What is Max?

.Max is a graphical music programming environment for people who
have hit the limits of the usual sequencer and voicing programs
for MIDI equipment..

.Miller Puckette, Max reference manual, 1988

Max was conceived in 1986 as a project for producing interactive
music at IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et de Cordination
Acoustique/Musique) in Paris. The original author was Miller
Puckette. Max became a commercial product from Opcode Systems in
1991 with further develop-ment by Puckette and David Zicarelli.
Cycling .74 became the publisher of Max in 2000. Since that
time, Max expanded to include audio data (with the introduction
of MSP) and image/matrix data (with the introduction of Jitter).

Max lets you control your equipment in any way you want. You can
create applications for compos-ing, improvising, and ordering or
modifying media.anything you can imagine doing with a computer.
Because Max turns all control information into a simple stream
of numbers, you can
.patch. anything to anything else.

Max provides you with a high level, graphical programming
language. Programs are .written. using graphical objects rather
than text. This reduces the need to learn a lot of arcane
commands and syntax, and it provides a clear and intuitive way
to write programs simply by connecting objects to each other.

Max takes care of all the low level programming tasks for you.
It will trigger events at any arbitrary time in the future,
interface to MIDI and other communication protocols, and perform
useful logical operations.

Applications made with Max run in real time. Because of its
speed, Max enables you to write pro-grams that generate music
instantly based on what you play, or that modify your
performance as you play.

Max is based on the C programming language. Max provides a
simple yet versatile, high level, graphical language which is
itself written in C, but will be easy to use for those familiar
with almost any other programming language, or even for those
who have never programmed before. For those who are fluent in
the C language, however, Max can be combined with C code that
you write. So, if there.s something you need to do that Max
can.t do.and Max can do a lot.you can write your own Max objects
in C. The release of Max 4.5 further extends Max.s capabilities
by sup-porting Java and Javascript.

more info available at:

http://www.cycling74.com

Download File Size:26.65 MB

---