Since opening in 1977, the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music has been at the forefront of technological developments in musical expression. Artists who have worked at IRCAM include John Cage and Iannis Xennakis, to name just a few. Among the countless technical innovations to have come out of the Paris institution, John Chowning’s pioneering work in FM synthesis and Miller Puckette’s development of Max are perhaps the two that have had the profoundest impact on modern music and music-making.

In recent years, IRCAM has developed devices that provide access to deep sound-shaping capabilities through interfaces that invite intuitive and musical interaction. Taking full advantage of the Max for Live platform, IRCAMAX 1 represents a selection of unique IRCAM devices and instruments optimized for use with Ableton Live.

The IRCAMAX 1 Pack includes six effects and one instrument based on IRCAM’s SuperVP real-time sound processing technology:

IM-FXSequencer contains four independently adjustable effects – a delay, a freeze, a transposer and a ring modulator – which can be triggered by a step sequencer synchronized to Live’s master tempo. The programmed sequence determines which effects the incoming signal is sent to at each step. Independent sequences can be programmed for the left and right channels.

IM-MultibandDelay uses FFT processing to split the audio spectrum into eight frequency bands and apply a different delay and feedback to each of them. Different panning and volume values can be set for each band and all programmed values can be continuously varied to create dynamic polyrhythms.

IM-SimpleTransp is an easy to use and highly powerful device for producing very natural sounding transposition in real time. With independent control over the pitch and spectral envelope, the device lets you avoid the ‘Mickey Mouse effect’ of artificial-sounding transposed voices – but it also works well on instruments by retaining the filtering of the signal while transposing. The transposition amount can be controlled in real time via MIDI while the ‘Remix’ and ‘Settings’ tabs let you calibrate IM-SimpleTransp to your own taste.

IM-Transp includes all the functions of SimpleTransp, and adds two sequencers synchronized to Live’s master tempo for controlling the pitch and the transposition of the formants.

IM-Scrub adds a position matrix and scrub/scratch functions to the Transp device. It can record audio on the fly, divide the recording into slices and reorder them.

IM-Mover offers a different way to control time position and transposition. Using the mouse, a MIDI controller or a joystick, you can move around within a waveform display to intuitively improvise with and instantly remix any audio material.

IRCAM’s SuperVP algorithm splits signals into sinusoid, noise and transient components and allows each of these to be manipulated individually. IM-SuperVPSynth makes use of this technology to provide ultra high-quality real-time sound transformations within a sampler instrument. The device’s time stretch and remix functions enable deep temporal and timbre manipulations of audio – making it a powerful tool for producing realistic instruments or voices using just one sample. The instrument also includes a multimode filter, two envelopes, and an LFO for complex modulations.

[Note: This pack requires Live version 9.0.1 or higher and Max 6.1.8 or higher]