Cycling ‘74 has recently published an article called Managing Complex Patches in Max by Arne Eigenfeldt.

I first met Arne at the ICMC banquet in Miami a couple of years ago. If my memory serves correctly, Arne was one of a number of people at that conference who told me that they realy liked using Jade modules in Max, especially for teaching, and that he really didn’t use the Jade application at all. The sum of these various conversations was part of the germination process leading to Jamoma taking flight several months later.

In addition to being a really thoughtful and deep composer/creator, he has a wonderful and gracious manner. His installation this past fall at the ICMC in New Orleans was particularly rich and full of depth. It was clearly the culmination of a lot of serious thought and the layers of sound it produced wove a really captivating tapestry. How did he do it?

There are lots of answers to that question, but a significant part of the answer was that he developed a style of patching in Max that allowed him leverage the benefits of a structured approach. In this article he shares a lot of what composes that approach.

I have personally been fascinated and obsessed with structural facets of music, software, art, nature, texts, etc. for a very long time. This obsession is reflected in Jade and Jamoma. Often I still feel that I have defend approach, and try to convice others that being structured is beneficial when working with Max. I’m thrilled to see someone else carrying that baton in completely separate context than Jamoma. Hopefully his insights will benefit Max users for years to come…