Once I get a computer that will run everything again, that's definitely on the list. Unsure of when that'll be though. ppooll can be such a great environment for fucking around, but they never teach you how to use it, it's a real shame.
Yeah, there's something about the interface that just beguiles me, and I assumed that as I familiarized myself with Max more, I'd catch up to it. I'm surprised it's been around for so long, and is still getting updated releases, but there hasn't become better documentation yet. The Wiki is an absolute joke (and describing an act as a "synthesizer based on the idea of non-trivial machines" isn't particularly useful to me). If the Wiki at least established a better foundation for how the setup works and created a better glossary of terminology, I think the individual acts would be more navigable. What pains me the most is that I'm a tech writer, and I want to help (and feel a bit ashamed for not understanding it better), but there's not much of a community around it. I get the impression that the Max for Cats has taken some cues from PPOOLL/LLOOPP, but they've managed to make a more coherent, documented, and complete product right off the bat (then again, it ain't free).
Maybe if I can learn PPOOLL adequately enough, I can contribute to the documentation? I'm not sure how feasible that would be, though.
I think what beguiles me most is the esoteric way the routing works and the way the acts interconnect (host/bufferhost, which acts use audio input, which use samples, which modulate other acts, how you even configure that). Then there's the weird square grids on everything, which I can't keep track of. Not to mention my general inability to understand how the saving and setting up of everything is really done.
I can't imagine comfortably automating an entire live session with it.
Fundamentally, I think PPOOLL might be easier than I realize, but I find myself getting stuck in corners. Messing with parameters and trying to get things to interact, I often end up with some stuttering dissonance where I have to close a bunch of windows down to undo whatever mistakes I had made.
Like I said, I've seen people demo it and tool around with sine waves, but I'm aiming for a more practical and flexible surface for on-the-spot experimentation (ideally, something with a bit more depth and character than AudioMulch, which I understand is a versatile and extremely usable software, but it feels very restrained to me; my brain parses out very little mystery in the way it effects sound). A lot of my shortcomings probably lie in having spent most of my music playing looking at everything in the same manner that I think of playing guitar in a live setting, and my expectations for computer interactivity may be a little misguided. Still, while I enjoyed making ambient drone music when I got started in laptop compositions, I still have a perverse pop sensibility that drives me to want to make something more functional with this kind of software. I always thought Christian Fennesz struck the closest balance to extreme experimentation and without falling too deeply into drone/ambient structure pitfalls, hence me spending so much time with Max in general. Hopefully PPOOLL clicks with me and opens a few more doors.
Oh fuck, totally downloading those patches the minute I get home... thanx Dr. Sticks!
