> Step by step

2. Exploring the GUI and saving your patch

1 “At the moment, this device doesn’t really do anything. The audio from Live comes into our Max world via an object called plugin, so this is our first Max object. We’ve got two cables running out of the plugin object – one for Left, one for Right – and they’re connected to an object called plugout.” 2 “Plugout feeds the audio back to Live. At the moment, our device doesn’t do much as there’s nothing in the middle. It just passes the audio through unaffected. We want to put something in between the input and the output – in a way, we want to insert an audio effect, much like you might do in a typical DAW mixing environment.” 3 “One of the most important functions is the Lock button. When it’s locked, we can interact with the patch as a user, and tweak the parameters of our device. When it’s unlocked, we can edit and customise the objects. Remember the Ctrl/Cmd-E key command, which allows us to lock and unlock our patch.” 4 “Let’s see how we can customise something and save this device. Then, once we know that, we’ve probably got enough information to start to build our own device. I’ll select this object, which is a Comment. It’s got a blue highlight around it, to show that it’s been selected.” 5 “Another really important part of the Max GUI is the Inspector, which is opened by clicking the I symbol on the right hand side (Ctrl/Cmd-I). The Inspector allows you to configure the properties of the object that’s selected – they’re unique to each type of object.” 6 “As a simple example, grab the Comment object and look inside the Inspector. There are four different panels: Basic, Layout, Recent and All. We’re probably going to be sitting in the All mode most of the time. That’ll give us access to every parameter for our object.” 7 “At the very bottom of the Inspector is a Text On/Off label. Double-click and edit this to, say, ‘ Build an FX’, and press

Return. We’ve updated that property for this object. You’re going to spend a lot of time in the Inspector when you’re building devices in Max.” 8 “In the File Menu, select Save As. Max For Live likes its devices to be saved inside the Ableton User Library. That way, they’ll show up inside the Live Browser. At the moment, I’m creating a Max Audio Effect, so I need to save my device into that folder.” 9 “It’s definitely not a good idea to save your work in a different location. If you do, it’ll still work, but it won’t show up in your Browser, and you want to have the easy functionality of being able to grab your devices when you’re in the middle of a production.”