![]() Next time, we'll look at making a musical scale with 7 numbers and a multiplication symbol, which costs a lot less than 50 cents to make! The light of music can, indeed, illuminate the soul, whether coming from a mouth harp, a cigar-box dulcimer, or the very computer you are using to read this post. Mike told a story: he said soldiers can make an instrument from just about anything, during the boredom (amidst the periodic, momentary ferocity) of war. But up close, it soon becomes clear that you can take your ideas as far as your imagination can possibly reach, which is probably the best reason I can think of for investing over 2 years of my life with Max, and I'm only scratching the surface! I hope you will, too. From a thirty-thousand-foot view, it looks a little like sheet music. We will dig a little deeper into what each element in this flow-chart style of programming means. ![]() ![]() I think you will be inspired by the possibilities that instantly come to mind when listening to this new robo-rhythm-accompaniment. Click the buttons labeled "Rotate A", "Reverse B", "Sort parts of C", and "Transpose C" to alter your arrangement, using Max's probability algorithm. Drag your mouse over the multi-slider labeled "C" to draw a melody line. Once you have the tutorial open, click the link to open the interactive tutorial patch, and check the box labeled "Start." The drums will start playing the selectable output on your computer, or the internal midi synthesizer. You might just make beautiful music together! Whatever approach you may take to music making, I hope that you will see not what you can do for your computer, but what your computer can do for you. You may instantly recognize this sound as classic electronic a la Autechre in the very early 21st century, or perhaps not recognize this sound at all, perceive it to exist in a futuristic band similar to the Cantina Band from Star Wars. I encourage you to download a demo copy of Max available at Cycling 74's website, and look into the Data Processing Tutorial #5: List Processing. The music is what matters.įigure 5: Semi-random INSTANTLY UNRECOGNIZABLE The jaw-harp, a world-class instrument, hand-crafted in the key of E, has made for an enduring legacy despite its minimal and simplistic interface. In the Iowa graveyard, with a 20 mile per hour wind, in the middle of winter, at the behest of his Grandfather's wishes (despite using up Iowa farmland as his eternal resting place), the minister gave Mike a nod and Mike played his Grandfather's favorite song "Cripple Creek", a song about healing. When Mike was 14 years old, his Grandfather asked him to play the mouth harp at his funeral. In Alabama, they call the mouth harp a frog fiddle. With the ubiquity of computers, Max is very similar. It actually resonates with your skull, and uses your breath to modulate the timbre. Even though the mouth harp was worth about fifty-cents, it became a very valuable educational tool. ![]() That's really what Max is about: minimal resources, maximum impact. Given to him from his Grandfather, a frugal immigrant, young Mike learned to appreciate more bang for your buck. Figure 2: Filling in the gaps (automatically)Īs Mike plays the jaw-harp, he tells us that it is a world-class instrument, handed down from generation to generation.
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