Love it or hate it, there simply is no graphical development environment for musical and multimedia anywhere near as deep as Max. Max remains the most powerful “blank slate”, custom creative software around, and it’s allowed two decades of artists to create their own tools without coding.

Today, David Zicarelli, the Big Kahuna at Cycling ‘74 and a driving force behind Max as we now know it, talked publicly for the first time about Max 5. This version looks like the biggest ground-up overhaul of Max, MSP, and Jitter since their creation. It’s a huge article, well worth reading, but here are some highlights. (I get to sit down with C74 Director of Engineering Darwin Grosse next week at AES; not sure how much of that meeting I’ll be able to share right away but will definitely find out.)

The capsule summary (as I understand it)

Max 5 is a complete overhaul that’s all about making patching more pleasurable, with an entirely new, 21st-Century user interface and code base. It’s not about adding a zillion new objects. The idea is to be easier to learn for beginners, and more fun to use for experts. (Interestingly, this is similar to the more modest but philosophically parallel reworking of Logic Studio, another app born in the late 80s.)

It’s not just skin deep, because doing things like building workable UIs for performance and debugging promises to be easier.

Keep in mind, this is all basically hearsay on Max 5 because I haven’t seen it yet; I’m just condensing what I can based on my knowledge of Max and David’s introduction. But I don’t want to make you wait for details, since I know we have plenty of die-hard Max users collected here (and the odd Cycling ‘74 employee, so I hope I’m not too far off.) That said, here’s an overview of what to look for from the new version, with more details to follow:

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Read the rest of Cycling '74 Releases Max 5 Details: Bringing Max Out of the 80s, Into the Future (583 words)

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© Peter Kirn for Create Digital Music, 2007. | Permalink | 14 comments

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On June 17th, 1979, a Swedish woman was joined in matrimony by the Berlin Wall. She now goes by the name Wall Winther Berliner-Mauer and she is the author of a website that honors her beloved, now-deceased historic communist icon. (First posted to this blog by Brian Turner.)

Surely she jests? No, I don't think so. She explains the sincerity and depth of her feelings within her page on objectùm-sexuality.

There she writes, "Even as a child a child I was able to communicate with objects and relate to objects. I realize that this might sound strange to people in the western society, but I think one has to remember that in other cultures Animism is a part of their life."

She obliquely mentions having sex with her object of affection. I can only imagine what this might have entailed. (Most likely staged from the west end, don't you think?)

You'll see she also runs a musuem in Linden showcasing miniature models of the Berlin Wall. And Guillotines.

If your own loved ones are fortunate enough to not have been destroyed by an edict of Ronald Reagan's, please don't forget to send them an e-postcard.

(My favorite part: "These pages are handcoded.")

For more on objectùm-sexuality fetishes I highly recommend this web page dedicated to "car play" ("Tire burnouts, boots and shoes on the car pedals").

28th September 2007: Muse Research, the owner of KVR Audio, has arranged for you to receive a free pass to the 123rd AES Exhibition. Use this on-line registration form to register for a free VIP Exhibits Only pass. In add...

Last night, a reasonably-sized mob squeezed between workbenches at Etsy Labs to enjoy the latest Handmade Music night, organized by myself and CDM, Etsy.com, and Make Magazine. At this point, I’d normally try to explain what the concept behind Handmade Music is, but, like so many things, it sounds way cooler in Spanish. Mangas Verdes writes (responding to the latest video from Etsy):

Son músicos, son artesanos y son modernos. ¿Quién quiere pagar miles de euros por un sampler o un sintetizador? ¿Quién dijo que en en el campo de los instrumentos musicales tampoco hay nada nuevo bajo el sol? Handmade Musical Creations: interesante, irreverente y divertido. Luthiers, pero en versión tecno.

Luthiers de la música digital

And yes, luthier means in Spanish exactly what it means in English. I love it.

In a night filled with handmade circuits driving tape players, webcam MIDI controllers, a giant wall of switches, and a din of bleeps and bloops, one could well say “this sounds like chaos” or “aren’t these all just gimmicks?” I wouldn’t argue — quite the contrary. “Weird device that makes noise” is, after all, the first stage of any musical instrument. Already, people were practicing with these instruments as you would a cello. A cello takes years to master. So I’m eager to see where all this leads.

Last night’s highlights: an extended ambient-esque set from Richard Lainhart, a hand-wired cassette Mellotron from the good folks at Make (more on that coming later today), the public debut of the Monome 256, a great 40h performance (very different from Brian’s last time, showing the versatility of the instrument), Eric making the world’s least-practical yet most-fantastic controller in the form of a giant wall of household switches, and all sorts of unusual sound-making boxes.

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Read the rest of Luthiers de la Musica Digital: Handmade Music Makes a Racket, Draws a Crowd (275 words)

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