The addition of MC to Max 8 added some handy ways to organise audio signals. One of the simplest benefits is the ability to pack stereo channels together with mc.pack~ 2 and process each of the channels with only half of the number of objects taking up space in your patcher (filtering stereo signals would previously require multiple biquad~ objects for example). MC also opens up some helpful ways to think about additive synthesis voices, richness of sound, and polyphony, and simplifies the patching needed to realise certain kinds of synthesised sounds.
One thing that is really wonderful about MC is the simplicity in which synthesised sounds can be made richer and fuller in the stereo space by modifying a group of oscillators’ frequencies and panning the individual ‘voices’.
Many softsynths — such as Native Instruments’ FM-8 — offer the ability to add more voices to ‘fatten up’ a sound. The addition of extra oscillators combined with a small amount of detune adds a fullness to the sound that — before MC came along — would have required a fair amount of patching to replicate in Max. With MC objects though, this can be accomplished quite simply with MC object messages like ‘deviate’ and ‘spread’ eg. deviate 0.1 0 (to produce random bias values ranging between -0.1 to 0.1 for each voice of an oscillator) and spread 0. 1. (sent to the right inlet of mc.phasor~ to evenly spread the phase of a series of control oscillators, for example). Using these messages with objects like mc.sig~ can be useful ways to widen MC signals within the stereo space when mixing them to stereo with mc.stereo~ (or mc.mixdown~ 2).
Synthesising THX Deep Note using MC
Several years ago, on the 35th anniversary of its first screening, THX Ltd. released James A. Moorer’s score for the ‘THX Logo Theme’. Commonly referred to as the THX ‘Deep Note’ the theme is an instantly recognisable musical motif of swirling noise that coalesces into a D Major chord spanning 5 octaves.
Building the THX Deep Note in Max is a great conceptual exercise, and drawing on the MC approach of thinking makes producing something like this quite straightforward. Here’s an example of how it might be done.
How does the patch work?
- An
mc.sig~object is given 30 voices all of MIDI pitch 61 (orC#3). - These are scaled to the range 55–67 by an
mc.rand~object that outputs 30 randomly varying values — constantly shifting the incoming values frommc.sig~up/down by an amount of up to 6 semitones. - At the same time, 30 voices — the final chord, comprising 10 distinct pitches of 3 notes per pitch — are being broadcast by another
mc.sig~object. - The two competing
mc.sig~values can be interpolated between by using themixoperator in amc.gen~object. - The MIDI pitches are translated to frequencies with
mc.mtof~. Keeping this as MIDI note numbers up until now is kind of nice as it allows you to think about things like detuning and pitch shifting in ‘cents’, due to the linear nature of pitch intervals in MIDI. - Adjusting the main ‘Deep Note controls’ slider lets you play with the transition at step 4 in realtime. The values output by this slider object are fed into the
Transition to pitch,Amplitude swell, andPanfunctionobjects, which means that the different aspects of the sound can be independently styled while keeping the controls simple. The slider fades the sound out at either end, but bringing it in on the left side introduces the dissonant swirling noise, and dragging to the right starts the transition to ‘consonance’. - The pitches produced during the transition are drawn on a stave with the
nsliderobject, and anmc.scope~shows the inter-pitch deviation. - The sound is mixed to stereo with an
mc.stereo~object, where the placement of the different voices are subtly distributed in the stereo space by anmc.sig~object that outputs 30 random values between 0.25 and 0.75 (due to thedeviate 0.25 0.5message). - A few objects are used to roughen up the sound a little bit and boost the frequencies in the low end.
Here’s the patch if you want to have a play around:
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-----------end_max5_patcher-----------
For fun, try disabling the ‘Enable/disabled detune’ (step 10) to hear the difference between strictly tuned notes, and Moorer’s subtle detuning. The detuning makes it sound more rich and organic. Also, try changing the final resolution chord to match Moorer’s score (step 11). [Interestingly, the score depicts a high 89 / F5 which seems to not be present in the theme itself.]
There’s a lot of nuance to the THX Deep Note, and the end result made with Max here is similar to the original, but there are still some subtle differences. Aspects described in the score (such as how “each note moves slowly and randomly”) sounds a little more like sinusoidal oscillations in pitch in the theme (as opposed to the way they are shifted randomly by mc.rand~ in the Max version here). Rethinking the way they move randomly might be a fun exercise using mc.cycle~. There’s also a non-linear ascent to the final chord in the original which sounds like an acceleration towards resolution. Playing around with the function objects controlling the ‘transition to pitch’, ‘amplitude swell’, and ‘pan’ might be good places to start experimenting.
Links:
- THX Deep Note: https://www.thx.com/deepnote/
- THX Deep Note trailer, Broadway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLMLPuO_H8w
- THX Deep Note with Dr. Andy Moorer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6grjzBmHVTY