Download the Max patch here: synthFilter.maxpat

The following tutorial is describing how to connect Parat+ to a Max7 patch. The following patch is used as an example. This is the same patch as used in the video above.

This tutorial will use four Parat+ Faders to control the oscillator pitch and pulse width, as well as the cutoff frequency of a low pass filter and its bandwidth (Q).

When controlling the filter cutoff frequency is where the use of OSC really improves a controller setup compared to MIDI, because on a Retina iPad a Parat+ Fader will allow more than 1000 discreet steps over the Fader throw, rather than the 128 one gets with MIDI.

The final Parat+ Fader page will look like this:

N.B. For best performance and lowest latency ensure to setup a Peer to Peer network between your computer and your iOS device. Alternatively use a dedicated router which is not used by anyone else. Don’t make your performance dependent on other people downloading large files.

Setup the OSC target in the Setup view to match IP address of the computer running the Max7 patch. For example:

Also ensure the same Port number is set in Parat+ as used in your Max patch:

The OSC-route object enlists the OSC addresses required to be used in Parat+.

Double tap on the Option Wheel beneath a Fader to open its Edit Fader view. The orange dot shows which Fader details are populated in the Edit Fader view. To change to another Fader, either double tab on the Option Wheel of another Fader or use the <|> to step through to the next or previous.

Set the OSC address (transmitting) and the Parameter range as follow:

/osc/pitch to set the oscillator pitch. This will be in MIDI numbers, where 60 would be the middle C. Using for example a range of 0 to 36 will give very low pitches, just great for a square wave bass sound. Optionally change the ‘floats’ to ints to get chromatic pitch tuning.

/osc/pwm to control the pulse width of the synth. Only float values in between 0 and 1 will make sense here. In fact the actual values of 0 and 1 will result in silence!

The PWM is great to be automated. Use the Gesture recorder to record some changes.

To record a gesture, swipe from the centre of the Option Wheel towards the loop icon to activate the recording standby and the loop playback.

The recording will start on the next touch move on the Fader and stop when the finger is lifted off. The loop will play instantly.

To control the filter use /filter/cutoff with for example a range between 200 and 5000 (Hz).

To control the filter bandwidth use /filter/Q with the range set to 1 to 10. Maybe also experiment with a maximum value of  up to 20!

Setting up the interactive controls using Parat+ Source Faders.