I’m currently doing a five day workshop at BEK offering an introduction to Max MSP and Jitter. This is day two. Below are two excersises I have given them to work on until tomorrow. As far as possible I try creating examples that are relevant in a music and arts context. So there’s no how to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit this week.
1) A sample-based keyboard instrument.
Create a simple instruments with two or more separate voices connected to separate keys on the keyboard. Each key when triggered should cause a sound file to play until the key is released again.
Try two different approaches concerning the sound played back:
a) The sound is constantly looping but gain (0 or 1) is controlled using the keyboard.
b) The sound starts playing from the beginning of the file every time the key is pressed. If the sound plays all the way through it stoops even if the user keep pressing the key.
The latter is a software-based emulation of the Mellotron a tape-based sampling instrument used on a number of recordings in the 60s and 70s:
http://www.obsolete.com/120_years/machines/mellotron/index.html
http://www.vemia.co.uk/mellotron
Hints:
A) Try combining the “key” and “keyup” objects so that you don’t have to press the keys several times to start and stop audio the way we did today.
B) Implement a fade in and out and the beginning and end of the sounds. Try making it so that the user can decide how long fade in and fade out they want.
2) Emulating Brian Eno: Music for Airports 2/1:
Create a layered textural composition in a similar fashion to Music for Airports 2/1 by triggering a number of sound files at regular intervals. Leave a bit of silence in between each time a sound file triggers and make sure that the interval at which the sound file is triggered is independent for each layer.
