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I had heard about how cool MIDI was, but wasn't blown away until I saw a demo of MAX back in 1992. MAX let you generate and re-wire MIDI signals in real time wi

I had heard about how cool MIDI was, but wasn't blown away until I saw a demo of MAX back in 1992. MAX let you generate and re-wire MIDI signals in real time with a simple but powerful graphical interface (it's still around and now does real-time DSP audio and video processing too). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_(software) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_(software) Later that year I got my hands on a synthesizer and a copy of MAX and it became the first 'real' programming that I did. The real-time feedback made it easy to learn and debug, while its graphical nature made it highly prone to actual 'spaghetti code' unless I properly modularized everything. I quickly learned that I was a better programmer than musician - so I set up MAX to 'cybernetically enhance' my own playing. If it wasn't for MIDI's fairly simple protocol and MAX's powerful tools built around it, I might not even be a programmer today.

blacksmith_tb 14y ago
Not to mention PD, its free cousin: http://puredata.info/ http://puredata.info/
jtheory 14y ago
I remember MAX! The music theory drills that eventually ended up as Java applets on eMusicTheory.com started (a few of them, anyway) as MAX applications, in '95/'96. I helped a music professor develop some of those, then (because we wanted students to be able to practice outside of the music lab, and because I was learning Java in compsci classes) I started rewriting them as applets. The applet versions even support MIDI input (just plug in your keyboard and you can use it to give answers to the online drills!), but the sequence of Java security disasters will probably spell the death of that feature -- when I drop applets, AFAIK there's no other in-browser way to catch MIDI input; it's frustrating as hell.