Andrew Benson

Our ever-popular Cycles series of sound libraries, produced by Ron MacLeod, is now available for download in our online store for a reduced price.  Previously only available on DVD-ROM, the Cycles libraries are a unique collection of high-quality samples created with Cycling '74 software.

Learn more and listen to excerpts from Cycles.

cycles-sound-libraries-now-available-as-download

Cycles Sound Libraries Now Available as Download

Tom Hall

The truth is that I’m still recovering from Ableton’s recent inaugural event, Loop - A Summit for Music Makers, but I thought I should get to writing about it while it’s all fresh in my mind. I was there primarily as a presenter for Cycling ‘74, but attended all three days and moonlighted as a participant where I could. Unexpectedly, it was about creativity in general and very little about Ableton, despite the announcement of Live 9.5 and Push 2 during the weekend.

There were approximately 500 people in attendance at the multipurpose venue Radial System V, located directly on the east bank of the river Spree, an old water pumping station dating back to 1881. The venue never felt crowded as there were several events, performances and workshops happening at any one time across several rooms, halls and... a boat.

I was presenting three events for the summit:

Workshop One was an in-depth look at four MFL devices taken from the Max for Live Essentials Live Pack.


Workshop Two was about building a BEAP Generative Synth from scratch, directly inside a Max for Live Instrument Device.


A Max Connect event that highlighted four diverse Max For Live users that included AGF, Christian Kleine, DJ/Rupture (aka Jace Clayton) and Leafcutter John.


Download the materials from the workshops!

Loop opened on Friday afternoon to a fantastic keynote from Robert Henke. Robert discussed the virtues of being a musician who uses a laptop and trying to explain that to a stranger you’re sitting next to on the plane (everyone could relate). He mentioned that it had been a blessing he had never been on the cover of WIRE magazine and attributed it to his success and lasting career.

He really struck a chord with the huge crowd when he talked about experimentation, “make more weird noises” and to not to get disheartened with failures, “If you’re failing, it means you’re trying something new”, many laughing but hastily writing it down at the same time.

Meeting people at Loop was easy, there was a wide representation of demographics and an equal mix of gender both as attendees and speakers. Whether you were sitting alone or in a group, inside or outside, I was struck by how friendly people were. They were eager to learn why others were there -- whether it was to share ideas, learn or network.

There was a huge emphasis on creative practice and collaboration. It definitely felt like Ableton had taken a number of cues from Dennis DeSantis’s book 74 Creative Strategies for Electronic Music Producers, in the creation of Loop, and people seemed to be loving it.

Catching Matthew Herbert’s talk was great, One Creative Manifesto, he himself having spent many years working on A Manifesto, a personal contract. In a world full of options, online distraction and multitasking, and endless creative tools, sometimes applying restrictions to oneself can lead to greater outcomes.

Saturday afternoon in the main hall was a fantastic performance by AGF. Multitalented and faceted, AGF is a poet, rapper and composer working across a range of mediums in a short amount of time that conclude with sampling the whole audience in a fun and interactive way. Her performance garners much attention with a large crowd gathering afterwards to see all of the devices she is using. I’m really excited as we see the crowd gather, since she is one of our four presenters for the following afternoon's Max Connect event we’re hosting.

Of course, I had to remember that I was there to present two workshops and a Max Connect event; It was hard not to get carried away with meeting people, enjoying fabulous banquets (I sat with the great Roger Linn one evening!) and the amazing talks and presentations.

I was a little nervous about our first workshop. We had been given a Boat for the day and it was tied up at Radial System V. Getting there bright and early to set up and make sure we were prepared for the first workshop, I had great assistance from fellow Cycling ‘74 guys Joshua Kit Clayton (also visiting for Loop) and our Berlin colleagues Jeremy Bernstein, Stefan Brunner and Florian Demmer.

The Boat was full for our first workshop and we navigated through four great Max For Live devices over the course of an hour. It was excellent to connect with such an enthusiastic and attentive group of attendees and a pleasure to watch their faces light up as they caught on to the material I was presenting.

