“Max lets you control your equipment in any way you want. You can create applications for composing, improvising, and ordering or modifying media — anything you can imagine doing with a computer.”
Cycling ’74
Max is a visual programming environment for music and multimedia. Programs are written by connecting objects together via ‘patch cords’, so Max coding is called ‘patching’ and Max programs are called ‘patchers’. This powerful metaphor can make musical programming simple, fast, and fun.
Max was originally developed by Miller Puckette at IRCAM (Paris) in 1986 to produce real-time interactive music. It was further developed by Puckette, David Zicarelli, the founder and CEO of Cycling '74 (San Francisco), and many others. Max became a commercial product of Opcode Systems in 1991, and in the late 1990s, Cycling ’74 became the official developer of Max, adding comprehensive digital audio and video programming capabilities to the product. In 2017, Cycling ’74 was acquired by Ableton (Berlin, Germany).
Max has three main components: Max (core programming language objects), MSP (digital audio objects), and Jitter (video objects). The unique organization of its online documentation, interactive Help files and code examples – not to mention the recently expanding public library of third-party video tutorials – make Max easier to learn than ever before. Because Max takes care of all of the low-level programming tasks for you (e.g., user-interface objects, MIDI objects, audio objects, video objects, etc.), Max is a great tool for quickly prototyping an app or quickly working out creative ideas.
Max turns all control information into a stream of
numbers. This allows Max to connect to almost any
hardware device (e.g., keyboard, mixer, Wii Remote
Controller, lighting board, etc.). Rather than being
locked into a fixed mode of execution in the time
domain like the sequencer window of a DAW, sonic
events may be scheduled to occur at any time in the
future, or simply triggered at the will of the
creator. This makes Max an ideal interactive
playground for the real-time creation of algorithmic
music, generative music, sonification, the exploration
of sound, and more.
I created this sequence of Getting Started with
Max & MIDI patchers for my MUSC 336 Introduction
to Computer Music students at the University of
South Carolina. The sequence was designed to prepare
the composers enrolled in MUSC 336 for participation
in the Mutational
Music Project the following semester. Included
with each patcher you will find: a screenshot of the
patcher, a description of the patcher, a download
link, an object listing, and links related
introductory Max Tutorials in the Max Documentation.
For computer programming topics, links to Wikipedia
articles are also included.
These patchers were originally created with Max 8.
Max 9 has adopted a new default 'dark' themed color
scheme. To get the patchers to look like the
screenshot provided, set the Max's Color Theme to
'max8'. You will find this setting under: Max >
Preferences > Color and Theme > Color theme =
'max8').
Let’s get started….
Links
Bain, MUSC 336 Introduction to Computer Music – https://reginaldbain.com/vc/musc336/
Cycling ’74, What is Max? – https://cycling74.com/products/max
Cycling ’74, Max 9 Documentation – https://docs.cycling74.com
Cycling '74, Max Object Reference – https://docs.cycling74.com/reference/
Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my MUSC 336 students, who have
made many excellent suggestions for improving these
patches over the years.
This work is part of the Mutational
Music Project, the broader impact component of
the National Science Foundation (NSF) grant project
Mutational variance of the transcriptome and the
origins of phenotypic plasticity (NSF award #1556645).
Jeff Dudycha was the principal investigator and
Reginald Bain was the other senior person on this now
completed project.
Updated: 9/18/25