1. 1 Practice Paragraph 1.

1 - First steps w ith Max/MSP

by clicking on its icon. (Remembe r, you can cause t he palett e to appear by

do uble-clicking on any empty spot in t he Patcher Win dow). Wh en you click on
the icon, a new kind of object wi ll appear: instead of an object box, a new user
interface object (also known as a ui object) wi ll be created. Here's a litt le ti p:
if you have a hard ti me f inding an object in the object palett e, j ust create an
object box (the same generic object t hat we just used to create cycl e - ), and
t hen type the name of th e object that you wan t to create (such as gain- ) into
its interior . Once you've do ne th is, click outside of t he object, and t he object box
w ill immed iately morph into the ui object whose name you typed.

Fig. 1.5 The gain- object

Drag th e newly created ga i n- object t o a spot in the Patcher W indow

underneat h t he cycle - object, and connect t he out let of cycle- to the
inlet of gain - in th e fo llow ing manner: f irst, bring the mouse poin ter near
the outl et on t he lowe r edge of t he c y cl e - object. A red circle, along with a
box contai ning descriptive text (a feat ure off icially called "object assistance"
by Max/M SP), shou ld appear. The circle, show n in f igure 1 .6a, ind icates t hat
th e out let is selected, and by clicking and dragging the mo use towa rds t he
gai n- obj ect whi le holdi ng th e mouse button down , a yellow-a nd- black
st riped patch cord can be made to appear . If you d rag the end of this patc h
cord tow ards the inlet of t he gain- object (th e small dark patch on its upper
edge), yo u w ill see anot her red circle (and more descript ive text) appear, as
show n in f ig ure 1.6b. This second circle ind icates that you have located an
inlet t hat is compat ible - at t his poin t , release t he mo use butto n, and yo u w ill
have connected the two objects !

The gain- object has two inlets on its uppe r edge (w hich are really quite d iff icult
to see as distinct, since they are crammed toget her and poo rly distinguished
from each ot her). The left inlet, to w hich we connected the cycle- object , is
desig ned to receive audio signals from a generator such as cycle- , and the right
inlet is designed to receive numeric values w hich, for the time being, we are not
interested in .8 It is impossible to make buggy connections by routing t he digital
signa l out let to the nume ric inlet, because Max w ill not allow incompatible con-
nections such as th is to be made.

8 For the curious, t his numeric inlet represent s the "slew rate" for the fader handle, or the t ime
interval in milliseconds used for inte rpolating fader positions while it is being moved.
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