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Author Topic: Cycling 74 "M"  (Read 6077 times)

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Offline chrisNova777

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Cycling 74 "M"
« on: May 18, 2017, 05:47:57 PM »
https://cycling74.com/products/m
https://cycling74.s3.amazonaws.com/download/M27.pdf

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M 2.8 is a Mac OS X version of a program first published by Intelligent Music in 1987. In the 1980s, M ran on four different computer platforms (Mac, Windows, Atari, and Amiga), and had many fans all over the world.

M was quite different from any other music software when it first appeared, but many musicians and composers were attracted to its powerful implementation of the idea of interactive composition, where you shape the music as you hear it unfold. M 2.8 features compatibility with OS X Core MIDI so you can use it to power the software synthesizers that sound great but are always in need of better material.
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Composing music with M is radically different from writing music on paper or recording into a tape recorder or MIDI sequencer.

Instead of merely playing back what you've already composed, M becomes a part of the actual process of composition. You enter your basic musical ideas and materials as melodies, chords, and rhythms, and then work with M to transform those ideas into finished compositions.

M's powerful tools and musical controls let you work so quickly and interactively that the line between composing and performing becomes blurred. You're composing and performing at the same time, and with a vast array of controls. You can control your music by clicking and dragging the mouse on the computer screen, by "conducting" in a Conducting Grid, by pressing keys on your computer keyboard, or by playing specific notes on your MIDI keyboard.

When working with M, you hear the musical results of everything you do while you're doing it, so you can try new things and explore musical ideas without the computer getting in your way.
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M's main screen is designed to be a musical control panel that lets you do many things simultaneously while giving you a visual overview of all of the program's operations.

There are six windows in the main screen. Each window contains a particular grouping of controls, and the controls in all of the windows are interrelated as different parts of the same musical process. All of M's main screen windows are always active so that you can use any control whenever you like.

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The Patterns Window contains four rows of controls for creating and managing Patterns. A Pattern, in M, is a collection of notes that can be transformed in a variety of ways. The Patterns Window also contains some controls for managing Voices. A Voice in M is a "path" through the program that begins with a Pattern.
The Conducting Window (Untitled in the picture above) contains controls that allow you to affect the operations of the whole program. You can change certain aspects of the program's operation in the Conducting Grid; you can start and stop the music, change the tempo, and do lots of other things that we'll describe later in this manual.
The Variables Window contains controls that allow you to transform M's Voices. A Variable in M is a category of transformation. In the Variables Window, you can change note ordering, transposition, texture, and density; you can introduce rhythmic "feel"; and you can set MIDI velocity ranges. You can also choose between different groups of Patterns that you've created.
The Cyclic Variables Window contains controls that allow you to establish cyclic variation for note durations, legato-staccato articulations, and accents.
The Midi Window contains controls that allow you to direct your Voices' outputs to different MIDI channels and to send program (patch) change numbers to your synthesizers.
The Snapshot Window (with the Camera icon) contains controls that allow you to store and recall groups of other screen controls. You can also record and play back sequences of Snapshots, which we call Slideshows.






Offline rasputin

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Re: Cycling 74 "M"
« Reply #1 on: July 07, 2018, 09:28:51 PM »
Fantastic to find this site, and I hope in future I'll have something to contribute as many (100s or 1000s) were the hours I used Opcode/Cycling 74 software back in the day. Briefly I made the decision to do all my music work on PCs once I found I was going to have to re-buy everything I owned to go to Mac OS X... Long story.
Anyway, I was fascinated with M and spent a lot of time with it. Glad to see it's still available from Cycling 74.
Now I can discard my old 2.5 manual without worrying that it's something precious!
tim p scott
making music with computers since before there were computers! (well, kind of: actually more like 1994-1995 or so)
Some favorite software: Opcode Vision/Max, Reason, Ableton Live.

Offline rasputin

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Re: Cycling 74 "M"
« Reply #2 on: July 08, 2018, 02:10:19 PM »
I actually find I have two M 2.5 manuals printed and 3 hole punched.  I can send either of these media mail if you're interested; shouldn't cost more than $5. I just hate to throw away stuff like this! Gee, you don't think I have a hoarding problem do you!  ::)

Amazingly it looks like Cycling 74 still has this available for $74 -- this is just for Mac, I think--I think it was alwys just for MacOS.

The cool thing is that if you have version 2.5.7 or later it looks like they'll upgrade you to 2.8 for free.
tim p scott
making music with computers since before there were computers! (well, kind of: actually more like 1994-1995 or so)
Some favorite software: Opcode Vision/Max, Reason, Ableton Live.

Offline hageir

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Re: Cycling 74 "M"
« Reply #3 on: April 14, 2020, 02:11:49 PM »
Here are various things, a couple of versions (I think the M258 is OS 9 - 68k/PPC) others are OS X
*demo version is fully operational, without saving.
https://web.archive.org/web/19991008111359/http://www.cycling74.com:80/products/dlm.html

I did find an even older version, I have it on a drive somewhere.

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System Requirements

M 2.6 requires:

Mac OS X 10.2 or later.
For sound output directly from the computer, a Core MIDI compatible synthesizer application. For external MIDI input/output, a MIDI interface is required.

M 2.5 requires:

Mac OS 8 or 9.
OMS 2.3.8 (download available below).
Quicktime for sound output from the computer.
A MIDI interface for MIDI input/output.