Chapter 1P - Sound synthesis wi th Max/MSP 1P

Remember t hat you will find complete instructions for th is in th e " How to Install
and Conf igure Max/MSP" document that can be fo und at www .virtua l-sound.
com/cmsupport. In any case, here is a b rief summary of what to do:

1) Create a "Max Library" fo lder on your hard drive. We suggest that you
not put it in the fo lder that conta ins Max, but somew here else: perhaps, for
example, in your documents fo lder.

2) Copy onto your computer the f ile "Virtual Sound Macros.zip" that you w ill
f ind at www.v irtual-sound.com/cmsupport . Extract the folder called " Max
Library" and copy it to the fo lder created in the f irst step.

3) In Max/MSP, select the File Preferences item fr om t he Options menu: a

window wil l appear that has a row of icons at its bottom. Clicking on the fir st of
these icons, which contains t he plus symbol ('+'}, will create a new line, whic h
conta ins a "C hoose" button . Click on th is butto n, navigate to the Max Library
fo lder that you created in step number o ne, and select it. You have now added
t his fo lder to your search path.27

4) Close the File Preferencesw indow , and then re-open 01_04_triangle_square.

maxpat to verify that a new error message does not appear in the Max w indow.
If it does still appear, exit Max/MSP and try relaunching the application.

Let's ret urn to ou r patch, where we again find a selector- object used to
compare two signals. The first is a triangle wave: click on the message box con-
taining '1' and activate the aud io by clicking on the "startwindow" message to
see it. The triangle- object that we see being used is not an oscillator; it is
more like a "factory" that can produce triang le signals, and wh ich is designed
to produce a single cycle every time t hat it receives a ramp that runs fr om Oto 1.
As we saw above, t he phasor- object conveniently produces a ramp from 'O'
to '1 '. To produce a triang le wave, therefore, we need only hook triangle-
up to a phasor-, and to set the number box connected to the phasor- to
the frequency that we w ish to hear. Listen to the timbre of the triangle wave
by raising the fader.
The argument of the object, 'OS, indicates the point at wh ich the peak of
the triang le wi ll occur in the cycle. The value '0.5' indicates that the peak will
come exactly half-wa y through t he cycle. It is possible to modify this point by
means of th e right inlet to the object. If you modify the number in the float
number box that you see connected to the triangle-, the tr iangle skews left
or right, depending on the number selected. In fact, when the value is 1, the
wave becomes a sawtooth. As you wil l note, changing the shape of t he triang le
changes the timbre of the sound.

27 We will retu rn soon to t his topic ; we will anticipate, fo r the moment , that all of the fo lders

specified in the File Preferences wi ndow are part of Max' s search path. Every time t hat a patch needs
to load an object, a sound, an image, or anything else, Max autom at ically searches for t he element
in question among t he fo lders that make up th e search path .
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