[PD] newbie growing pains...

Derek Holzer derek at umatic.nl
Wed Feb 21 03:14:54 CET 2007


Hi Jared,

for what it's worth, I've been working with PD for years and I still 
can't read most other people's patches ;-)

Everybody has their own style, their own "handwriting", and some are 
more readable than others. Diving right into somebody's finished patch 
is pretty difficult for an experienced user, and almost impossible for a 
beginner, I'd say! If you were trying to learn German, would you start 
by reading Goethe?

I learned PD by reproducing things which I understood already in stages, 
such as going from a quad-panner, a mixer, a sampler and a 
delay-network, to complex feedback-FM, a granular synthesizer and an 
algorithmic sequencer...etc etc. First I played around with the built-in 
examples, then I made simple things and basic utilities. After that I 
went back to the examples I skipped and figured out what I did wrong, 
and then I moved on to "porting" things from other apps I had used 
before and knew the structure of (AudioMulch units, Reaktor instruments, 
various VSTs, etc). These kinds of exercises are the ones I think work 
best. Start from a point you know, and figure out how to do it with the 
most basic objects in PD. If core PD doesn't do it, then it's time to 
reach for an external.

best,
d.

jared wrote:

> obvious similarities, but the more time I spend with PD the more they
> feel like different beasts.   I will definitely go back and start from
> square one with PD.   


-- 
derek holzer ::: http://www.umatic.nl
---Oblique Strategy # 77:
"Give way to your worst impulse"




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