We had a small break and then commenced with workshop number two, where we got into opening up a Max For Live device and patching. The idea surrounding this workshop was to introduce patch cords, the nature of patching with objects (high and low level) and come out the other side with something fun and interesting. We created a Generative Synth using only high-level BEAP modules, patched it so you could quantize to root note and scale, and added some effects at the end for good measure. The boat was alight with array of bleeps and bloops in resplendent scaling - it sounded fantastic and people appeared delighted they had come out with something usable from the workshop in a short amount of time.

The final Cycling ‘74 event was a Max Connect showcase on the boat, packed to overflowing with people and ideas. We had four artists selected we knew would be at Loop and used Max in their creative practice: AGF, Christian Kleine, DJ/Rupture (aka Jace Clayton) and Leafcutter John.

Each artist gave a small but detailed overview of their practice, talked about how Max is involved and how it helps them to achieve the results they imagine. AGF talked about ‘working off the grid’  and getting away from working in a linear fashion, Christian talked about his foray into Max in the 90s and the problems it’s allowed him to solve. Jace Clayton (DJ/Rupture) commanded the room from a central location, his discussion was enthralling and incredibly engaging. He touched on concepts, locality as manipulation, data mining and how Max and Max For Live are a central location for bringing this all together into a device, application or project, the audience was deeply interested.

Last (but not least) came Leafcutter John, who began by standing and declaring “If you’re going to love something you should just love it regardless, and I love Max!!” He went on to explain that the evolutionary path of his work and career would simply not have been possible without Max.

John presented a light-sensitive box combined with an Arduino, composed of 16 LDR resistors laid out in a grid format. Reading the LDRs was serialized by the Arduino, with the results sent to Max for analysis and sound generation. John spoke at length about wanting to generate an instruments that allowed expression - not just sonically but physically. Smooth movement should translate into smooth sound, and aggressive movement to aggressive sounds.

He ended his presentation (and the Connect event) by encouraging the audience to get out their cell phones and other light generating devices to experience his instrument for themselves. It was a real hit and nice way to round out the day for us.

What were the highlights of my exciting and exhausting week?

The general buzz of creativity at Loop involving all facets of electronic music from old to new to the ideas of the future.


The focus events (Phoebe Kiddo’s talk on meditation as a creative tool comes to mind).


Connecting with Users - While it’s fun as hell to work on content and the like in the background at Cycling ‘74, I really enjoyed connecting with users and hearing about their projects with Max For Live and Max firsthand.


Ableton’s commitment to the future of electronic music - their festival itself was clearly driven by unbridled creativity. In addition, the announcement of their new trade-in initiative for Push (passing the old ones and a copy of Live onto young people for music education) is a pretty awesome move.


The way the three days just ran like clockwork - very well organized and everything on time.


A diverse range of demographics and gender, both attendees, participants, presenters and across panels.


A subtle announcement at the end of Loop 2016 by Gerhard Behles, “See you at Loop 2016”, looks like we’ll see more of this great event!



Leafcutter John presented his fantastic Light Sensitive Instrument at the Max Connect event at Loop, Berlin.

Leafcutter John - LDR/Arduino Instrument at Max Connect, Loop Berlin

a-report-from-the-front-lines-the-ableton-loop-summit

A Report From the Front Lines: The Ableton Loop Summit

Lilli Wessling Hart

NAMM • Anaheim, CA • January 15, 2009--Cycling '74 and Ableton today announced Max for Live, the integration of Cycling '74's Max/MSP environment into Ableton Live. Available as an add-on product to Ableton's newly announced Live 8, Max for Live permits users to create devices that extend and customize Live by creating instruments, controllers, audio effects, and MIDI processors.

Devices developed with Max for Live utilize the same features as those created by Ableton engineers. This includes UI controls, MIDI mapping, multiple undo, tempo-based effects, sample-accurate automation, and comprehensive file and preset management. Devices created in Max can be shared with Ableton's new web collaboration features. An innovative “preview mode” feature permits editing in Max while devices continue to process audio and/or MIDI as if they were inside Live. When an edited device is saved, it updates in place inside Live's device view.


The devices included with Max for Live illustrate the potential of the integration of the two products. Step Sequencer is a MIDI effect that features four 16-note sequences with adjustable step sizes. It includes unique features such as sequence shift buttons, a random mode, and real-time MIDI control. Loop Shifter is a new type of loop playback device that uses MIDI to change the way loops are played back. It includes automated mapping and playback modes that produce surprising and entertaining results. Finally, a Max for Live extension for the newly announced Akai APC40 transforms the buttons on the hardware controller into a step-sequencer-style editor for Live MIDI clips.

