Cycling '74 Max: Howard Sandroff Recalls When It Was Opcode
Howard Sandroff, the Director of Computer Music at the University of Chicago and Professor of Sound Art At Columbia College, remembers back to his days at Earcom in the mid 80's for the development of what we now know as Cycling '74 Max.
Max has been turned over quite a few times from Earcom to Opcode to Gibson to Cycling '74. He also remembers how Opcode transformed it from experimental programming to a commercial software program which should work all the time since people pay money for it. Sadly, software developers forget that sometimes these days.
HOWARD SANDROFF: Max has got an interesting history, and it’s all tied up with its development at IRCAM.
GRETCHEN HASSE: Mmm hmm.
HOWARD SANDROFF: And the first time I saw it, I was at IRCAM. I don’t remember exactly when this was. This would have been in the ‘80s, middle ‘80s, and it was running on a NeXTcube using signal processing, hardware and software -- signal processing hardware called the ISPW, and it did signal processing as well as MIDI. I was much interested in signal processing but it was very expensive, and then NeXTcubes were tricky.
Well, IRCAM then released a version of it that just did MIDI and ran on a Macintosh. At that time, a Macintosh was incapable of doing signal processing; it just wasn’t fast enough. And even a NeXTcube couldn’t do it by itself. It used these cards that plugged into its expansion chassis to do the signal processing. Signal processing requires a lot of computational power. The Macs didn’t have it at that time neither did the NeXTcube.
Shortly thereafter, IRCAM turned it over to a company called OpCode who released the Macintosh version of it commercially, and again it controlled MIDI. It is essentially a programming language. It’s a visual programming language in which you gather a whole series of little objects which in and of themselves are computer programs that you can connect together visually using these little things they call patch cords. And so, if you’re looking at the screen, you see all these little boxes connected by the patch cords.
And as time went on, OpCode released more and more workable versions because of course the difference between research software that would be at a place like IRCAM or MIT is that it doesn’t work all the time because it’s not intended to work all the time. It’s an experimental platform. And software that has been commercially released is that commercially released software that the expectation is that if you pay money for it, it works. So, OpCode cleaned it up and they made it commercially viable and they continued to support it until they were bought up by Gibson Guitar Company and went out of business. And the rights were reverted back to IRCAM and they turned it over to one of the original authors, David Zicarelli, who came up with a company called Cycling ’74, and he’s been maintaining and supporting it in all of its progeny since those days.
As the Macintoshes became more sophisticated with faster and faster processors, then they too could do signal processing.
[HOWARD SANDROFF’S “TEPHILLAH” PLAYING]
Earcom and More
A couple of comments: Max was first developed at IRCAM (pronounced "Earcom"), the government-subsidized music research facility founded by Pierre Boulez. MIller Puckette was the principal developer, along with other, at IRCAM.
Between IRCAM and Opcode, Intelligent Music, where David Zicarelli worked and developed M, Jam Factory, and other interactive composition programs, had the rights to Max and actually began Max's development path from experimental research software to commercial product. Unfortunately, Intelligent Music went out of business before Max could be fully developed, and the rights were assumed by Zicarelli, who then went to Opcode to continue development. Zicarelli had earlier created one of the first Macintosh MIDI applications, a DX-7 editor-librarian, which was licensed by Opcode.
Max is named for Max Mathews.
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