Month: October 2012

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Converting car engine sounds from Pd to Max

From “Designing Sound” By Andy Farnell

Update 6/2014: This project is at: https://github.com/tkzic/automax

original post

Yesterday I converted Andy Farnell’s car engine patch into Max. Some general suggestions about Pd to Max conversion:

  • You can save the Pd patch as a .pat file and load it into Max
  • [pow] object inlets reversed
  • look at translations from previous post for common objects – more on this later
  • I wrote a translation for [vd~] – more on that later…
  • In Pd all numbers are floats – so any non-signal objects in Max need to be explicitly set to float.
  • I am working to come up with a set of diagnostic tools in Pd for reading for probing into signal path, when debugging conversions.
  • the Pd [inlet~] does an implicit conversion from float to signal. In Max, you need to use [sig~]

The patches are currently in my tkzic/Pd folder. Will be moving them into a specialized folder for Andy Farnell stuff.

 

 

 

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Ableton – special effects, slowing down the master track

notes

Essentially the process is to copy a section of the master track into sampler, then slow it down by applying a pitch bend envelope.

I made a Live set example of this with the chorus from Justin Bieber’s “baby”

Steps: (in arrangement view)

  1. record a section of the master track into a new audio track
  2. On a midi track, select the region you are working with and make a new midi clip (shift cmd M)
  3. drag the audio from your newly created track into the instrument area for your midi track. This creates a simpler instrument
  4. right click simpler and select “simpler to sampler”
  5. Make a one note midi clip using C3 (ie, playing Midi note C3 causes the entire audio clip to play)
  6. In sampler, increase pitch bend width to maximum
  7. Apply a pitch bend envelope to the midi clip

Some miscellaneous keyboard shortcuts:

Shift tab – alternates from instrument view to clip view

shift transpose – octaves

hold down option key to duplicate clip by dragging

 

 

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Ableton slice to midi

Sample an entire song

  • drag song from itunes into an audio clip slot
  • warp it
  • collect and save, so you get your warped sample in your project folder
  • right click on the audio clip select slice to new midi track
  • use single sampler preset
  • In sampler, select all zones, then turn on looping
  • Play with a MIDI keyboard. This will be the most fun thing you ever did.

Local Files:

Ableton teaching examples

(There is an example with Shining Star by EWF)

 

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Max/MSP Using data streams as switches

Adapted from Max/MSP Data tutorials: 1, 2, and 3

I wrote a sample patch to demonstrate triggering two different sounds from a a stream of data using the high range and low range – with a neutral zone in the middle. This patch includes a sine cosine test wave generator.

local file: max teaching examples/tz examples/working with data streams.maxpat