Tutorials

My Favorite Object: multislider

It’s one of those objects that can slip by you or easily be written off as just a UI object, but it’s so much more than that. I really dig multislider and obsessively so. I should probably use other stuff instead, but I really enjoy a visualization of the data I’m using.

For example, I like to use it a a sequencer with another multislider layered over the top that gives you position, real-time dynamic changes with visualization of those changes and positioning. What’s not to like?!

Another way you can use multislider is as a way to visualize and unravel data from a dictionary or a coll. For example, if you have multiple drum patterns or scales set inside coll as simple patterns of zeros and ones, you query coll with a simple number and the list is sent straight out to a multislider giving you a visual of what that looks like.

I have my multislider set to a range of 0.0-1.0. So the pattern in coll results in either steps that are on or off.

These values come out of multislider as a list, or can be queried individually by step and could then be routed to drums, gates or filters.

Additionally, you could use certain patterns as starting points and then go ahead and manipulate them dynamically - (see the [pak 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0.] running into the multislider).

Like I said, you could avoid all of this, but if you’re a visually oriented musician that likes to see the data as well, multislider can be a really great object/tool.

Learn More: See all the articles in this series

by Tom Hall on January 24, 2017

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Jaky's icon

Jaky

I agree, I love it too! AND since it is mirawebabble it gets so freaking amazingly interactive !

Tom Hall's icon

Tom Hall

@phantasmeano good point! it's also great for writing detailed content into a buffer~ using peek~ and can be taken well beyond the functionality I show here.

dustinmosley's icon

dustinmosley

Very cool!! I'm still fairly new and I've been trying to make a nice looking Mira friendly sequencer (as the beap version uses live.step and won't show up). This should be super helpful! Also the trick for visualizing data from a coll object will be great as I'm getting more used to working with lists and all. Thanks for sharing this!

I had a little difficulty getting it to work at first. It seems the name was the cause. It downloaded as "multislider.maxpat" this caused all of the multisider objects to show up as "juibogus" and all new multisiders to show up as a patcher reference. Renaming the patch to "multisider tutorial.maxpat" or whatever seemed to fix it.

Evan's icon

Evan

I've been loving me some multislider lately! I've done a waveform display/playback position combination recently, and it looks pretty nice.

andrej's icon

andrej

Totally agree the multislider object it's a legend, I'm using it all over in the project that I recently presented https://cycling74.com/project/granurise/#.WIpGoRqkrYU
It displays the waveform, it controls the voice parameterers and also the rnd visualization is made with multislider. So MS is really a nice way to interact with the interface.