PLOrk

http://plork.cs.princeton.edu/


I didn't know if you guys knew about this or not but I thought it was kinda cool and they use Max/MSP according to the seminar information.

Oct. 31 Class

I was wondering if there were any big plans for class tomorrow because I thought it might be nice if some of the groups performing could use the time to rehearse. I know that my group can plug everything into headphones so we wouldn't make any noise! I was just thinking this would be a big help to most of us especially for the paradiso show.

Possible Show at the CANVAS

So,

I've been talking with Rose Marshack at the Krannert Art Museum and they have expressed some interest in us doing a show at the CANVAS in the museum. This show would allow us to tool around with Jitter (as the CANVAS is just that, a huge projection screen with several available projectors). If any of you have been there, you know how boss that thing is. Perhaps though, since only 1 or 2 of us have any chops with Jitter, maybe we could hook up with a video artist from the School of Art and Design? What do you think?



jb.

Because I like to pretend that people care

Come hear the worst possible public performance of Chopin's Scherzo No. 2 in the Krannert Lobby:

Saturday
October 28
12:45 pm

It'll be the slowest performance of the piece in history, and also probably the one with the most wrong notes. If you get a kick out of torturing yourself, you should stop by! Or just come to hear the Drummers of Burundi for free.

crash and burn (cont.)

ok,
so this time its serious. trying to open my patch results in an immediate stack overflow message then max crashing. i can open as text but now i am totally lost. anyone got any tips of what to look for, how to look for it, what to never do again, etc?
is there anyway i can open an older saved version of the patch or is it gone forever?
HELP!

Networking is awesome.

We have a bunch of computers around... no reason that they shouldn't talk to each other. I've used udpsend and receive and CNMAT'S OpenSoundControl for a while (and they work very well), but I was very surprised by this article from Cycling 74:

Max Talking to Max

You can send all kinds of data with your trusty ethernet cable. Now, we can truly control robots (preferably Transformers) in our quest for world domination! COMPUTERS TALK!!!!!!

Caffe Paradiso (cont.)

Wassup Homies,

Alright so as for the gig at Paradiso on the 2nd of November. We have 4 groups so we have up to 15 minutes/group. If you don't have 15 minutes its no big deal just do what you can. The show will start at 6pm so we should be set up and ready to go by then. Here's the list of performers as I understand it:

1.Nathan Mandel
Jake Rundall

2.Jimmy Bunch
Shane Wirkes

3.Vincent Murphy
Moon Young Ha
Packy Lundholm
Shane Wirkes

4.Colin Holter
Sam Gingher
Talia Dicker

As far as a p.a. system goes, Prof. Taylor can we get those speakers that we used at Beckman? If not does anyone else have a decent p.a. we could use? Also, I think my group will be using Moon Young's 8 channel mixer and I'm thinking we don't really need anything more than that for the rest of you guys. Please comment and let me know if there's anything else we're forgetting!

Alright Peace Out,
Shane

October 24

Hi from Brooklyn! I'll be back on Wednesday. In the meantime, please use Tuesday's class time to either check out Anthony Ptak's demo in the Electronic Music Studio, or to start getting together the next two gigs. For those of you interested, the Smith 25 gig will be an excellent chance to experiment with Jitter, thanks to the built-in projector in there....

Nov 5

I just want to confirm if people are definitely going to prepare something for the November 5th gig at Smith. We will be advertising for this event, so please let me know soon.

Some incentives:
-Don't let the little kids scare you. They can make for a really great audience.
-Smith 25 has a built-in screen, perfect for people who want to incorporate video/jitter.
-You can say you were a guest artist/lecturer for the UIUC MTNA. It looks pretty impressive on the vita.
-We'll give you an official letter of thanks to prove that you were a guest artist/lecturer for us, and we'll try to say nice things about you in the letter :oP
-And finally, though we don't give out checks, we do give $5 gift certificates to Starbucks. So you literally get a cup of coffee on us.
-Oh yeah, and you should just do it to make me happy. Cuz my unhappiness could have serious repercussions... like maybe sometime in the not too distant future purposefully doing a crap job playing your pieces just to make you look bad... Yes that means you. MuaHaHaHaHa

Live

Dr. Taylor mentioned Ableton Live yesterday in class; I just wanted to share this amazing video that includes (about halfway through) some close-ups of what I believe to be Live on a laptop:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6PjSxeLPwE

Caffe Paradiso

Hey all,

Just a post to let you know that Thursday October 26th has been confirmed for our performance. The time I booked is from ~7-~9pm this is totally flexible and we can change it whenever to whatever we want! We will have to bring our own speakers and possibly tables but we can discuss this at length later. K Bye!

Beckman gig pics!

Dear Maxers and Maxettes,

Here are a few pics from the gig last Thurs... I should've taken some pics during the actual performance, but my lame batteries choked out.

Cheers,

Sam

NOISE FEST!

I found a flyer for this event in st. louis. there are lectures, workshops and a ton of concerts. a weekend pass is only $16!
I don't think that I'll be able to get off of work though. so someone else should go and then tell me about it. the website doesn't have much info, but i emailed them for a more complete schedule that i'll post later.

http://www.lemp-arts.org/nf.php

Beckman debriefing

Congrats everyone on a successful performance! People in the audience liked it too. Let's get going on some followup performances. Here are some things to consider for the next gigs:

- Instead of doing 5 acts on a gig, let's try some breakouts: maybe one or two different acts per gig, which means you can play for longer.

