’s thesis in Max/MSP, a sound installation project entitled Radiospace.

Max has been my main axe since then.  I moved from Seattle to Shanghai in 2004 to take the job with Ubisoft, and when I first landed and hadn’t yet met any collaborators, Max allowed me to continue to make music as a one man band.  Max also became increasingly prominent in my video game work, as I used it to prototype game audio deployment systems, notable the innovative music system we developed for EndWar, which will be the focus of my Expo 74 workshop.

I’m keeping a close eye on Björk’s new Biophilia project; to call it an “album” seems too reductive.  I’ve been convinced for a long time that the successor to the CD would be the app, and this seems like the first major project to pull a lot of these ideas together cohesively and on a grand scale.  I really believe that real-time, interactive, digitally mediated experiences are going to be the primary mode of experiencing music in the future, and the place to look for direct precedent is field of video game audio.

It’s definitely an exciting time for independent game projects and apps, especially as game audio middleware like Wwise and FMOD has become standard, game engines like Unity and UDK are available to indie devs for free, iPhone/iPad/Android are viable platforms for small scale games, and XBLA and PSN provide a distribution alternative to the big lumbering game publishers. I’m also very excited about the possibilities of HTML5.

Let’s see, who else…Messiaen is a constant inspiration for sonic forms that inhabit a kind of perpetual present, similar to what games must do.  I’m currently working my way through his complete organ works (the Latry boxed set).  My friend Wang Changcun, the most active Max user I met while living in China, just shared his new project with me (entitled “sorry, autocorrect”), with some really nice algorithmic grooves, although I’m not sure if I’m allowed to share the link yet.  Carl Stone is also never far down my listening list.  And lately I’ve been reading a lot of Jim Harrison poetry.

I’m just really excited to see what other people are working on.  The great thing about Max is that it’s so vast that I don’t think anyone really masters the whole enchilada; instead people dig down deep into whatever they’re into.  It was encouraging to read that most presenters don’t consider themselves Max whizzes; they’re whizzes in their particular thing, and Max is the tool.

I’m also very excited to find out more about Max 6, which is sounding amazing so far!

Self-Portrait, Dusk, at the Point of Departure

Ben Houge talks about his Expo '74 workshop.

videogame-music-prototyping-at-expo-74

Videogame Music Prototyping

At Expo '74, you will have a variety of events -- presentations, workshops, panels, social -- available to you. We hope you can attend all to get the most out of our short time together. 

Below you will find the list with the times. Please keep in mind, these details are subject to change. Also, you will see that workshops go on simultaneously. You can choose one (or a set when there's more than one) to attend each day. (The conference is sold out.)

See the color program. You will receive a copy at check-in.

10-10:30am David Zicarelli keynote, welcome

10:30-11:45am Cycling '74 Max 6 presentation with Joshua Kit Clatyon

Nick Rothwell (Programming with Clojure in Max)

Alex Harker (Convolution and Impulse Response Workshop using HISSTools)

9-10am Cycling '74 Gen (new code generation add-on to Max) presentation with Gregory Taylor, Darwin Grosse, and Joshua Kit Clayton

10-11:15am Education Panel with Luke DuBois

11:30am-12:15pm Brian Crabtree and Kelli Cain (monome), presentation

2:45-3:15pm Break, prepare for workshops and science fair setup

3:15-5:45pm One set of workshops and two individual workshops:


Dan Nigrin (Making A Slick Max Standalone) - 75 minutes
Nathan Bowen (Mobile Phones and Max) - 75 minutes

Scott Fitzgerald (Ins and Outs with Max and Arduino)

Cycling '74 (Max for Live) with Darwin Grosse, Matthew Davidson, and Dennis DeSantis (Ableton)

5:30-7:30pm Reception with food and drinks (open to all expo attendees)

5:45-6:15pm Science Fair setup (and a break for those not exhibiting)

6:15-8pm Science Fair (open to all expo attendees)

9-11:30am One set of workshops and two individual workshops:


Thomas Resch (Introduction to note~) - 45 minutes
Andrea Agostini (Bach: Automated Composer’s Helper) - 45 minutes
Michael Sperone (Techniques for Extending Acoustic Instruments) - 45 minutes

Jean-François Charles (Live Spectral Processing in Max)

Ben Houge (Videogame Music Prototyping in Max)

11:45am-12:45pm Group event with Geoff Morris of Cycling '74

1:45-2:30pm Philippe Manoury, an interview with David Zicarelli

7:30pm Todd Reynolds/Luke DuBois performance at Issue Project Room's 110 Livingston space (free ticket included with your expo registration)


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