Today was spent, for the most part, in the Japanese Room with Lesley, learning Max/MSP. Our onging attempt at drawing music (see also: our ICM final project) seems way more feasible in Max than Processing (or any other language we may learn in the next month), so it’s been our goal to get a semi-functional knowledge going so we can proceed with the rest of the project. So far, I can get it to print curses and blink a light while making a sound that closely resembles what I’d imagine a dying whale to sound like in outer space. Useful!
Fortunately, Max is proving to be waaaaay easier to work with than other languages, largely because it’s so graphically-based. You drag an icon onto the screen, you give it a name or number, you type a command, and off you go. This is inquestionably easier now than it would have been two month ago, as I now have a rudimentary understanding of programming and am familiar with a lot of the terms used, but it’s still not as much of a cakewalk as many would say. Then again, these many seem to be all audio/video artists. So meh.
I’m good now with getting it to play pitched sounds, respond to metronomes, evolve sounds (additive and/or FM synthesis), etc, but I haven’t gotten it to respond to any midi device I’ve made. I’m sure I’m just missing a button somewhere, so this should be fixable, and hopefully painless.
To add to the fun of all this, I have a bunch of new sliders and knobs to play with thanks to Amit (an ITP grad himself) who was liberating a box of pComp stuff. For me, this meant picking up a few chips, a multiplexor, a bunch of knobs, some audio thingies, a bag of piezos, a helping hands unit and a pile of other things. I shall now invent some sort of project that requires these things, or at least that’s the plan. The sliders on their own should make for really excellent synth controllers, once I learn how the hell to do that.
Full scope of the loot here.
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