K509 — Computer Music Seminar: Assignment 7

Assignment 7: Max/MSP live processing

Make a patch that records sound from a microphone (or line input) and then plays segments of the sound while waiting to record more. Process with the fffb~ bandpass filter bank.

Some tips...

Use two (or more) buffers to hold the recordings, so that you can record new sound in the second buffer while still playing sound from the first. Notice that you can tell the record~ object to switch buffers before recording. (See record~ help window.)
Turn recording on and off with a MIDI pedal message (typically, controller number 64). Keep the toggle button, so that you can test without having a pedal hooked up.
For testing purposes when a microphone is not handy, use sfplay~ to play a sound file into record~.
Switch playback from one buffer to the next right after you finish recording into the second buffer. Ideally, you would have the first buffer continue playing while fading out. (To make this work smoothly for long fade-outs, you probably would need more than two buffers.)
Don’t just play back the sound in one continuous segment. Instead, construct some Max logic that will play many short segments from the recording, possibly in a random order. (Hint: try using groove~ for playback and metro to trigger the segments.)
Process the sound you play by using the fffb~ filter bank. Use multisliders to control the center frequency, Q, and gain for each filter in the bank. (See multislider help for an example.)
Be sure to include meter~ and gain~ objects for sound entering, as well as exiting, the patch. At these input and output stages, the audio signal will clip if it exceeds the range [-1, 1]. Between the input and output stages, exceeding that range will not cause clipping.