Weather Balloons

Necessity, invention, etc.

By Dave Barber

Preparing this weekend for my gig this coming Saturday, I had an incredibly frustrating few hours when I absolutely could not get Soundflower to work as part of an aggregate audio device. I tried previous versions, remaking the aggregate device, all kinds of things. No sound.

What that means is that I can’t use mlr in Max and then pass the sound over to Ableton for effects, which has been my basic setup since I’ve been using a monome.

I’ve performed without effects before, but I like having some delays and other ways of mutating the sound that comes out of mlr, which is otherwise modified only by being repitched and/or reversed. So I was pretty freaked out about playing for half an hour or more with no effects.

After I got a grip on myself, I decided to try finishing a project I’d started a few weeks ago, a version of mlr with aux sends and effects within the patch. It was rough going because of my super-beginner level Max skills, but I ended up hacking something together that actually works. Three aux sends for each mlr group!

For now, I’m using effects stolen from this tutorial. They’re okay for my needs, but I’m still dreaming of something like Ableton’s granular delay, or even better the Daevl plugins. (I’m in Max 5 so can’t use them, it seems.) When this performance and a few other pressing commitments are over, I can concentrate on patching some creative effects of my own, and I’m really looking forward to it. For now, does anyone know any cool pre-made Max/MSP effects?

UPDATE: I’m going to try the vst~ object and one or more of the free Soundhack VSTs. Crossing my fingers; if this works, it’ll be awesome.

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