« Return to Thread: Coding vs patching: would you eat soup with a fork?

Re: Coding vs patching: would you eat soup with a fork?

by Paul Jones :: Rate this Message:

Reply (Restricted by the Administrator) | Reply to Author | View in Thread


In my experience,

I started studying music technology at the age of 25, well after I'd written much music and released a fair bit. Using commercial synths and samplers, sequencer.
Max was the first programing I ever did, and it gave me a grounding to learn supercollider, if I had been presented with SC first I imagine I would have had a much harder time learning. I only bothered with supercollider in the first instance because my teacher would rant on a daily basis how much better it was. For my final project I used Max/Jitter to create a motion tracking patch and mapped this to SC via OSC.
It was this process or using both languages that gave me the informed opinion that SC was both easier and more intuative once one had a grounding, however if you wanted to do motion tracking in SC I think you'd be up against it.

Where I am doing my MA, they only teach max, which is a great shame. Even the teacher thinks so, but the sad truth is universities are  buisnesses more that a learning institutes now, and Max is more trendy and attracts more students (for the time being). If on an open day you tell them they will be learning code, chances are they will go somewhere else with prety interfaces.

Many of my freinds who produce in the traditional way find the site of code compleatly off putting. This is a natural reaction, often musicans are quite tunred off by such an aproach and to say  "If the computer is your chosen instrument and you can't program in a proper programming language, then you're the student who hasn't practiced their scales" is a bit OTT in my opinion. These guys are producing realy good music,  surely the end result is what matters?

Hmm I could rant more and more but I should do some work.

One more thing, without this list, learning SC would have been impossible for me. Thanks all

Cheers, Paul


From: Dan Stowell <danstowell@...>
To: sc-users@...
Sent: Friday, 24 April, 2009 11:02:19
Subject: Re: [sc-users] Coding vs patching: would you eat soup with a fork?

Hi Pierre -

Disagreement is good, please carry on.

In my experience, what you call "anti-MSP discourse" is actually quite
rare, but in a sense it's a necessary conversation: max and sc (and
all the other environments that offer similar possibilities) have
different learning curves and make different things difficult/easy,
and the typing-vs-patching aspect is an important factor. I for one
would like to read more research on this topic - I only rarely use
patcher languages myself, and so I have little personal experience of
managing a large project using one, so I'd like to read studies which
investigate these issues.

Dan


2009/4/24, Pierre Alexandre Tremblay <tremblap@...>:

> Sorry to disagree here.
>
>  As much as I like SC, I can take MSP to 11 years old and get them going
> within an hour.  Not with SC.  The intuitive plug and play is the base of
> it.
>
>  SC is better to do more complex stuff, please do not confuse pedagogy and
> DSP.
>
>  And most of the best computer music I've heard is made by completely
> computer illiterate, so the scale analogy is completely flawed. I play bass
> at professional level, but don't ask me to build one. I have a professional
> luthier for this.
>
>  No flame starting here, but the anti-MSP discourse of the SC community is
> probably one of the reason why its growth is still modest despite SC being a
> fantastic, different, complementary tool.
>
>  hugs from the North of England
>
>  pa
>
>
>
>  Le 09-04-24 à 10:26, Lorien Dunn a écrit :
>
>
>
> > As musicians we should at least be humble enough to learn to play out
> instruments well. If the computer is your chosen instrument and you can't
> program in a proper programming language, then you're the student who hasn't
> practiced their scales.
> >
> > From a music grad who made into computer science academia before going
> back to music ;)
> > Lorien
> > Uri Sala wrote:
> >
> > > Dear list,
> > > Would you give someone a fork to eat soup? Sorry about the cheap
> analogy, but it breaks my heart every time I think that 75% of the
> theoretical knowledge I have received in electronic music has been using
> Max/MSP. Most of the young and more inexperienced guys at school have a hard
> time grasping the concepts of electronic music. I am totally convinced that
> if they used SC they would learn much faster. Can anybody explain to my why
> the myth that coding is hard and that having a screen full of spaghetti
> makes it easier to program is still in vogue? I really don't get it. I mean,
> really. Actually I do, or I think I do. When the beginning electronic music
> student sees a Max patch, he only sees the end result, that is, a nice GUI,
> and thinks WOW, max looks neat. They never think that, under that nice
> looking main patch is hidden a maze of subpatches, until they start patching
> themselves. I am sure that, eventually along the line, every Max user gets
> the "god there are so many cables and windows open, maybe text would
> actually be better" - kind of feeling. I did, only it took me about a week.
> > > I am quite known among my friends in the conservatory for my strong
> feelings about SC, and my increasing unease every time a teacher tries to
> shove Max down our throats, clogging the screen with nonsense to do
> something that would take 1 line in SC.
> > > Some people might argue it is a matter of personal preference. Well, let
> me get intransigent: it is not. Ruby vs Python is a valid dilemma. Coding vs
> dragging is not. Just look around. Do you know any (non musical)
> programmers? What do they use? Little boxes and cables? Ask any of them
> whether they think it would be better to program in that way and you're
> likely to get a laugh. Of course many people have done great programming
> with Max. I once ate a soup with a fork too. Hey, even Miller Puckette said
> that Max was not thought out to program with, just to use as patcher for C
> modules.
> > > I wanted to ask whether anyone knows of a text somewhere that exposes
> what I just said in more objective, less altered terms? If not, I would like
> to know the opinion of the forum. I promise to collect the strongest points,
> print them and post them all over town.
> > >
> > > Sorry about the rant, but I cannot stand bad reasoning. I will have my
> pill now.
> > >
> > > Cheers
> > > Uri
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > sc-users mailing list
> > >
> > > info (subscription, etc.):
> http://www.beast.bham.ac.uk/research/sc_mailing_lists.shtml
> > > archive:
> http://www.listarc.bham.ac.uk/marchives/sc-users/
> > > search:
> http://www.listarc.bham.ac.uk/lists/sc-users/search/
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > sc-users mailing list
> >
> > info (subscription, etc.):
> http://www.beast.bham.ac.uk/research/sc_mailing_lists.shtml
> > archive:
> http://www.listarc.bham.ac.uk/marchives/sc-users/
> > search:
> http://www.listarc.bham.ac.uk/lists/sc-users/search/
> >
>
>
>  _______________________________________________
>  sc-users mailing list
>
>  info (subscription, etc.):
> http://www.beast.bham.ac.uk/research/sc_mailing_lists.shtml
>  archive: http://www.listarc.bham.ac.uk/marchives/sc-users/
>  search:
> http://www.listarc.bham.ac.uk/lists/sc-users/search/
>


--
http://www.mcld.co.uk

_______________________________________________
sc-users mailing list

info (subscription, etc.): http://www.beast.bham.ac.uk/research/sc_mailing_lists.shtml
archive: http://www.listarc.bham.ac.uk/marchives/sc-users/
search: http://www.listarc.bham.ac.uk/lists/sc-users/search/


Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

_______________________________________________
sc-users mailing list

info (subscription, etc.): http://www.beast.bham.ac.uk/research/sc_mailing_lists.shtml
archive: http://www.listarc.bham.ac.uk/marchives/sc-users/
search: http://www.listarc.bham.ac.uk/lists/sc-users/search/

 « Return to Thread: Coding vs patching: would you eat soup with a fork?