Max for Live features a variety of basic building blocks for creating new devices as well as an extensive set of interactive tutorials illustrating the development of instruments, audio effects, and controllers. 15 new Max objects duplicate the UI elements found in Live devices, manage parameter state, and provide an unprecedented level of control over the Live environment itself.

Max for Live will be available from Ableton later this year. Pricing information will be announced when Max for Live is released.

Cycling '74 creates software for the specialized needs of artists, educators, and researchers working with audio, visual media, and physical computing. Our visual programming tools Max, MSP, and Jitter serve as the creative engine behind thousands of innovative projects.

More information about Cycling ’74 and its entire product line available at https://cycling74.com.

Ableton develops technology to inspire creative people. Since the company started in 1999, Ableton has attracted an extensive and highly committed community of musicians, composers and DJs worldwide. Currently, Ableton counts about one hundred employees in its Berlin and New York offices. The company has received outstanding press, awards and customer feedback since the unveiling of Live in October 2001.

More information about Ableton and its entire product line available at http://www.ableton.com.

Cycling '74 and Ableton today announced Max for Live, the integration of Cycling '74's Max/MSP environment into Ableton Live. Available as an add-on product to Ableton's newly announced Live 8, Max for Live permits users to create devices that extend and customize Live by creating instruments, controllers, audio effects, and MIDI processors. 

announcing-max-for-live

Announcing Max for Live

Gregory Taylor

Now that I've got a nice generative patch and a way to hear it, I thought it'd be nice to make a few improvements and extensions that would let me begin to specify larger structures - to generate instructions to my generative patch, as it were. While I'm sure that the world is full of people who want ways to have the same thing happen again and again, I'd like to do this in ways that offer a little more freedom than that. This short tutorial will add a modest number of these kinds of changes.

LFO Tutorial 1: The Zen of the Silent Patch

Click here for a full-sized version of the patch image.

In the course of playing around with the LFOur - LFOur_vst and LFOur_out patches, I decided that - although I had considerable control over the patterns I could generate from a small number of pitches stored in a coll object - I would like to allow for more variety. In some cases (and working with VST drumboxes what what got me thinking about this), it was great to have a very small number of choices. I could limit those choices by changing the contents of the coll object I used when mapping output or I could experiment with different settings for the notevalue tempi of each of the four LFOs in combination with the rate at which I sampled the LFO output. In the course of experimenting with this, I realized that I could add the ability to work with multiple coll objects to my patch, or I could also consider changing the size of the range of notes in the coll object that I used when sampling (e.g., for an ostinato, the coll would only have two choices when scaling its output).

After some thought, I decided that since neither addition was very complicated, I'd add both options.

First, I'd like to have the opportunity to use more than one coll object in order to vary the set of pitches I use when mapping the LFOur patch's output. I added a single receive object connected to the coll.

Whenever I send the message refer followed by the name of a coll object in my patch to an s ref object, I'll switch the coll that's used when mapping output.

Adding the ability to select a range within the coll object itself involved the addition of two new  inlet objects to the notemap subpatch and the addition of a pair of number boxes to the top level of the patch that specify the low and high output mapping values used by the scale object that is used to map LFO outputs to MIDI note numbers. A nice side effect of this choice is that I no longer care how large the coll object I'm using with the patch is - I can set it to any set of high and low values to work with different lengths for the coll objects' contents (just change the high number) or map subsets of the coll object contents by changing both values (0-15, 8-23, 60-63, etc.). And I have added the two number boxes that set the low and high scaling values to the pattr registry in the patch by giving each number box a scripting name using the Inspector, so that my presets now automatically recall my mapping ranges as part of the patch preset.

The values I'm sending to the two newly added rightmost inlets of the notemap subpatch are used to set the arguments to a  scaleobject. As any reasonably seasoned Max user will tell you, there are two different Max objects commonly used for linear mapping: the scale and  zmap objects (just in case you need to be reminded again that there is nearly always another way to do nearly anything using Max!). While they'll both go a fine job of performing linear mapping of one set of values in a range to values within a different range - in this case, mapping values in the range 0-127 that the LFOur patch sends me to a range that matches the size of my coll object - there's a reason I prefer using the scale object: I can invert the values used when mapping outputs, which lets me count “backwards” through a coll object's contents. So I can also now read my coll object forward or backward.

