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

indicates t he t ime spent to reach th e value. In t his patch, every change in

ampl it ude value wi ll take 20 milliseconds to be reached.

PROVIDING INFORMATION FOR USERS

If you compare the patches show n in fig ures 1.51 and 1.52, you wi ll note that in
t he second patch w e have removed t he comments near the number boxes, but
th at if you pass the mo use over these number boxes in performance mode, you
w ill see t he same comme ntary text appear in a small yellow floa ti ng square. This
is done by using the hint feature , whi ch can be accessed fr om t he inspector. In
edit mode, call up the inspecto r fo r one of t he number boxes, select th e Hint
tab, and in th e item w ith the same name, enter the com ment text , which wi ll
fr om t his point on appear in the yellow hint rectangle at the appropriate t ime. If,
o n t he ot her hand, you' d like to provide a comme nt th at w ill appear in the Clue
W indow w hen t he mouse passes over your object, you can type th is message
into the item named " An no tat ion" on t he same inspector panel.
........... ...... ........ .................................
ACTIVITY

Mod ify the patch contained in fi le 01_ 13_conv_interp. maxpat in a way t hat
also interpo lates th e freq uency, and creates a glissando betwee n one note
generated by kslider and the next. Try d ifferent times for moving betwee n
t he tw o notes (20, 200, 2000 milliseconds). You must use an append object
and a line- object, and connect t hem to the oscillator .

. . . . . . . . . .. .... . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . .. . .. . . . ... .. .. . .. . .. . . . . . . .

1.5 INTRODUCTION TO WORKING WITH SAMPLED

SOUND

We'll now ta ke a brief look at some of the objects that allow you to manipulate
sampled sound. To read an audio f ile that was previously saved to disk, you can
use sfplay- . Open the file 01 _ 14_audiofile.maxpat (seen in f ig ure 1.53) t o
take a look. This object can have a numeric argument to indicate the number
of channels in the f ile (for example, '2' for a st ereo fi le). To open a fil e, send
the command "open " by means of a message box, and select t he f ile that you
wa nt. (Legal file types include A IFF, NeXT/Sun, WAVE, and Raw Data Files.) If
yo u don' t have any audio f iles o n your hard drive, you can find some in t he
"soundfiles" folde r that is contained in th e Virtua l Sound Macros.39

39 As we already explained at the end of Section 1.2, the Virtual Sound Macros folder can be
downloaded from www .virtual-sound.com/cmsupport. You should have already copied it into a
folder called "M ax Library" , created to hold it.
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