Max/MSP
マックスエムエスピー

People who know the name Max/MSP software may be limited to those who have been involved in electronic music since its early days or those who are interested in experimental genres. Max is a comprehensive sound-centered program development environment for audio, video, music, 3D graphics, and physical computing since the days when it was not common for each person to own a computer.

When you open Max software, at first you will only see an empty canvas. However, it becomes a place like a garden for invention, because you can build all of the mechanisms for creating sound there with your own ideas. It is one of the most widely used development software in the world of sound, not only in the fields of new media art, technological entertainment, and musical composition, but also in research and development, since the days when there were hardly any DAWs or even soft synthesizers.

Max is an unavoidable tool in the field of sound production, which requires unique development that cannot be achieved with off-the-shelf hardware or software, and has the advantage of a large number of users and a vast amount of online documentation and programs created by anyone, due to its long history.

If you are a creator working on experimental sound design or composition, learning how to use Max will greatly expand your range of expression, Especially in electronic music, the art of sound design can be as powerful support for composition as the art of playing musical instruments.

When you learn something about music, there are so many things you can do to deepen it by making and playing it. I believe that making is an act that is open to everyone, and even if you are not a musician, there is great value in learning through the act of making.
Especially in composition, learning theory and technique without practice, that is, without creating anything, is denied by many musicians.
Even on this page, rather than gaining detailed knowledge, we would like you to try making it yourself anyway and use it as material for your own thinking.
Developing something in Max is one of the lowest thresholds in programming. There is no problem if you do not try to do something big right off the bat, but rather just start with small things and increase your knowledge one by one. At first, it is important to aim for a form that can be established through ingenuity in usage while minimizing the number of things that must be learned, and if you feel that there is not enough there, it is important to continue learning new things.　Skilled people will continue to learn forever that way.

I have uploaded one video here, a very simple program that opens Max and then plays a Reese-like detuned sawtooth wave.
Watch the video and imitate it. First and foremost, touch Max to create a mechanism that produces sound. It is okay to make mistakes in program development; no one will be injured or their computer destroyed by using Max. You may also understand the creative sense that it is in mistakes that unexpected discoveries and encounters can be made.
The finished product is also available in downloadable form, but please try to make it yourself as much as possible.

When you open New Patcher, you will initially see a brand new screen. We will build the sound system here one by one.
The object that generates the sawtooth wave is completed by double-clicking on the window and typing phasor~. In this video, three sawtooth wave oscillators are prepared, and the + and - objects are used to add and subtract frequencies and send the values to the left and right oscillators.
Max has a help menu on every object, which can be opened by option+click, and is itself a program that can be executed, helping you learn as you work.
+ - objects should be entered with a single space before entering a numerical value. The unit is Hz. Then, the actual Hz value of the whole frequency can be varied by using the number box. The number box appears when you press the i key. If you make a mistake, press delete.
Next, place the live.gain object that controls the volume. This can be found in the Audio tab of the Max for Live Objects, Audio tab. The object to play the created sound through the speakers is ezdac~.
When the program is complete, click on the key symbol in the lower left corner to lock the entire program and prevent editing, instead allowing you to click on the UI to change numbers and move sliders.
If you want to edit the program itself again, simply lock it with the key symbol in the lower left corner.

Now, did you think there was something wrong with the sound of this program?
Yes, I am making a mistake here. + The number 25 that I am entering in the - object is in Hertz, but I mistakenly entered a number that is supposed to be in cents, so I think I have a dissonant harmony rather than a detuned one.
But if you hear this sound and it inspires an idea other than detuning, that's where Max's depth begins!

The history of Max begins in the 1980s when Miller Puckette of IRCAM, a French institute dedicated to the research of music and sound, especially in the fields of avant garde and electro-acoustical art music, wrote a music language for Macintosh called Patcher a music language for the Macintosh, to create an interactive computer music system.

The software was first used in a musical work, Pluton, by French composer Philippe Manoury in 1988.

In 1989 IRCAM ported a version of Max/FTS for NeXT, short for Faster Than Sound. It required an external device for real-time sound synthesis and processing called ISPW. Max/FTS has been installed in 30 laboratories and studios around the world, including IRCAM.

In 1989, Max was licensed to Opcode Systems, and in 1990, the first commercial version of Max, Max/Opcode, was released. Opcode would later be released by Cycling74, a company founded by David Zicarelli. Meanwhile, in 1996, Miller Puckette developed PD, an extension of Max's sound processing capabilities, at the University of California, San Diego. Inspired by this, Zicarelli later introduced real-time sound processing to Max, which had only a midi generation function, and released it as a package called MSP. The term MSP is a reference to Miller S. Puckette.

In 1998 IRCAM releases jMax, an open source java version of Max, but the project has now been terminated. The latest version as of 2023 is Max 8.5.