Note: Another difference between the scale and zmap objects is equally subtle: although the scale object will let you reverse the range values when mapping output, it won't clip output values so that the fall within that range - if you feed it a very high value, it'll faithfully map it waay outside the output range you think you've specified.

The zmap object does clip its outputs, although it won't invert output ranges (Is this a bit of fabled “secret” Max arcana? Not really, but I'm always surprised at the number of people who haven't noticed this). Since I'm using a scale object, I've used the minimum and maximum attributes of the number box object using the object ‘s Inspector to automatically clip my input ranges in my patch. Once set, you cannot type a number less than 0 or greater than 63 into either range number box. This is a trick I use often when patching.

The astute and observant reader will notice that the biggest change in the LFOurGenerator patch has to do with the patching that surrounds the  transport object, and includes a quartet of objects we haven't seen in any of the patches to date: the  timepoint object.

Each of these four timepoint objects takes as its argument a time point, specified in bars, beats, and units - one of the timing formats that Max uses. The objects' function itself is pretty straight-ahead: when the transport reaches a timepoint specified by the argument, the timepoint object sends a bang message. In this patch, The timepoint objects control a couple of things:

 The first timepoint object increments a counter used to step through the presets for the LFOurGenerator patch itself. These presets keep track of the sources, notevalues, and range of values from the LFOur patch to be sampled and used as inputs.

The second timepoint object uses a counter to step through a sequence of numbers used to set the sampling rate of the LFOur patch itself by sending a value to the receive destination L4samp_rate in the LFOur patch. Setting a greater sampling rate means that there is more variety in the sequence generated by any LFO.

The third timepoint object uses a  textbutton object as a toggle, and will alternately send the message refer sequence_1 and refer sequence_2 to the receive object  located in our notemap subpatcher, changing which coll object in our patch is used for note values.

The final timepoint object serves several different functions: The first and perhaps most interesting thing it does is to reset the transport (by sending the message 0. to the right inlet of the transport object), effectively creating an 8-bar “loop” which cycles over and over. But it also controls a counter and coll object pair that sends messages that change the presets used in the LFOur patch to change the operation of the LFOur object while the patch runs. Finally, when a complete cycle of the counter is finished, a bang is sent out the “carry count” outlet of the counter object and used to turn off the transport.

You'll notice that I added a  trigger object directly below the large toggle to initialize the state of all my counters and toggles whenever I turn the transport on, and another toggle that actually turns on the transport. You might want to have a look at the patching around the transport object a little more closely.

If you unlock the patch, you'll also see that I've connected the third outlet of the preset object to the umenu and textbutton objects attached to the second and third timepoint objects in order to have them not be affected when the first timepoint object changes patch presets. The one other thing you might stop to wonder about is why there's a  metro object attached to the transport, and why doesn't it have a toggle switch of its own? The answer is that in order to get a current bar/beat/unit output from the transport object, it needs to receive its own bang message, and that's what this metro object provides. Notice that the metro object sets two attributes: autostart and autostarttime. Setting the autostart attribute to one means that this metro will start any time that the transport itself starts, and the autostarttime attribute tells this metro to always start counting from timepoint 0 when it's started up. This metro is the reason that we can see the bars and beats display updating.

So this patch lets us configure a larger scale generative structure - it uses timepoint objects to set the point at which changes will occur, and uses messages to modify not only the patch itself (using messages to the preset object), but also to modify and set the behavior of the LFOur patch itself.

Of course, you don't have to stop there - you can route the same control information to other parts of your Max patch to control how various VST instruments are mixed, to adjust plug-in settings, and so on. Here's an MP3 example that uses this patch and some things I've added that I'll let you imagine. Sorry about the reverb - I've recently downloaded an Altiverb impulse response from Gol Gumbaz in India that I'm in love with. It seemed like just the thing.

I hope this trio of articles has been interesting and enlightening. While your mileage on the examples I've provided may vary, I'm sure you can create interesting kinds of mayhem of your own based on what's here. So don't fare well, fare forward.


