The Zapperment Max for Live Lib

A library of useful Max for Live objects, written in TypeScript.

Motivation

The js object in Max for Live is a powerful tool to code music software.

However, the JavaScript language version used in the code of js objects is ECMAScript 5, which is quite old and misses a lot of useful features of modern JavaScript, like module loading, promises, async/await, let, const, for...of loops, arrow function, to name just a few.

Wouldn't it be nice to harness all that power when writing code for M4L patcher plus profit from the excellent developer experience and bug safety provided by TypeScript?

This project makes this possible through a special webpack build that transpiles TypeScript code of each js object into a single bundle that is ES5 compatible and can be used directly in Max for Live.

Installing and building

Prerequisites

• Make sure you have the latest version of Node.js installed
• Make sure you have the package management tool Yarn installed

Installation

• Clone this repository to your local file system:

git clone git@github.com:zapperment/max-for-live-lib.git
cd max-for-live-lib

• Install npm package dependencies with Yarn:

yarn

Create a configuration

Create a .env file for configuration. The easiest way to do this is to copy the file .env.example, which is included in this repository:

cp .env.example .env

This file can be used to specify the path where your Max for Live patchers are stored. This way, you can write the compiled TypeScript modules directly to your M4L directory and have the patcher updated almost instantly.

By default, the compiled files are written to a dist directory below the repository root. If you don't specify the path to your M4L patcher directory, you'll have to copy the compiled JavaScript files over manually to use them.

Build the js objects

To build the JavaScript bundles from the TypeScript sources so that they can be used in your M4L patcher, run the build script:

yarn build

Included js objects

filterMidiCC

This js object can receive MIDI input and filter out MIDI control change (CC) messages. If the controller number matches the specified number, the value of the control change is sent to outlet 1, otherwise the MIDI data is sent through to outlet 2.

pickUp

Passes values coming in at inlet 1 on to outlet 2 only if they are at or beyond a set threshold value. The threshold value is set through inlet 2. This is useful for MIDI controllers.

getNextTriggerTime

When this JS object receives a bang, it calculates the musical time in beats that a clip that has been fired will start playing.

firedSlotStartOrStop

When this JS object receives an integer value as returned by the slot property fired_slot_index, it determines if that value means a clip will start playing or the track will stop playing, and issues a bang to outlet 1 or 3, accordingly.

If no slot has been fired, a bang is sent to outlet 2.

anySlotPlaying

When this JS object receives a bang, it checks if any slot in the device's track is playing. It sends a number to outlet 1 (0: no slot is playing, otherwise 1). It also sends a bang to outlet 1 if any slot is playing or a bang to outlet 2 if no slot is playing.

mkIIIDisplay

Write text to the display of the Novation SL MkIII MIDI keyboard. Send a message to the inlet like this:

send [column] [message]

• column is the column (0-7) in which to write the text (number)
• message is text to write (list of symbols)

The text is written in the top row, above the current knob value. Keep in mind that the text needs to be short, around 9 characters, lest it is truncated with ellipses.

Example

To write the text "hi there" above knob 1:

send 0 hi there

Developing your own js objects

If you want to develop your own js objects, you probably want the build to automatically be run again every time you change something in the source files.

To do this, run in watch mode:

yarn watch