Gibberwocky: Live Music Coding Meets Ableton Live & Max

Enter the insanely cool world of live coding music performances with Gibberwocky which works inside Ableton Live thanks to this Max for Live project.  

You may have come across Gibberwocky as a Max for Live project in late 2016. It enables live coding directly inside Ableton Live and brings the worlds of live coding and musical performance closer than ever.

According to Cycling 74, at "NIME, Graham Wakefield (Cycling '74) and Charlie Roberts (author of the super-popular Gibber environment) introduced a new Max package that offers the same kind of integration with Max features including signal processing in Gen, the Max transport, and message passing of all sorts."

Here's a video showing Gibberwocky in action in Ableton Live:

 

 

 

Our interest in using musical gesture led to an emphasis on continuous modulation in gibberwocky. Declaring modulation graphs, changing them over time, and creating visualizations depicting their state are all heavily prioritized. The dual-emphasis of pattern manipulation and modulation positions gibberwocky somewhat uniquely among live-coding environments.

Here's what Gibberwocky Max for Live can do:

  • Easily discover, sequence, and modulate parameters of Max/MSP patches and Max for Live instruments — no patching required.
  • Create musical patterns and transform them over time, with feedback showing how and when your patterns develop.
  • Create modulation graphs that can easily be assigned to any parameter in Live or a Max/MSP patch. Or use the graphs to generate MIDI CC messages. Either way, every parameter of the modulation is exposed for control via sequencing.
  • You can code entire musical performances in realtime.

 

 

 

Rounik is the Executive Editor for Ask.Audio & macProVideo. He's built a crack team of professional musicians and writers to create one of the most visited online resources for news, review, tutorials and interviews for modern musician and producer. As an Apple Certified Trainer for Logic Pro Rounik has taught teachers, professional... Read More

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