Now that I've got a nice generative patch and a way to hear it, I thought it'd be nice to make a few improvements and extensions that would let me begin to specify larger structures - to generate instructions to my generative patch, as it were. While I'm sure that the world is full of people who want ways to have the same thing happen again and again, I'd like to do this in ways that offer a little more freedom than that. This short tutorial will add a modest number of these kinds of changes. 

lfo-tutorial-3-extending-our-generators

LFO Tutorial 3: Extending Our Generators

David Zicarelli

Zuckung from Amoebazoid is the newest c74 music release.

Your music sounds both intricate and spontaneous. Would you prefer people paid more attention to your intricacy or your spontaneity? Or neither?

i'm not sure it matters how people listen to it. it's complicated in parts, but mostly i think it's quite accessible. i would also have to admit that the spontaneity is tempered by lot of paranoid editing. most of the stuff here was improvised but not necessarily in the way it ended up in the final recording, although my favourite parts are the unedited sections where the music just flowed that day for whatever reason.

My understanding is that you recently relocated to Berlin. What kind of a music scene is there for you?

Berlin has been very influential on me musically and opened me up to a lot of new stuff. in a sense though, that isn't really reflected in this album as most of it was recorded in Ireland. the stuff that i'm performing is usually out of step with the stuff i'm trying to polish up in the studio. i don't think i'm alone in this. i've done a lot of live performances in Berlin now and usually tends to occupy the improvised noise end of the spectrum, for better or worse.

Where do you imagine people will want to listen to this album?

i don't know where people would want to listen to it. i would like them to listen to it on headphones because that is where it came together. also i'm a sucker for the stereo image. that's not very subtle maybe, but neither am i.

One of my favorites on the album is "Zuckung" the title track. To me it sounds like a particular song from a Return to Forever album from 1974 put through a shredder, but I suspect that has absolutely nothing to do with what you were after. Have you even listened to Return to Forever? Could you talk a little about your relationship to "virtuosity" and "musicianship"?

heh, i don't really know 'Return to Forever' per se but as a relatively recent refugee from the jazz scene i understand the reference. i guess i do have a grudging respect for virtuosity which no doubt comes from my days as a third division jazz guitar guy. i try to not let that get in the way of making something i like to hear, as opposed to something i should appreciate. being at heart a drummer, but never being able to do it, i think i've tried to emulate some of that Tony Williams style from the second Miles Davis quintet with Max/MSP. ultimately it hasn't ended up sounding anything like that but i'm quite happy with the happy accidents it has produced. i also used Max/MSP as a kind of guitar steroid, which converts whatever turgid pentatonic cliches i input to something more interesting. at least i hope so.

Zuckung from Amoebazoid is the newest c74 music release. Take a quick look at what Amoebazoid, himself, has to say about his new album.

q-a-with-amoebazoid

Q & A with Amoebazoid

D. Coward

The actual pedal is a MIDI foot controller - this controls Max 7 on a personal computer. 

The pedal is two separate loop pedals - meaning two loops of different buffer lengths can be recorded.  I like to think of this as two different music boxes that play melodies that take different times to go back to the beginning – over time, the melodies start to overlap in unique ways. 

The rest of the pedal functions as a sample pad to trigger previously recorded loops that the user can assign to a button.

The pedal has the capacity to recall nearly any number of loops of virtually any length.  This is perhaps the most significant utility that differentiates it from other existing loop pedals.  The ability to access stored loops is only limited by the power of your computer.  Unlike other loop pedals that have cheap computers, this configuration does not have a delay when recalling loops – allowing the user to seamlessly move from loop to loop on que and record new ones along the way. 

The actual pedal is a MIDI foot controller - this controls Max 7 on a personal computer. 
The pedal is two separate loop pedals - 

dual-looper

Dual Looper

This was my second time at Loop, a summit for music makers put on by Ableton in Berlin, Germany. It reminds me of a DIY art/music event that ran for years in Newcastle, Australia called TINA – a combination of the cold war architecture of Funkhaus and the eclectic curation led me to that association. 

This year, Loop had doubled in size from 500 attendees to over 1000, so the venue needed to be much larger than the previous year. And it was - the venue, Funkhaus, was a Soviet-era recording facility for communist propaganda and the place from which GDR radio programs were broadcast. It’s still the biggest recording facility in the world - a place where it’s easy to get lost wandering the back corridors. 

