Max For Live Drops on Monday. What does this mean for you?

Max For Live is intended to be released on Monday. What does this mean for you?

Are you the type that likes to fiddle around and figure out what makes things work? There's a Max For Live for that!

Are you the type that likes to have a library of great Instruments and effects? There's a Max For Live for that!

Or, You could be in the ever increasing group of people who start out using Max For Live's built in devices and edit them to your liking.

Lets take a look at the possibilities...

In one hand you have a library of Max For Live devices that are ready to use and will be available at release. If you are accustomed to dragging a device onto a track and then using it within a set then this will work in the exact same fashion. You could think of Max For Live as an entire collection of devices that include audio and midi effects, along with virtual instruments. It is basically an ever expanding, open ended, collection of devices that you pay for once. So, if you think about it in these terms, you are gaining a wide selection of instruments and effects for the price of a typical VI or effect.
 
If you look through what is provided with the factory content then you would be amazed at what you get. You get many of the Pluggo devices that have been converted from the original collection to Max For Live devices. Additionally, you have devices like Step Sequencer, Loop Shifter, and Buffer Shuffler along with a collection of building blocks that work on their own or could be combined to create bigger devices. All of these can be used right out of the box (or download).

if the collection isn't enough of a reason to buy Max For Live then think about this. You may be perfectly happy with the content that is provided, but there could be a few little tweaks that you are looking for in a effect or instrument. You would normally have to contact the developer and see if they could add it into one of their releases. It is very hard for a developer to add every feature that every user requests. So, in reality, the developer only add the features that are the most requested. Even if they can add the feature that you request then it could take a while for them to implement it. What Max for live proposes is that you create or edit a device and add the features you like. The ability to, "Tweak" a device is one of the most powerful features in Max For Live. You could, metaphorically speaking, "Pop the Hood" and see how things are working.

There are several packages out there that allow you to create virtual instruments and effects along with allowing you to use them as a hosted plug-in. What separates Max For Live from those other platforms is it's integration into Live. Not only can you tweak instruments and effects, but you also gain control over much of the functionality contained within Live. You can control songs, tracks, devices, clips, and more. The control allows you to perform actions on the different elements in Live.
You can do things like:

• Launch Clips/Scenes
• Control Devices programmatically
• Grab information on different elements in Live
• Start/Stop transport
• Control loop position (start and end points)

There is so much more you can do within Max For Live. These are just a few quick actions that were right of the top of my head. The nice part about the whole solution is that every thing is well documented and is provided within Live. There are a lot of tutorials to get you going. Before you know it, you will be writing instruments and effects that you would have not though possible a few days or weeks earlier.

To sum up...
Max for Live provides a little for everyone. You do not need to be a programmer in order to take advantage of what is included and what is coming in Max For Live. But, if you do like to tinker then Max For Live is your paradise.