New Years max patch gift!

December 31, 2009
Tags: , , ,

A friend is having a birthday party in a couple days, and asked if I could play some tunes. I had a few options.

  1. just use itunes. [boring, no crossfader! no mixing!]
  2. learn how to use Traktor. [way more than i need]
  3. pack up turntables and mixer etc. [heavy, probably will get damaged]
  4. make a DJ patch that works with my block controller. YEAH!

This is a simple 2 deck DJ device, no preview channel.
I do all my track organizing in iTunes, because it’s great for that, then right click and export the playlist as xml. This patch reads in the XML playlist, turns that into a coll that links to a cell block for viewing. (You’ll need to change the path that the umenu links to to load the XML lists.) No, there is no drag/drop of files or really much concession to using the mouse. The block is where it’s at, man! All audio is handled ungloriously by jit.qt.movie. You could add soc/spigot~ if you want headphone previews on a 4 channel-capable soundcard.
It’s not the cleanest patch – I did this thing in about a day. Look for a cleaner version in the coming months, including standalone versions for those non-maxers out there.
I use the 2 left faders on the block to scroll (coarse/fine) through the file display. The far left 8 vertical buttons on the block load a clip from the cellblock into the left deck, similarly for the right deck and far right 8 vertical btns.

Top left knob (#1) is crossfader.
Top right knob (#8) is master volume.
Knob 6 and 7 are l/r scrub.

The function buttons are:
PlayL PlayR
StopL StopR
[blank] [blank]
Shift

The Shift button is a momentary that turns the sliders into volumes for each deck.

Download it here: http://lividserver.com/dl/block/simpleDJ.zip

The xml parsing was assisted by a nice patch from the dot collection (digital orchestra toolbox – http://www.idmil.org)

Simple, unattractive max patch!

Simple, unattractive max patch!

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