The nature of Loop programming is such that it’s not possible to see everything. In fact, there are several things happening at any one time. This means you get to curate your own unique Loop experience and that it’s unlikely two people will have the same experience, unless they were to follow Each other. This has its pros and cons; I noticed that some people were constantly slipping in and out of talks, performances, and presentations trying to capture moments of two things at once. It was disruptive at times. So I'll report on where I went. 

The first Loop event I visited for the day (Friday) was a discussion The View From Here: Localized scenes in a globalized World – I had this earmarked already after a chance breakfast with Demian Litch, a techno artist out of Mexico City. She’s leading the charge in a revolution for young female producers out of Mexico and she’s nailing it. Her work has a strong feminist nature with a lot of concern about the value of women (or lack thereof) in Latin culture. (At present, six women are murdered daily in Mexico with no one convicted of those crimes.)

The discussion was great, Demian highlighted that Latin America is vibrant and passionate about electronic media at the moment, largely due to technology becoming more affordable and networking across borders made easier with social media. Demian has really built some vast networks both in the USA and through Europe and she is playing globally now.

Next, I checked out a presentation Versum: A journey through sight & sound with Tarik Barri. Tarik produces an incredibly well-synchronized 3D environment that takes into account the space, size, and speed of the imagery and the levels of the synchronized sound to each of the generated images - they correspond sonically, depending on their position within that environment. He uses Max, Max for Live, Open GL/GLSL and Java to pull all of this together. Hard to imagine, and incredible to see in person. Many jaws were on the ground by the end of his presentation.

I slipped upstairs to the sound chamber/freezer (at least that’s how it felt) to see Robert Henke’s installation Fragile Territories. 

I haven’t felt like this about an installation for a while. The blue/purple glow reminded me a little of Ugo Rondinone’s ‘Our Magic Hour’ installation at the MCA in Sydney, 2003 - it certainly gave me the same chills and the feeling of the hairs standing up on the back of my neck. The sound and vision were excellent and the chill of the freezer-like sound chamber only added to the evocative feelings. I very much enjoyed the sound, but personally would have liked it a little louder, something where the sound immersed the viewer at the same level as the exquisite but fragile visuals. The lasers emit light with a clarity that I feel is still hard to reproduce with video projectors and it certainly makes it possible to break out of that 16:9 paradigms. Robert’s work organically combines with the space and activates it in a way that you could be forgiven for thinking it’s always there. I amused myself by imagining what would have happened if someone had walked into the same sound chamber and seen this in the 1950s - they would they have thought they'd entered a black hole and been ejected into another dimension or that they were in the presence of some serious witchcraft!

Next, I headed over to the green room, where I got to sit down and chat with Mari Kimura, a long-time Max user (since 1991). Mari has creative insights and an academic/research background like no one else I know and I’ll be sharing those with you in a future newsletter article. Another great thing about spending some time with Mari in the green room was that eventually Morton Subotnick showed up - and joined us in conversation. Upon learning that I was from Los Angeles, Morton regaled me with an hour-long story about growing up in Boyle Heights in the thirties and forties, going to school, and battling local gangs just to keep your head above ground. It made me laugh when he mentioned it took an hour to get to Santa Monica back then because there were no freeways - I had to let him know that it’s still the case now even with freeways.

Later, I see Morton play live in surround sound (4 channel), accompanied by Lillevan who produced live visuals. An exquisite 50 minute-long performance that saw the two combine and divide at times throughout the performance. I was captivated by many these moments of synesthesia, and the main hall was alight with a attentive audience. I don’t think I’ve ever seen 1000+ people so quiet and still.

The following day, I caught Open Audio Communities: Sharing the knowledge - a panel that included Johannes Taelman (Axoloti – like the Nord Micro Modular or the Mexican lizard, depending on your point of view), Astrid Bin (Bela), Olivier Gillet (owner of Mutable Instruments), and Tom Whitwell (Music Thing Modular and huge open source enthusiast). Each of them presented fantastic overviews of their work, where they came from, and the path that got them to where they are now.