The work was begun in 1987 at IRCAM in France by Philippe Manoury (1952-), one of the most influential composers in France today, and was completed after about two half-days of work a week for six months.

It is a work for MIDI piano and computer, each synchronized and running a device for sound synthesis called Sogitec4X. Attempts like score following have been made since the development of Max, and at that time, performers were required to play with a sense of tension, as even a single mistouch would cause the MIDI information to be lost and the computer to fail to process. The first performance was given by Japanese pianist Ichiro Nodaira.

Unlike C and other languages, Max/MSP is characterized by its ability to develop programs that execute specific commands by graphically constructing logic by connecting boxes called objects that perform various types of calculations with wires. Moreover, Max does not require compiling, which is a process that allows you to develop programs while playing sounds, so even if you have a vague idea of what you want to create, you can develop your ideas while listening to the sounds.

However, there is a weakness in this approach, which is that readability becomes overwhelmingly complex and worse when implementing algorithms comparable to those in Java or C. Complicated wiring is also commonly referred to as spaghetti patches. To overcome this complexity, after moving to Cycling'74, Max has taken the approach of increasing the number of objects to prevent complicated patching. By preparing standard algorithms as Max objects, users can use only the results of calculations by supplying variables without knowing how this object works, thus reducing the difficulty of learning Max.

Max/MSP is composed of Max, MSP, and Jitter, which are separate processing objects, as well as extensions called gen~ and RNBO.

• Max … User interface, timing, communication, MIDI programming
• MSP … Extension for audio processing
• Jitter … Extension for video processing with matrix and generation of 3D graphics using OpenGL
• gen~ … Extension to allow development of signal processing per sample, included since Max6
• RNBO … This is an extension function that has been included since Max 8.5, which enables export to vst, au, C++, Web Audio, External Object, etc. by developing within a dedicated object.

To see what the latest version of Max can do for you, visit the Learn section of Cycling'74's website.

Still, Max is a programming language, so it is true that it is an environment that is distant from music. Many people are stumped as to how to learn it. Therefore, I have compiled a list of objects that you should definitely learn.

In fact, many of the objects that exist in Max can be combined to perform the same calculations. If you have seen the contents of my Max for Live devices, you know that most of them use only the basic objects shown above. Don't you think that's less than you think? Now you just need to be creative in how you combine these objects! First, please open the help file and memorize the functions of just the objects here!

Another feature of Max is the ease of communication with various languages and protocols: Java, Javascript, Lisp, OSC, MIDI, RTcmix, csound, Chuck, Supercollider, Max for Live, VST, TCP/IP, xml, sql, etc. TCP/IP, xml, sql, etc., are all available as objects or libraries within Max/MSP. Max/MSP is probably the only software that can work with such a wide variety of software and languages internally.

For more information on the multilingual nature of Max/MSP, an article with sample patches by Professor Brad Garton of Columbia University's Computer Music Center on the Cycling'74 website is useful.

Max for Live is a collaborative project between Ableton and Cycling '74. Add to Ableton Live the power and potential of Max/MSP, which gives you access to virtually everything a computer can do. Not only will you be able to develop instruments and effects, but you will also be able to hack into Ableton Live itself and develop mechanisms to make it do special things.

• Build your own audio effects, MIDI effects, and instruments
• API to control Live sets, tracks, clips, devices, notes, loops, parameters, etc.
• Extends hardware functionality: provides objects to access hardware controllers connected to Live
• Includes a dedicated version of Max that allows creation and editing of Max devices
• Includes ready-to-use Max devices for audio and MIDI processing, algorithm synthesis, real-time performance, and hardware control
• Live playback continues while device is being edited in Max
• Flexible user interface design: tailor UI to Live or create your own UI
• Includes numerous built-in Max objects for logic, MIDI, scripting, audio, and video processing
• Supports video compositing and animation via "Jitter" objects
• Step-by-step tutorials to learn how to program with Max for Live

• Native Instruments Reaktor … It is easier to learn and use than Max, but it is an applied system of modular synths, less capable in terms of FFT and other aspects, and not capable of generating video or network-based works.
• Apple Computer Quartz Composer … It is patch-type programming and the programming process is very similar. This is a software for video generation and does not have an excellent library for sound.
• Pure Data … The original developer, Puckette, released Pure Data in 1996 as a free software program that was a redesign of Max. It differs from Max in some basic respects, but is largely similar, and the patches themselves are loadable from Max.
• OpenMusic … A program developed by IRCAM for algorithmic composition, Max is primarily suited for real-time processing in the act of playing, whereas OpenMusic is suitable for non-real-time output of scores (MIDI data or Finale format) and sound files. OpenMusic is suitable for outputting non-real-time scores (MIDI data or Finale format) and sound files. It supports the SDIF format developed by IRCAM, and has extensive data exchange with a variety of software, including Audiosculpt, Max, and Finale.