- We need to elevate the main speakers, so they're at ear level or higher - more than anything else, doing this will help the overall sound.

And now that we're getting sound to work, and our Max patches aren't blowing up, we need to start thinking about some musical issues:

- One of the potential problems with laptop gigs is that it can be impossible to tell who's actually playing what at a given moment. While this can be cool, it quickly (for me anyway) gets tiring. When you're making your patches and planning your pieces, try to keep clear who is making which sound.

- Similarly, if you add too much processing to instruments or vocals, it starts to sound muddy. Ideally every sound file and processing should have a reason for being. It's like orchestration: if everybody plays all the time, the result is a gray, washed-out sound.

- Finally (this is more related to your final project) if you're creating a patch for improvisation & munging sound (like Kenaxis, a few posts below), you're really making an instrument, or a hybrid between instrument and composition. Keep in mind that traditional instruments such as pianos and guitars have developed over hundreds of years, and represent the pinnacle of instrument design. In other words, making an instrument is a non-trivial exercise. Figure out what you need your instrument/improvisation tool/composition to do, and plan carefully. We'll be spending some class time on these issues in the coming weeks. Good luck!

jitter

Hey all, I was wondering if anyone with a windows machine has attempted to install jitter. When I started the installation, it gave me an error message saying I needed to download the .NET framework from microsoft. But when I went and did that and tried again, I got the same error message. Has anyone successfully installed jitter?

Thanks, yos.

Using Externals

If you'd like to use externals (such as the excellent gigaverb~) on one of the CAMIL computers, here's how:

1. Download it from maxobjects.com and unstuff it

2. Put the gigaverb~ folder someplace in your home directory (I have a "max stuff" folder on my desktop)

3. In Max, under the Options menu select File Preferences...

4. In the File Preferences... dialog box, click the Choose button and browse to the folder where your external is

5. Restart Max (just to be safe) and try making a patch with your new external object. It should work!

externals?

Well, Keith and I tried to load up 'altiverb' and 'gigaverb,' but the computer won't do it. Is there a way to do this? (We get the 'not authorized' message when trying to load externals)

Poor Man's Lemur

LCD LEMUR

It's the last two post by "pixelmechanic."

question...

Can anybody suggest some kind of audio file converter that will turn AIFC or MPEG4 files into AIFF, or some other format that MAX understands? We used peak to record our soundfiles, and we must have saved them in some screwy format.

crash and burn

i've created a monster. there is some error in a patch i've spent hours on and now there is an error message everytime as soon as i open the patch. then max crashes. the error message says "stack overload select resume from the edit menu to the scheduler". it seems like the same problem happens if you (for example) try to use a patch with a int object's left outlet linked to an int left inlet then that left outlet linked into the first one's left inlet.
so i get that you can't do that, but now it seems like there is one locked in my patch and i think it may be triggered with a loadbang. so as soon as i open it: error message then max crashes.
is there anyway i can change my patch outside of max or can i disable a loadbang without opening the patch. i am pretty sure the answer is no and i just wasted a fw hours, but any insight would be helpful.
thanks

Samp~

From maxobjects.com, here is a freeware patch by monolake:

http://www.maxobjects.com/?v=objects&id_objet=946

It only works on OS X, but it plays different transpositions of a sample at the same time, and has a cool feature where you can drag a soundfile right onto the sample window (similar to Kenaxis, below).

Kenaxis - cool looping tool

Here's a commercially available msp application which lets you load and munge up to 6 samples simultaneously, plus granulation:

http://www.kenaxis.com/products/products.html

If you're inspired, you can purchase it, or at least take a look at the elegant user interface in the demo videos - simple but effective!

Distortion

Is anybody else looking for a low-latency, decent-sounding distortion from MSP or (heaven forfend) Pd? I was using a voltage-controlled bandpass filter for a while, but the latency was prohibitive. However, local Max guru John Ritz suggested I try some waveshaping (detailed in MSP tutorial 12), which turned out really well - sounds way better than the vcf, and the latency is much lower. Anyway, just wanted to pass on my findings.

Project 2: Beckman October 12

Thursday, October 12 Beckman concert, 12:20 - 12:50 pm, "Live Laptop Electronica."

1. Nathan Mandel, sax
Jake Rundall (bring computer w/interface)
(slow, improv)

2. Moon Young Ha
Vincent Murphy, electric guitar
Shane Wirkes, vocals/electric bass (bring computer w/interface)
-slow, drony

3. Jin Ho Chung, laptop
Juri Seo
Jimmy Bunch
Josephine Chang
(with special guest John Ritz?)
use Steve's computer w/interface

4. Alex McHattie, bass
Keith Manlove (bring computer w/interface)
Brian Gulik

5. Colin Holter, electric guitar (bring computer w/interface)
Talia Dicker, electric bass
Sam Gingher

fast/slow, loud/soft, opener/closer
Live instruments vs. soundfile playback
Simultaneous jamming by more than one group?
Will each group do a single 5-6 minute set, or splinter into smaller songs that fit together?
Group improv vs. pre-composed - set a perimeter for musical action
"Battle of the bands"
Other possibilities: Circus Maximus (Corigliano), Europera (Cage)
at least 2 audio interfaces, 2 mics (to eliminate downtime)

Beckman will provide the PA, which will help greatly - I'm going to check it out this week.