The last piece in this unit was to create an alternative sound production using MAX, Midi and a drum kit. The team and i had a long creative process, our main challenges were figuring out what we wanted to do and how to execute it. We stumbled across some existing work that was visualising music and sound, and immedietly knew we wanted to do something along these lines. So we ended up with sounds that where externally downloaded and purposely not traditional "drum sounds", these comprised of a mix of 8-bit and more modern sounds to understand the capability of the MAX software. So what is MAX, well the best description is on their webpage( https://cycling74.com/)
"Max is an interactive, visual patching environment for musicians, artists, and anyone who loves creating, inventing, or prototyping their own unique software."
I also found some uses in industry , from DJ's using it (Mad Zach 2012) adds that:-
"One of the things that really sets Ableton Live 8 in a league of its own is the ability to create your own effects, instruments, and MIDI functionality using the extremely versatile object based programming environment, MAX/MSP"
you can appreciate the benefits of this in say House Music ( not my prefered Genre!) and even surealist music scores or immersive audio/visual productions
The system had to be coded to the sounds and the corresponding drum pad, this was a totally new concept to me but enjoyable.
The software itself was quite a struggle as coding is quite a new concept for me and the rest of the team, but as we went along we grew to appreciate the software and see its futher capabilities through the work of tutorials on youtube.
References
Cycling ’74 (no date) Cycling ’74. Available at: https://cycling74.com/ (Accessed: 14 December 2023).
Zach, M. (2013) 5 free Max for live objects for Ableton djs and producers, DJ TechTools. Available at: https://djtechtools.com/2012/04/13/5-max-for-live-objects-for-ableton-dj/ (Accessed: 15 December 2023).