The Art of “Making Music” Just Opened Up a Bit More: Good or Bad?
MaxForLive is the fusion of Ableton’s Live DAW and Cycling74′s Max visual programming tool. With the two, you can create plugins that bring new capabilities to LIVE8. You can also share these plugins with others. Ableton hopes to create an active MaxForLive community with a rich set of ever new and changing plugins. (Think Native Instrument’s Reaktor5 communities and you’ll get the concept.) Well these things are starting to trickle in.
Here is a potential game changer. A device that renders knowledge of music theory ‘optional’. Watch the whole thing. (Takes about 10 minutes). Seriously, take the time. The end features the guy jamming real time with a long time jazz pianist and DOING QUITE WELL despite the fact that he doesn’t understand “notes, chords, and all that stuff.”
So, is this the continued democratization of music or the further “dumbing down” of musical knowledge? Fascinating.
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Edit – 12/22/09: There is a really lively discussion / debate / argument going on over at the LIVE forum on the merits (or lack thereof) of this MaxForLive patch. Check it out here.
