The Max Msp examples by the Max Cookbook might be one of the richest resources for exploring the simple visual programming language that is Max Msp. Read about the website then explore the resources.

Even if you don’t have max msp you can see the patches as a visual image.

About This Site

This site contains examples and explanations of techniques of computer music programming using Max.

The examples were written for use by students of computer music and interactive media arts at UCI, and are made available on the WWW for all interested Max/MSP/Jitter users and instructors. If you use the text or examples provided here, please give due credit to the author, Christopher Dobrian.

No guarantees are made regarding the infallibility of these examples.

You can send comments, corrections, questions, etc. to dobrianmaxcookbook@gmail.com.

How to Use This Site

The examples in this site were made to demonstrate basic programming techniques and/or solutions for specific problems, without any particular attention to making a comprehensive collection, an organized instruction manual, or a progressive set of tutorial lessons. Nevertheless, through sheer quantity, the examples do cover many useful fundamental concepts and show how to do a lot of the things one commonly needs to do when programming sound synthesis, effects processing, algorithmic composition, and interactive media performance.

On each example page you’ll see a picture of the patch, a link to download a working copy of the patch, possibly some links to additional files that may be needed for the patch to work properly, and some text explaining the patch. The patch itself is a plain text file of JSON code. Click on the file name, and it will be downloaded and saved with a .maxpat extension on your local drive. You can then open that file as a Max patch.

Note that many of the examples are designed for versions of Max prior to Max 7. Therefore, they may employ some techniques that seem antiquated or obsolete due to new objects or features introduced after the patch was written. However, they should all still work correctly.