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Max, also known as Max/MSP/Jitter, is a
visual programming language In computing, a visual programming language (visual programming system, VPL, or, VPS), also known as diagrammatic programming, graphical programming or block coding, is a programming language that lets users create computer program, programs by ...
for
music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...
and
multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms, such as Text (literary theory), writing, Sound, audio, images, animations, or video, into a single presentation. T ...
developed and maintained by
San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
-based software company
Cycling '74 Cycling '74 (also known as "C74" and stylized as '74) is an American software development company founded in 1997 by David Zicarelli, headquartered in San Francisco, California and owned by Ableton. The company employs the digital signal processi ...
. Over its more than thirty-year history, it has been used by
composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and def ...
s, performers,
software design Software design is the process of conceptualizing how a software system will work before it is implemented or modified. Software design also refers to the direct result of the design process the concepts of how the software will work which co ...
ers, researchers, and artists to create recordings, performances, and installations. The Max program is modular, with most routines existing as
shared libraries In computing, a library is a collection of resources that can be leveraged during software development to implement a computer program. Commonly, a library consists of executable code such as compiled functions and classes, or a library can ...
. An
application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that des ...
(API) allows third-party development of new routines (named ''external objects''). Thus, Max has a large user base of programmers unaffiliated with Cycling '74 who enhance the software with commercial and non-commercial
extension Extension, extend or extended may refer to: Mathematics Logic or set theory * Axiom of extensionality * Extensible cardinal * Extension (model theory) * Extension (proof theory) * Extension (predicate logic), the set of tuples of values that ...
s to the program. Because of this
extensible Extensibility is a software engineering and systems design principle that provides for future growth. Extensibility is a measure of the ability to extend a system and the level of effort required to implement the extension. Extensions can be th ...
design, which simultaneously represents both the
program Program (American English; also Commonwealth English in terms of computer programming and related activities) or programme (Commonwealth English in all other meanings), programmer, or programming may refer to: Business and management * Program m ...
's structure and its
graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...
(GUI), Max has been described as the
lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...
for developing interactive music performance software.


History


1980s

Miller Puckette Miller Smith Puckette (born 1959) is the associate director of the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts as well as a professor of music at the University of California, San Diego, where he has been since 1994. Puckette is known for aut ...
began work on Max in 1985, at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
. Originally called ''The Patcher'', this first version provided composers with a graphical interface for creating interactive
computer music Computer music is the application of computing technology in music composition, to help human composers create new music or to have computers independently create music, such as with algorithmic composition programs. It includes the theory and ...
scores on the
Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...
. At this point in its development Max couldn't perform its own real-time sound synthesis in software, but instead sent control messages to external hardware synthesizers and samplers using
MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...
or a similar
protocol Protocol may refer to: Sociology and politics * Protocol (politics) Protocol originally (in Late Middle English, c. 15th century) meant the minutes or logbook taken at a meeting, upon which an agreement was based. The term now commonly refers to ...
. Its earliest widely recognized use in composition was for ''Pluton'', a 1988 piano and computer piece by
Philippe Manoury Philippe Manoury (born 19 June 1952) is a French composer. Biography Manoury was born in Tulle and began composition studies at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris with Gérard Condé and Max Deutsch. He continued his studies from 1974 to 1 ...
; the software synchronized a computer to a piano and controlled a
Sogitec 4X The Sogitec 4X was a digital audio workstation developed by Giuseppe di Giugno at IRCAM (Paris) in the 1980s. It was the last large hardware processor before the development of the ISPW. Later solutions combined control and audio processing in t ...
for audio processing. In 1989, IRCAM developed ''Max/FTS'' ("Faster Than Sound"), a version of Max ported to the IRCAM Signal Processing Workstation (ISPW) for the
NeXT NeXT, Inc. (later NeXT Computer, Inc. and NeXT Software, Inc.) was an American technology company headquartered in Redwood City, California that specialized in computer workstations for higher education and business markets, and later develope ...
. Also known as "Audio Max", it would prove a forerunner to Max's MSP audio extensions, adding the ability to do real-time synthesis using an internal hardware
digital signal processor A digital signal processor (DSP) is a specialized microprocessor chip, with its architecture optimized for the operational needs of digital signal processing. DSPs are fabricated on metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) integrated circuit chips. ...
(DSP) board. In 1989, IRCAM worked with Joel Chadabe and Ben Austin of Intelligent Computer Music Systems to license the software for commercial sales in the United States. With the 1990 bankruptcy of Intelligent Computer Music Systems, both the ''Max'' Software and Ben Austin moved to
Opcode Systems Opcode Systems, Inc. was founded in 1985 by Dave Oppenheim and based in and around Palo Alto, California, USA. Opcode produced MIDI sequencing software for the classic Mac OS and Microsoft Windows, which would later include digital audio capabili ...
, which became the publisher of record for ''Max''.


