Puredata & Supercollider

The Lounge General Discussion
#1

Fighting gas while not being employed. The desire for a Syntakt is real, but not financially responsible.

How many fellow elektronauts use PD, Maxmsp, or SuperCollider?

I recently have dived into these since my recent music all kind of comes out the same and they’re free. I’ve put out an album for the last 3 years and I think this year is going to be more just of a weird experimental noise.

The sound quality of PD and SC kind of remind me of the MD & MNM. Has anyone created any patches or codes that remind you of these legacy boxes?

Also, I’d love to hear some creations from these programs from everyone. I’m really trying to explore new sonic territory with resources that are available to everyone with a computer.

What’s some things everyone loves about these programs? Are there any other free programs like this that anyone recommends?

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#2

Pd, quite a lot!
MaxMSP too, but less.

If you want to run your patches on iOS or Android, stick to Pd Vanilla.

I use Pd a lot to bestow new abilities on drummachines and samplers via MIDI, but I don’t do a lot of audio in it.

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#3

Have any songs of using PD with gear?

#4

I have dabbled in pd, I think it is absolutely awesome, but my pd chops are not :smile:

cheetomoskeeto has a good series of tutorials about pd on youtube as does Really Useful Plugins

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#5

Oh yeah. I’ve been diving into those tutorials a lot. So many tutorials on YouTube from the last decade and a half. Best part of it is; that none of them are obsolete.

#6

I tried to work with Pd long time ago and recently tried SuperCollider.

Couple of thoughts:

  • Problems with Pd and environments like that - when you have a complex patch all becomes a mess. The modularity does not look a strong point of this. Just find the MI Clouds implementation for Organelle and you’ll see what I mean

  • SuperCollider is a more traditional language. My problem was with the basic setup. I think it should work better on Mac or Linux, where Jack audio is built-in.
    I just tired of trying to set up a proper output device on my Windows machine. It’s nothing serious, but a bit of annoying to write some configs to make the engine speak to the external soundcard. There was also some strange error on startup regarding allowed ports or something.

You need to be prepared to work with some low level stuff before learning the lang itself.
The runtime is also a bit quirky - there is a client and server and all is realtime. Need to get used to it.

Imo, writing machines like Md/MnM is possible, but that’s not the point of these environments. They are much more powerful. Microsound, ambient fields, unusual generators, stochastic events, etc.

(My desire for the future - PureData for Bitwig as answer to Max4Live :cheeky: )

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#7

Yeah, I realize it’s as deep and complex as it can get if you want it to be. I have simple musical desires. Itches that can be scratched. My windows laptop runs PD like crap, but I can still use it for some basic monstrosities. J haven’t dived so much into supercollider yet, but I am interested in it since you can compose more structurally. The more itches I can scratch musically, the better. Especially at the cost of 00 funds besides the computer I’ve already had. I was completely computer free while making music for awhile; but it felt like I invested too much money into something that was just a hobby. It’s been a fun exploration to step away from steps, sequencers, keys, drum pads, and whatnot.

I’ve also started exploring VCV rack, which is VERY fun.

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#8

Using SC sequenced by Tidal Cycles is ace fun. I also use FoxDot which is excellent (both especially when using your own samples and messing with timings).
…and I sometimes make pd patches for Organelle but prototype them on my mac first and therefore sometimes just end up with a wacky patch which I won’t port to Organelle.
I’m no patching genius but it’s kinda personally rewarding and it can sound quite unique.
I’ve not really made full songs using these things - I use mostly odd elements.

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#9

I’ve spent a lot of time with PD, and in the last couple of years have gotten into Supercollider. I use them for sequencing or looping duties, as an adjunct to hardware synthesis.

Check out Patterns in Supercollider! I absolutely love the pattern library for detailed, complex algorithmic MIDI sequencing. Something like changing sequencer direction is as easy as typing “.reverse” after your array of notes. It can be surprisingly fluid, intuitive and playable, even for a non-coder like me. The percussion stuff in this track uses SC patterns to sequence a Blofeld:

The best use of PureData for me was a system I built to send complex wavetable LFOs (via a home-made DAC) to modulate my Serge modular. It was fantastic to be able to switch instantly between a set of arrays, change read-speed/direction etc on the fly using a laptop keyboard. Here’s an example of me doing this live:

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#10

I think any good laptop from 5 and even 10 years ago should run both with no performance issues. It was ok on Macintosh in the year 2000 :slight_smile:
Unless you create a patch with tons of feedback, events or heavy file IO (and that always goes via a buffer, not sure if there are file-streaming blocks)

#11

cool stuff. A Golden Brain is very beautiful

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#12

I wish that were the case. My HP from 2019 turns PD into a turd if I have too large of a patch.

#13

I love both of those tracks. I owned an MD at one time but didn’t know of PD then. I am very interested in what can be achieved with gear and PD. I’ve only been exploring electronic music for 3 years and hated computers for the first 2. Now the more I use them, I realize what actual pieces of gear I could use and just not horde.

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#15

I’ve written pd patches and now writing in MaxMSP. I’ve written “stand alone” patches and patches that integrate the DK and DT in both languages

If you’re interested in pd you should explore Acreil’s work.

I’ve written an interesting noise patch in Max recently. The best things about these programs is the ability to explore an infinite variety of timbers.

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#16

Yeah, that’s what I’ve read. There’s so much to learn with PD, really glad I found it when I did.

#18

Do you have any of the DT DK patches in action? Planning on selling my DK in the next couple months, quit using it when I started reading more literature.

I love how that patch sounds like water, metal, and a door stopper at the same time. I was just listening to that artist earlier while out and about. Their portfolio is impressive, looks like they’re quite the engineer.

For awhile it just seemed like I was crappy at making music, but now i am finding out I just love sound exploration and the “making songs” part was putting unnecessary strains on my enjoyment.

MaxMSP looks beautiful, I have used M4L a little bit and it feels so smooth compared to PD. If I continue educating myself with PD and really get a grip on it and love it, I will purchase MaxMSP without a doubt. I have been fine with PD starting out. It’s more about having a creative outlet than anything.

#19

I like using Pd, but anytime it comes up, especially when we’re talking about coming from traditional music programs and not just straight programming, I recommend Automatonism. I came into Pd from using things like Nord Modular editor and Reaktor, and this made Pd make a lot more sense to me. It’s not perfect and it’s a little CPU hungry, but it really works well and is a great gateway into the software.

Here’s one of my patches from a while back. Nothing crazy, but check out some other instagrammers using Automatonism and it’ll give you a good idea of the breadth of sounds you can make with it.

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#21

I tinker a lot with that! Very exciting stuff & it is completely free. Not a lot I can do with my laptop with those modules inside the patch, but I absolutely love what they’ve done with PD.

#22

Yes, I have several DT and DN patches driven by either pd or Max. A link to patches themselves are in the comments. I’ve tried to put them all on my GitHub page.

If you can wait until Black Friday, you might get a good deal on Max.

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#23

used csound and then supercollider for years.
got disappointed, because they are rather tools-for-their-own-sake.

might give PD a try, because there are some boards that can run PD patches in standalone mode (and Axoloti slowly becomes sort of unsuported unobtainium).

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