This short Max workshop, will outline the basic principles of Max and realtime audio processing (MSP).This session will:

• enable you to gain an understanding how to approach the setup required for contemporary repertoire that utilise Max patches in performance.
• give an overview how different controllers can enhance the interaction with the software
• gain the skill to make some basic alteration to Max patches in order to customise and individualise their use for your purposes.
• have the opportunity to ask questions in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere

At the end of this course you will feel confident to engage with Max to be included into your artistic work.

Duration: 3 hours (including breaks)

Accessibility: Live Captions will be avaialble on the day using Zoom's automatic live transcriptions. If you have any specific access requirements, please email karen@newmusicscotland.co.uk

On registering you will be emailed the Zoom link in advance of the workshop

About Sebastian Lexar

“Sebastian Lexer rewires the ultimate nineteenth-century drawing room mechanism with twenty-first-century technology to create a music that hovers in between times, exploiting the tension between the automatic and the intentional, making any firm sense of space thrillingly uncertain.“ (Cafe Oto, Artists listing)

An interest in the sound of the piano has always been a major element for Lexar’s musical work. Classically trained, he moved towards improvised experimental performance, exploring, extending and augmenting the piano’s sonic repertoire using extended techniques and electronics. The practice based and technologically informed exploration and development of real-time electroacoustic performance tools and suitable interactive controllers, a system developed in Max/MSP, Lexar named piano+, was important for his own artistic work. A continuous development beyond the individual purpose to meet more general demand has led to the commercial release of a touch screen controller Parat+. In addition to his teaching post at University of Glasgow, he collaborates regularly with the Glasgow based synthesiser developer Instruō. Lexar’s long term work and experience with granular synthesis became the basis of the Eurorack module Arbhar. Part of a community of leading interactive artists and performers his work has been disseminated and included in commissioned software for several renowned artists such as Martin Creed, Beardyman, John Butcher, John Tilbury, Angharad Davies and Dai Fujikura. Whilst his musical approach focusses on freely improvised performance, he has always striven and managed to integrate electroacoustic means into performance systems allowing musicians to engage with technology in a truly instrumental way.

“Lexer has utterly reinvented the piano as an improvising instrument, outfitting it with a variety of strategically-placed microphones and using various elements of its acoustic sound—pitch, volume, sound density, etc.—as triggers in a sensitive, responsive computer program that he wrote himself. The results are neither piano nor electronics, a very mysterious, organic soundworld that’s intimately tied to the physical act of playing piano, even though the source material is often hopelessly obscured.” (freejazzblog.org)