1990s

Although Opcode launched its commercial version named ''Max'' in 1990, developed and extended by
David Zicarelli Cycling '74 (also known as "C74" and stylized as '74) is an American software development company founded in 1997 by David Zicarelli, headquartered in San Francisco, California and owned by Ableton. The company employs the digital signal processi ...
, the product was becoming a poor fit for Opcode, which was squarely towards commercial music production. Thus Zicarelli in 1997 acquired the publishing rights and founded a new company, Cycling '74, to continue commercial development. The timing was fortunate, as Opcode was acquired by
Gibson Guitar Gibson, Inc. (formerly Gibson Guitar Corporation and Gibson Brands Inc.) is an American manufacturer of guitars, other musical instruments, and professional audio equipment from Kalamazoo, Michigan, and now based in Nashville, Tennessee. Orvil ...
in 1998 and ended operations in 1999. IRCAM's in-house Max development was also winding down; the last version produced there was ''jMax'', a direct descendant of Max/FTS developed in 1998 for
Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...
(SGI) and later for
Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
systems. It used Java for its graphical interface and C for its real-time backend, and was eventually released as
open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...
. Meanwhile, Puckette had independently released a fully redesigned open-source composition tool named ''
Pure Data Pure Data (Pd) is a visual programming language developed by Miller Puckette in the 1990s for creating interactive computer music and multimedia works. While Puckette is the main author of the program, Pd is an open-source software, open-source ...
'' (Pd) in 1996, which, despite some underlying engineering differences from the IRCAM versions, continued in the same tradition. Cycling '74's first Max release, in 1997, was derived partly from Puckette's work on Pure Data. Called ''Max/MSP'' ("Max Signal Processing", or the initials Miller Smith Puckette), it remains the most notable of Max's many extensions and incarnations: it made Max capable of manipulating real-time
digital audio Digital audio is a representation of sound recorded in, or converted into, digital signal (signal processing), digital form. In digital audio, the sound wave of the audio signal is typically encoded as numerical sampling (signal processing), ...
signals without dedicated DSP hardware. This meant that composers could now create their own complex synthesizers and effects processors using only a general-purpose computer like the Macintosh
PowerBook G3 The PowerBook G3 is a series of laptop Macintosh personal computers that was designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from 1997 to 2001. It was the first laptop to use the PowerPC G3 (PPC740/750) series of microprocessors, and was ma ...
. In 1999, the Netochka Nezvanova collective released '' NATO.0+55+3d'', a suite of externals that added extensive real-time video control to Max.


2000s

Though NATO.0+55+3d became increasingly popular among multimedia artists, its development stopped abruptly in 2001. '' SoftVNS'', another set of extensions for visual processing in Max, was released in 2002 by Canadian media artist
David Rokeby David Rokeby (born 1960) is a Canadian artist who has been making works of electronic art, electronic, video art, video and installation art since 1982. He lives with his wife, acclaimed pianist Eve Egoyan, in Toronto, Canada. His early work ''V ...
. Cycling '74 released their own set of video extensions, ''Jitter'', alongside Max 4 in 2003, adding real-time video,
OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a Language-independent specification, cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D computer graphics, 2D and 3D computer graphics, 3D vector graphics. The API is typic ...
graphics, and
matrix Matrix (: matrices or matrixes) or MATRIX may refer to: Science and mathematics * Matrix (mathematics), a rectangular array of numbers, symbols or expressions * Matrix (logic), part of a formula in prenex normal form * Matrix (biology), the m ...
processing capabilities. Max 4 was also the first version to run on
Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
. Max 5, released in 2008, redesigned the patching GUI for the first time in Max's commercial history.


2010s

In 2011, Max 6 added a new audio engine compatible with 64-bit operating systems, integration with
Ableton Live Ableton Live is a digital audio workstation for macOS and Windows developed by the German company Ableton. In contrast to many other software sequencers, Live is designed to be an instrument for live performances as well as a tool for compos ...
sequencer software, and an extension called Gen, which can compile optimized Max patches for higher performance. Max 7 was released in 2014 and focused on 3D rendering improvements. On June 6, 2017,
Ableton Ableton AG is a German music software company that produces and distributes the production and performance program Ableton Live and a collection of related instruments and sample libraries, as well as their own hardware controller Ableton Push. ...
announced its purchase of Cycling '74, with Max continuing to be published by Cycling '74 and David Zicarelli remaining with the company. On September 25, 2018, Max 8 was released. Some of the new features include MC, a new way to work with multiple channels, JavaScript support with Node for Max, and Vizzie 2.


2020s

On October 29, 2024, Max 9, the most recent major version of the software, was released.


