timer

Use the timer object to measure the time between when you turn on recording and when you stop recording.

This patch records while the spacebar is held down, and starts looping when the spacebar is released. 

Following the “Tap Tempo” example, this is a translation of that patch it into a Max for Live device that controls the Live transport (using the mouse instead of the t key). For the purpose of the example demonstration the code that would reside inside an amxd file is included here inside a Max patch, so you can just see in Max without having to load it into Live.

This example shows a super simple tap tempo implementation. The patch alters the transport tempo based on the rate at which you tap the “t” key. This method simply takes the average of the most recent three time intervals between the most recent four taps. So once you tap four times, it will set the transport tempo to your tempo, and if you keep tapping it responds to your changes but takes a couple beats to move gradually to your new tempo.

This patch implements tap tempo using a "simple moving average" (SMA) calculation of time between taps. The patch alters the transport tempo based on the rate at which you tap the 't' key. The method takes the average of the most recent three time intervals between the most recent four taps. So, once you tap four times, it will set the transport tempo to your tempo, and if you keep tapping it responds to your changes but takes a couple beats to move gradually to your new tempo.

Instead of the user entering a tempo value by hand, it’s possible to have the computer measure the tempo at which the user is tapping the beat. Do do that, you simply need to measure the time difference between two events (taps).

This patch doesn't do anything musical in its own right, but it shows some features of the transport object for tempo-relative control of timing in Max.

One of the most intriguing features of the transport object is that there can be multiple independent transports in action at the same time. If a transport object has not had its name attribute set, it refers to the one global transport. However, you can create an independent transport by giving the transport object a name (i.e., by setting its name attribute to some name of your choice).