Olivier Gillet was a lot of fun. His talk explained how he went from coding for super corporate top secret stuff to wanting to work in the open source world. Olivier’s process for me is interesting; Due to the popularity of his modules, a number of people spread throughout the world have taken to producing copies of his boards and building them. For some of those people, it’s their main Livelihood. Gillet doesn’t seem to care, as long as he covers costs on the first run (after which time he releases the source code, build schematics etc.) then he is happy. He even went as far to say he doesn’t care if cheap knock-offs start coming out of China (I’m kind of surprised we’ve not seen this yet in the eurorack world, actually).

Performance-wise, I sneak in to see Matthew David and Diva perform live. They're both regulars of Los Angeles’ tape/new wave community, and nice people to boot. They completed a near 2-hour-long set of live improvised music. I think it’s mostly live looping-oriented based work with very few samples playing back. They work hard and the performance is phenomenal, both Matthew and Diva bring much needed warmth to the room through their durational set.

The Robotics presentation by Gil Weinbern and Mason Bretan of Geortia Tech brought an interesting change to my day. They have a robot they present called Shimi whose software can listen to music, patterns, translate those and reinterpret them back within a meaningful manner to the musician. This can also happen in a collaborative call-and-response scenario or a live situation where it is as if you’re improvising with another bandmate (i.e. the robot in this case). The robots even give this process a kind of physical presence, with mannerisms emulating the musician playing along with it.

The last Loop day is the one I had a chance to present a Max for Live workshop. I love sharing Max knowledge with users and this workshop was full of enthusiastic attendees. In just an hour and a half we worked through making a generative synth, a midi controllable/playable FM synth and a morphing trigger sequencer for the control of out board hardware. Attendees seem quite happy with what they achieved in the workshop and that's a wrap.

After wrapping up the workshop, I headed up to Hall 1 to experience The Kopenhagen Laptop Orchestra, who lit up Hall 1 in a way I had not seen all weekend. I think it might have been the “in the pit” format in which they played - people crowded around them while they moved through an incredibly organic set with a synchronicity I’ve not seen before. There are several machines running Max, all of them synced using Live as master sync and distributing that across each computer. I’m not entirely sure on the finer technical details, but after connecting with Andreas Wetterberg at Loop, I will be diving into an interview with him in the near future - so I will find out more.

I take a short break to grab a coffee, Loop had organized a vast array of food stalls for the summit but my favorite place for a snack was an old antique café that was built as part of Funkhaus from the beginning, their apple sponge cake was to die for and I revisited it many times throughout the weekend. 

After my break, I headed back to Hall 1 to see Suzanne Ciani. I had the pleasure of meeting Suzanne earlier in the week, sharing some great conversation with her about music, synthesis, and how she was led back to the modular after years of playing the piano.

Suzanne’s presentation, Life in the Waves, started with a 20-minute performance and it was brilliant! Her performance was a lot more active than I was expecting - a Buchla 200e, an iPad running the Moog Aninmoog app and another iPad controlling to Eventide H9 external effects units. Suzanne was moving around a lot and really playing her setup moving, shaping, and sculpting the sound. This stands as one of the best live improvised modular performances I’ve ever seen - arpeggios and sequences with a side of random and chance made for a dynamic sound that gave you enough predictability to latch onto for the journey with no chance of repetitious boredom. Clearly, Suzanne is a virtuoso of the Buchla and an exceptional artist separate from the machine.

Her conversation that followed her performance was charismatic and she showed no signs of recordings from the 70s, some decayed too far to ever be resurrected. Despite this loss, Suzanne had great positive outlook for the future, and she mentioned that she's currently in discussion with engineers to make hardware in similar style to Buchla, but beyond. An interesting point that came up is with her recent return to modular synthesis and the alienation of her early fan base resulted from her playing the acoustic piano for the past three decades. She said that she intends to engage with that perceived split further by hosting a concert or concerts where she plays the piano one night and the Buchla 200e the other. If I’m anywhere close when these happen I’ll be there.

To close out Loop, we got to hear a sermon from the one and only Lee Scratch Perry. This was meant to be a panel discussion with Lee, Subatomic Sound System, and Volker Schaner (who’s been making a documentary about Lee), moderated by Frances Morgan of Wire Magazine. The thing about this panel discussion was that nothing really progressed too far in the way of discussion. Lee Scratch Perry had something he wanted to say. Frances would interject in an attempt to keep the panel going along a trajectory she had planned prior. When Lee would get a chance to talk again, he almost would have to start at beginning again with what it was he was trying to tell us all, so he never got the chance (I felt) to get really deep into his thoughts and process.

