First Max 5 Preview: Music Patching, the Next Generation?

What’s this new Max about, and why was it such a big deal at the AES trade show? To really understand, let’s turn to gaming for a moment. When Nintendo described their vision for the Wii, they talked about appealing to three groups of customers:
- The “hard-core” gamer; that is, their existing audience, of course
- “Lapsed” gamers: people who had done some gaming at some point but lost interest
- Entirely new gamers, across a variety of demographics
History will have to be the judge of Nintendo’s slim white box and controller-wagging interface, but I heard some similar development goals at the AES audio show this weekend. Nowhere was this more apparent than Cycling ’74’s upcoming Max 5. Substitute the word “patcher” for the word “gamer”, and you’ve got a snapshot of the new Max.
After all, whether you’ve touched Max before or not, you’ve likely got some needs in at least one of these categories. Beginners are easily intimidated by the “visual programming” metaphors of a blank-slate, modular tool like Max. Many others get through a couple of patches, often in a school course, but wind up having difficulty getting beyond that first work later on. And even advanced users (maybe especially advanced users) are always looking for ways of working faster.
The build I saw of Max wasn’t entirely complete, but I will say it’s tremendously promising. I talked to many for whom the chance to see Max 5 was the highlight of the entire AES show. It’s a tool you really need to see in action, so be sure to check out Cycling’s just-posted videos of the program:
A First Look at Max 5 [Cycling '74]
This is not the all-words, no-pictures manifesto we saw recently: now you actually get to see the tool in action. Highlights:



Technology and music have always had dynamic, changing, intertwined histories. It’s easy to forget that we’re in the middle of that history, both in terms of the now ubiquitous practices of DJs and the mind-numbing progression of software updates.















