Max for Live extends the functionality of Live Suite
and allows users to customize their own devices.
In this video, we're gonna have a brief overview of what Max for Live is, and how you can use it.
Max for Live is an extension of the Live Suite software
and was co-developed by Cycling 74.
It allows you to extend and customize Live by creating your own Max devices
whether they're instruments, audio effects or midi effects.
If building your own custom devices is not what you really want to do,
there are also quite a few pre-made effects and tutorials to get you started.
Max for Live can be used just like Live's regular built-in devices.
In addition to this, Max for Live is now in bundle with Live Suite.
And so it's loaded every time that Live Suite is started.
So let's take a look at some Max for Live devices that come with Live Suite.
Max for Live devices can be found in the Category section of the browser
under Max for Live.
Max for Live devices fall into 3 distinct categories:
Max Audio Effects.
Max Instruments.
And Max Midi Effects.
As of Live 10, certain Max for Live devices are intergrated into the core library.
Let's have a look at some examples in these 3 tracks that I've pre-prepared.
In track number 1, I have a drum rack.
Within the drum rack, I have 8 different Max for Live devices.
Each one is a drum synth producing its own percussion sound.
Each of the Max for Live devices
can be controlled individually using their parameter controls.
In track 2, labelled Bass, I have a instrument rack, the 106 Bass,
and 2 Max for Live devices.
The device on the left, Expression Control, is a Max midi effect.
Expression Control allows me to map certain midi parameters
that I can select from the chooser...
to any of the parameters that I can see in Live's interface.
So by clicking Map, not only can I map this device
to other device parameters
but I could also map it to, for example, the Mixer section,
or even other device parameters in other tracks.
But for this example, I'm just going to map it to the Cutoff filter.
The device to the right of my instrument is an LFO Max for Live device.
I can map this low frequency oscillator also to any of the parameters that I see in Live
simply by clicking Map.
I'm going to map this to the volume of my mixer section of this track.
In my third track, I have a Max Instrument device called Granulator.
Granulator specializes in granular synthesis.
To the left of my device, I have Envelope, another Max for Live midi effect.
This device allows you to map an envelope to any parameter that you see in Live.
So I'm going to map the envelope to the frequency of my Auto Filter audio effect.
Some of the Max for Live devices that come with the core library have this yellow icon.
Once you click on it, it actually allows you to map that particular device
to several different parameters at the same time,
no matter where they are within Live's interface.
So in this case, I'm going to map the envelope
to another audio effect that I've added to my signal chain - the Reverb...
and allow the envelope to control the dry/wet controls of the Reverb.
If you'd like to see how a Max for Live device has been programmed
you can click on the Edit button of the Max for Live device
to open the Max device editor.
Here, you can actually open up the device and peak under the graphical interface
to see how the visual programming of Max was used to put this particular device together.
There are even more Max for Live devices available to you directly from the Ableton website
under Packs.
Also, in addition to this, there's the website Maxforlive.com
which contains a wide spectrum of Max for Live devices created by the community.