Many pieces for solo instrument or voice and electronics feature live input from a microphone picking up the sound of the soloist. This allows the software to provide real-time effects and also makes it possible to record parts of the performance for playback during the piece.

How to Do This Exercise

Working on the assignment is a two-stage process.

1. Download Exercise 7 Max Tips. This folder of Max patches shows you how to access live input, explains the concept of a buffer and tells you how to play sound stored in them.
2. Make a patch that does these two things:
   • route a microphone through a delay effect, and
   • record sound from a mic into a buffer, and play it.

See the Requirements and Suggestions section below for details. The Max Tips patches explain the required techniques.

Requirements and Suggestions

• Set up your patch to receive input from a microphone. Use an ezadc~ object for this. Patch a live.gain~ or meter~ after the ezadc~, so that you can detect clipping on the meter. Control the level of the mic signal from outside of Max: at the sound input control panel for your system or a mic preamp trim knob, if you have an audio interface. Use the meter to determine the right input level.
• Run the microphone through a stereo delay, with different delay times for each channel and some feedback. (The feedback is usually the same for both channels.) You can build your own stereo delay with tapin~, tapout~, etc., as we did in Exercise 5. Or you can use the Auzzie 2DELAYR module.

  CAUTION: If using a laptop microphone, be sure to wear headphones to avoid feedback from the computer’s built-in speakers.

• Create a buffer~ object that holds three seconds of sound, and set up your patch to record sound into this buffer using the record~ object.
• Play the contents of the recorded buffer~ using the play~ object. Provide message boxes that let you play the buffer using a few different speeds.

  An alternative to play~ is the groove~ object, which is arguably a bit more flexible than play~. However, many people find groove~ trickier to use.

  The essential difference between play~ and groove~ is that with play~, you specify how the playback pointer moves across the buffer, whereas with groove~, you specify a playback rate.

  If you don’t understand (or like) play~ or groove~, then you can use the Auzzie APLAYR module instead. This uses groove~ behind the scenes to play a buffer, so it works with sound recorded during a performance. You can tell APLAYR to use a specific buffer by feeding its right inlet the message “buffer <buffer_name>“.