A chord can be described as a pitch class set. For example, a C dominant ninth chord is the pitch class set {0,2,4,7,10}. Depending on the octave transposition of each of those five pitch classes, many voicings of the chord are possible. This patch take applies a transposition of four, five, six, or seven octaves to each of the five pitch classes to create a random voicing of the chord.
When you’re trying to synchronize musical events to a timeline, it’s sometimes useful to have a metronome that tells you where the computer thinks the beat is. The metronome makes a percussive sound on each beat, and ideally makes a unique sound on the first beat of each measure. Most DAW and MIDI sequencing programs have such a feature.
Max can interface with other applications via ReWire. Max can act as either a ReWire host or a ReWire client. Max can be a client to an open host application just by choosing "ad_rewire" as the MSP audio driver in the DSP Status window. Alternatively, you can use Max as the host (mixer) application by including the rewire~ object in your program.
The easiest way to establish MIDI connection between Max and other applications on the same computer is via the "virtual" MIDI ports Max provides. Max creates two virtual input ports and two virtual output ports that can be accessed by other MIDI applications. (You can see those virtual ports listed in Max's MIDI Setup, by choosing MIDI Setup... from the Options menu.)
This is an example patch you can use to try out the delaynote patch shown in "Delay MIDI note messages." Of course, you will first have to download the patch from that example and save it with the name "delaynote".
The left part of this example shows the use of the random object to make arbitrary note choices. Every time random receives a bang in its inlet, it sends out a randomly chosen number from 0 to one less than its argument. In this case it chooses one of 61 possible key numbers, sending out a number from 0 to 60. We then use a + object to offset that value by 36 semitones, transposing up three octaves to the range 36 to 96––cello low C to flute high C.
The line object interpolates linearly from its current value to some new destination value, ramping over a specified period of time, reporting its intermediate values along the way. In this example, we instruct line to ramp toward a given destination value, arriving there in 2 seconds, sending out a report of its progress (the intermediate values as it goes toward the destination) 12 times per second (i.e., once every 83.333 milliseconds).
There are many objects available for delaying events (i.e., for scheduling events to happen at a specific future moment). For timing and scheduling events, the most common object is the metro object (send bang periodically at a specified time interval), which can be used to trigger events, start/stop entire processes, or trigger a counter to step through a table or a coll or any sort of sequence of things.
Here are three ways of generating MIDI notes. Admittedly they don't result in very interesting music, but they show ways how numbers can be converted for usage as pitch information.
The timepoint object sends out a bang when the transport reaches a specified time position. This can be useful for causing something to happen—or for starting an entire process—at a particular instant during the transport's progress. A timepoint might, for example, even trigger a new time position value to be sent to the transport object itself, thus causing the transport to leap to a different time.