Today the Forum proposes a group of Real Time tools derived from the Max concept of patching. The two large families are : Max/MSP applications (for Macintosh), and jMax applications (for Irix, Linux, and Mac OS X). This presentation will describe concepts shared by these two families, contrasts between the two, and the musical applications available in the two environments.

OpenMusic is a highly visual environment for composing on the Macintosh. Based on Digitool Macintosh Common Lisp, OpenMusic provides a visual programming interface to Lisp programming as well as to CLOS (Common Lisp Object System). Thus OpenMusic is an Object Oriented (OO) environment. Many classes implementing musical data and behavior are provided. They are associated with graphics editors and may be extended by the user to meet specific needs. Different representations of a musical process are handled, among which are common notation, MIDI piano-roll, sound

We will present three programs which include this package : AudioSculpt, which allows spectral analysis of a sound, to then sculpt it by modifying its spectre. Diphone Studio, which after analysis and separation of sounds, allows manipulation of the set of paramters for each sound ; various treatments (formantic transposition, morphing between two timbres) are then possible. Modalys works like a virtual workshop. The user has an ensemble of fundamental structures, which he can assemble and play as he wishes.