Language

Max is named after composer
Max Mathews Max Vernon Mathews (November 13, 1926 – April 21, 2011) was an American pioneer of computer music. Biography Max Vernon Mathews was born in Columbus, Nebraska, to two science schoolteachers. His father in particular taught physics, chemistry ...
, and can be considered a descendant of his
MUSIC Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...
language, though its graphical nature disguises that fact. Like most
MUSIC-N MUSIC-N refers to a family of computer music programs and programming languages descended from or influenced by MUSIC, a program written by Max Mathews in 1957 at Bell Labs. MUSIC was the first computer program for generating digital audio wavefor ...
languages, Max distinguishes between two levels of time: that of an ''event'' scheduler, and that of the DSP (this corresponds to the distinction between k-rate and a-rate processes in
Csound Csound is a domain-specific computer programming language for audio programming. It is named Csound because it is written in the language C, in contrast to some of its predecessors. It is free and open-source software, released under the GNU Les ...
, and control rate vs. audio rate in
SuperCollider SuperCollider is an environment and audio programming language released originally in 1996 by James McCartney for real-time audio synthesis and algorithmic composition.J. McCartneySuperCollider: A new real time synthesis language in Proc. Int ...
). The basic language of Max and its sibling programs is that of a data-flow system: Max programs (named ''patches'') are made by arranging and connecting building-blocks of ''objects'' within a ''patcher'', or visual canvas. These objects act as self-contained programs (in reality, they are dynamically linked libraries), each of which may receive input (through one or more visual ''inlets''), generate output (through visual ''outlets''), or both. Objects pass messages from their outlets to the inlets of connected objects. Max supports six basic atomic data types that can be transmitted as messages from object to object: int, float, list, symbol, bang, and signal (for MSP audio connections). Several more complex data structures exist within the program for handling numeric arrays (''table'' data), hash tables (''coll'' data), XML information (''pattr'' data), and JSON-based dictionaries (''dict'' data). An MSP data structure (''buffer~'') can hold digital audio information within program memory. In addition, the Jitter package adds a scalable, multi-dimensional data structure for handling large sets of numbers for storing video and other datasets (''matrix'' data). Max is typically learned through acquiring a vocabulary of objects and how they function within a patcher; for example, the ''metro'' object functions as a simple metronome, and the ''random'' object generates random integers. Most objects are non-graphical, consisting only of an object's name and several arguments-attributes (in essence class properties) typed into an ''object box''. Other objects are graphical, including sliders, number boxes, dials, table editors, pull-down menus, buttons, and other objects for running the program interactively. Max/MSP/Jitter comes with about 600 of these objects as the standard package; extensions to the program can be written by third-party developers as Max patchers (e.g. by encapsulating some of the functionality of a patcher into a sub-program that is itself a Max patch), or as objects written in C,
C++ C++ (, pronounced "C plus plus" and sometimes abbreviated as CPP or CXX) is a high-level, general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup. First released in 1985 as an extension of the C programmin ...
,
Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...
, or
JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...
. The order of execution for messages traversing through the graph of objects is defined by the visual organization of the objects in the patcher itself. As a result of this organizing principle, Max is unusual in that the program logic and the interface as presented to the user are typically related, though newer versions of Max provide several technologies for more standard GUI design. Max documents (named patchers) can be bundled into stand-alone applications and distributed free or sold commercially. In addition, Max can be used to author audio and MIDI plugin software for
Ableton Live Ableton Live is a digital audio workstation for macOS and Windows developed by the German company Ableton. In contrast to many other software sequencers, Live is designed to be an instrument for live performances as well as a tool for compos ...
through the Max for Live extension. With the increased integration of
laptop A laptop computer or notebook computer, also known as a laptop or notebook, is a small, portable personal computer (PC). Laptops typically have a Clamshell design, clamshell form factor (design), form factor with a flat-panel computer scree ...
computers into live music performance (in
electronic music Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers) in its creation. It includes both music ...
and elsewhere), Max/MSP and Max/Jitter have received attention as a development environment available to those serious about laptop music/video performance. Programs sharing Max's visual programming concepts are now commonly used for real-time audio and video synthesis and processing.


See also

*
Pure Data Pure Data (Pd) is a visual programming language developed by Miller Puckette in the 1990s for creating interactive computer music and multimedia works. While Puckette is the main author of the program, Pd is an open-source software, open-source ...
*
Comparison of audio synthesis environments Software audio synthesis environments typically consist of an audio programming language (which may be graphical) and a user environment to design/run the language in. Although many of these environments are comparable in their abilities to pro ...
*
List of music software This is a list of software for creating, performing, learning, analyzing, researching, broadcasting and editing music. This article only includes software, not services. For streaming services such as iHeartRadio, Pandora (service), Pandora, Prime ...
*
Visual programming language In computing, a visual programming language (visual programming system, VPL, or, VPS), also known as diagrammatic programming, graphical programming or block coding, is a programming language that lets users create computer program, programs by ...


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Max (Software) Audio programming languages MacOS multimedia software Software synthesizers Visual programming languages Windows multimedia software Creative coding