Lee took great delight in letting everyone in the room know that we were just ‘babies’ still and that ‘shit’ is good, sometimes you just need a little ‘shit’ to make it good! I like to think he was referring to his days of dirty dub delays and mixer feedback in the studio. It was great to see someone (his grandson?) rolling joints for him side of stage, coming on stage on two occasions to give them to Lee so he could light up and huff & puff during the discussion, the audience of course delighted with this expression of freedom.

In any case, some people thought that Frances did a great job in steering the panel in a particular direction - but I couldn’t help but wonder.... What if Lee Scratch Perry was just handed the mic? What more did he have to say? I would bet money that we would have been in for one hell of a ride. We'll never know.

In summarising Loop, it is a phenomenal opportunity to meet with a large amount of creatives. The energy is fantastic and if you have the slightest creative urge it's going to come out the other side a raging driven giant. While I was in attendance as a Cycling '74 employee and presenter, I received a huge amount of creative inspiration from attending. If you have the cycles, I recommend applying and getting to Loop next year. You'll be a better artist, musician, creative for it!


on-the-road-loop-2016

On The Road: Loop 2016

Johannes

Play back a sample with small selections, define position, duration, rate and grain-pause between the events by using the x/y-panels

right x/y-panel - playback rate and grain pause

ideas for design influenced by stretta's beat factory: https://cycling74.com/tutorials/practical-max-2/ - Thank you!


looper

Looper

We rolled out of bed and into our suits this weekend to attend the annual Audio Engineering Society (AES) conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, a mere 5 blocks from our SOMA office. We occupied a small piece of real estate in the shadow of the big Mackie booth, and directly across from a booth featuring big reels of magnetic tape.

The show gave us an opportunity to show off Max 5 for the home crowd. We brought plenty of little patches to introduce new users to the Max experience and experienced users to the new features and interface. On day three, Gregory brought out his Monome 256 to show off some of the things people can do with this beautiful controller and Max. For our big display, Darwin patched together a slide-show style display that would open to reveal that it was in fact a Max patch.


Gregory and I worked the front of the booth, giving visitors a guided tour of the new Max from our laptops.

We got lots of interested booth visitors this year, most of them looking for a personal tour of Max 5. We talked to many folks who had been waiting for years to start using Max, and found the new documentation and UI features enough incentive to finally take the plunge. There were also a lot of long-time Max users who wanted to see what all the fuss was about. A surprisingly small number of visitors asked questions like, "What is Max?" In fact, we were all impressed by the quality of conversations we had with people at a trade show seemingly dominated by fancy microphones and expensive mixing consoles. By the time each day ended, we would just about collapse in exhaustion, having met so many wonderful individuals.

This year's AES also gave an opportunity for some of our new office crew to get out and shake hands. Cait, our new sales person, toured the floor with Lilli, meeting some of the distributors and colleagues that she'll be exchanging emails with.

Besides our core trade show crew of Gregory, Darwin, and me, we were joined by Cait, Lilli, Ben B., Kane, Mr. Zicarelli, and Emmanuel Jourdan. Although they're a lot of work, trade shows like AES offer us a rare opportunity to hang out with our telecommuting co-workers like Gregory, Darwin, and Emmanuel.

After we wrapped things up at AES, it was off to Safari West to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of Cycling '74 with all of my co-workers and their families. Now back to the office, we're working on the details for our first ever Max user's conference, Expo '74.  Be sure to clear your calendars, and stay tuned for more information, as it's going to be a fantastic event.

a-look-back-at-aes-2008-in-san-francisco

A Look Back at AES 2008 in San Francisco

Stefan Tiedje

 This is my ever growing evolving performance patch. It will loop/record/delay the input. Its meant for Live improvisation.

In its current incarnation it has up to 32 delay lines with pitch shift. and 16 sampling loops. The loops are accessing a fixed length recording space, currently set to 24 minutes and the delays can be up to 90 seconds. Its controlled by several fader boxes and a keyboard.

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