Started feeling kinda guilty for picking holes/requesting functions and patches so often and decided its time to start wrapping my head around this stuff so I can give something back and poss start on a long term career change…
Had a quick look round the forum via Google and seems like this tutorial is seen as a solid start point?
I have no idea on the rate of dev in PD itself or variations, add-ons (or terminology etc tho and don’t want to learn things that are outdated (unless advised to) or get myself in situations where I’m hitting walls and getting frustrated and not knowing whether it’s user error or down to the tools vs instructions not being compatible with each other… Would make things less stressful to know for sure that any problems I hit are just down to me writing bad code etc…
Hoping someone can point me to a forum post or link that sums up all current tools/software I need to download to begin with (I’m on Windows and ipad). And any good recent tutorials/articles that might help coding beginners that haven’t been linked to in posts in here yet. Also the best forum/community that has a high tolerance for dumb Q’s
Outside of community patches for organelle the kind of path I’m starting to begin to feel like I want to work toward is -
(stage 1)
Learn PD
Make some organelle patches
(Stage 2)
Begin to look at Swift/objective C and ios app making.
(Stage 3)
Begin to look at making my own PD standalone pedals/learn about the things I often read about like Arduino etc (this will possibly be in partnership with someone already clued up with DIY building/electronics etc). Possibly also an ios app/midi controller hybrid thing.
(stage 4)
Learn some of the more complicated languages (if feels neccessary/beneficial to my goals at that point) and begin work on a complex standalone hardware device.
(stage 5)
Try and earn some money… Either from my own ideas or in a coding role within a company.
I know that’s a ton of learning but I’m hoping if I graft at it I can make some fast progress over next couple of years learning the foundations and then eventually start on a long project that consolidates/extends on that.
Any advice on this path before I set out would be much appreciated. Thanks!
If you want to learn Pure Data I would suggest doing all of Dr. Hernandez tutorials from Youtube:
These really helped me a lot in understanding the basics in PD. After I did those, I was able to download patches and make them all work and convert them into my own versions. This is the first step imo, doing some basic tutorials. Also explore all the examples patches that comes with PD, they are really great too.
Second, when you have done the first step you will then be able to start downloading all the patches you can find on the web and start learning from them. There are so many patches around that are really good, but sometimes they just won’t work “out of the box”, so a little adaption/editing is needed. When you know the basics form step 1, it just becomes much easier downloading patches from the web editing so they work and learning from them.
This is how I got the basics and since then patching has been very fun. The problem I face is sometimes there are externals I cant get working, but I understand now that there could be many reasons for that, but overall I can make 90% of what I find work.
When you got a lot of ideas form patches you found, you can start making you own patches. I mean you can do this all the time, but it is often very good idea to research what the experts do and learn from it And that is really the cool thing about Pure Data, the resources available are VAST and if there is something you like to make you can almost always find an example from someone else who all ready made it.
Thanks a lot for writing that out! Sounds like really good advice. Yeah dissecting other patches seems super useful for learning, already earmarked a few patches that I’d eventually love to be able to understand the mechanics of and integrate in to new patches…
I’ll check those Dr Hernandez tutorials this wknd.
Thanks again!
Which version of Pure Data (I’ve heard people talking about Vanilla and Extended) should I download and learn in?
On the download page I already noticed some stuff that looks potentially useful/interesting. This patch seems to have resampling output to new sample, which could be cool instead of param automation (something I wanted to try to add to some organelle patches…) on some future patches. Tons of stuff to learn/check out…
I dunno which operating system that you are using. I am on OSX and I use PD 0.47 and 0.48.
Organelle runs 0.46 at the moment, but I think it will be updated in the futurem so I dont see any problem in patching on 0.47. The patches that I made on 0.47 on OSX have all worked on Organelle. But to be honest I only tested a few homebrewed patches for now.
But I think you should go for 0.47 and 0.48, and stay away from PD extended, as it is not being developed anymore.
I would not worry, pick any tutorial, any version of PD and start patching…
pick something to do (be realistic in your goals) , and just do it… the challenge, the questions, the resolutions are all where you learn.
( the wrong choice about version of PD, vanilla/extended, makes zero difference in the early stages)
as an ‘old school’ programmer, Id say one thing to be aware of:
these days, many learn by adapting and copying and pasting from others, this is cool, it gets things done quickly, and is a useful skill to learn.
BUT,creating new things from nothing, is a very different skill… you have to make many more decisions, and acquire lots of new knowledge.
(this is where vanilla vs extended kicks in… how much do you want others to have done the ‘hard bits’ for you)
it really depends what you want to become… many are what I refer to as ‘assemblers’, they glue bits of others code together in new ways (like a DJ), rather than a ‘creator’ (like a composer) creating new code. this is ok.
nothing wrong with either, just be aware they require different skill sets (albeit some skills overlap)
Thanks for the insight. Will keep this in mind when taking steps. Ideally I’d like to grasp things as deep as my crumbling brain will allow, so I’m grateful to be made aware that ‘do it yourself’ is something to be aiming for whenever possible if I’m gonna try and head toward that. Cheers
Hey man, I just picked up my organelle and I’m in the same boat with learning pure data. Yesterday I kind of just dove in and developed a whole 8 voice poly analog synth patch. It is definitely an overwhelming process but if you break it all down into smaller components and get each small chunk working on its own, it becomes simpler. Try not to worry about every big problem at once, just solve the series of many smaller problems and you’ll get there eventually. It is a big help to look at other people’s patches, but as other people mentioned its a good idea to solve your problems on your own rather than copy paste especially if you’re looking to do heavily customized stuff which it sounds like you are. The knowledge you’ll gain from solving problems on your own is invaluable and in my experience learning that mental process actually translates across all programming platforms (I also code in java and C). Anyways just saying you’re not alone and probably the best way to get into pd is just pick something simple to make and dive in!
etc tho and don’t want to learn things that are outdated (unless advised to) or get myself in situations where I’m hitting walls and getting frustrated and not knowing whether it’s user error or down to the tools vs instructions not being compatible with each other… Would make things less stressful to know for sure that any problems I hit are just down to me writing bad code etc…