Max MSP Beginners Guide: Presentation Mode and presets for your synthesizerIf you haven’t caught up on the previous four tutorials where we go through the basic tools needed to use Max MSP, how to build an input/output and oscillator, how to build an envelope system, and a filter system, you can do that ahead of this tutorial.
In this guide, you’ll add the finishing touches to your synth by creating a GUI (Graphic User Interface) and a bank of presets.
First, open up your patch from the last tutorial and ensure that the page is setup correctly before we start patching. Unfortunately, these do not save, and need to be reset each time you open up Max MSP. You can refer back to Part 1 of this tutorial series if you need any guidance.
Presentation Mode
Now you’ve built the synthesizer, you might want it to look like an actual synthesiser rather than just a circuit board.
To do so, you’ll access Max MSP’s Presentation Mode, which can be found at the bottom left of the screen, next to the lock icon.
When you click that, your patch will disappear. But, don’t worry! Your work hasn’t been deleted, it’s just hidden.
Presentation Mode allows you to select what objects you want to see and what objects you want to hide so that you can make your synthesiser look more aesthetically pleasing.
To get elements of the main patcher on to the presentation mode, left-click on all the things you want to put in your final synth; whether that be objects, messages, and/or comments. You then need to select ‘add to presentation’. After they’ve been added to presentation mode, they’ll have a red border.
Once all the elements have been selected, click back into Presentation Mode, and feel free to move everything around until it resembles a synthesiser.
However, rest assured that no matter what you move while in Presentation Mode, it will remain in place in Patching Mode. You will also find more use for the comment boxes that were used throughout the tutorials, as they can turn into labels for your final patch.
Using the inspector sidebar, you can also change the colours of objects, messages and comments to make it look however you like. There are also other customisation options within the inspector, such as the shape of bangs, the length of the Kslider, and many many more.
We recommend using an object named ‘Panel’, which you can use as a background to your synth and create different boxes for different elements to your patch.
At this point you have complete create freedom, so feel free to mess around.
For inspiration, here is our finished synthesiser in Presentation Mode:
Finished synthesizer in Presentation Mode
Presets
The synthesizer has now been complete both in terms of the patching it’s final look. Now, we recommend creating presets of the entire synthesiser, as well as a reset button.
This step is entirely optional, but it gives you the chance to transform the synth at the click of a button, rather that setting it manually.
To do so is fairly straightforward and involves the object ‘Preset’. It’s best to do this step in patching mode.
Once the object has been created, open up the help file, and you can see that it programmes presets through messages, which will instruct the object to ‘store’ data into the different presets.
Therefore, you need to create a message that says, ‘store 1’ and link it to the preset object. After this is done you need to set the synthesiser up to your desired settings, before clicking on the message. You will that the first box on the preset object will turn a light grey. This means that your preset has been set.
You can continue to do this for how many presets you want, changing the store number each time. At this point you can also create separate messages stating ‘1’, ‘2’, etc, which will recall each preset for you. Add these to Presentation Mode.
After you have created all of your presets, you will want to create one more, but setting all of the elements in the patch to zero. This will then act as our reset button. As we have only decided to created three presets, this reset will be stored into 4.
However, instead of adding the ‘4’ message into our Presentation Mode, you can attach a bang to the message, and add that to the presentation mode instead, as it will still trigger the fourth option on the preset object, but will simply look different. Therefore we have three preset options for our synth, and a bang which will reset the patch.
The Final Steps
The final step for to this monophonic software synthesiser is to export it.
Firstly, ensure that when the Max MSP file is opened, it opens in Presentation Mode, rather than the patcher itself. To do so, go to View > Inspector Window, and scroll down to where it says ‘Open in Presentation’. Ensure that box is ticked.
There are multiple ways to export a Max MSP Patch, but we will be exporting it as a standalone application.
Under file, click on ‘Build Collective/Application’. A ‘build’ window should pop up, giving you options of what you want to happen when the application opens. However, as we are not using any additional audio, video, or files, you can just click ‘Build’ at the bottom of the screen and ensure it is saved to the location of your choice.

Congratulations! You have just built a monophonic software synthesiser from scratch using Max MSP. This should hopefully provide you the skills and tools needed to continue on your software synth journey using Max MSP.
Want to share your finished piece? Drop an image on socials and tag us!
If you haven’t yet downloaded Max MSP, Cycling 74 are offering a four week free trial.
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Joy to the world: How a community inspired Joy Anonymous to fly far from their Southbank beginningsJoy Anonymous are more than just one of the most intriguing and refreshing dance music duos kicking about today – they’re essentially a forward-thinking concept. This concept was not born out of a studio nor on a murky dancefloor. It was formed out of inclusive collective energy created by unified souls outside on the wet and windy streets of London – on the Southbank, to be precise.
More specifically, the Joy Anonymous movement was established after production duo Henry Counsell and Lou Curran broke free from their pandemic-induced cabin fever, taking their sampler, keyboard, drum kit, camping chairs and lamps out into the stark reality of ‘the new normal’ on the river Thames every Friday. Here, runners, dog walkers and socially distanced groups of five got their first taste of live music in a long time, instantly finding joy from the heartfelt vibrations of Joy Anonymous. Soon those passers-by turned into regular crowds.

“When we took our equipment down to the streets of London and started,” starts Curran, the percussionist of the two, “the community built around us, fueled us and kept us going. We learned so much from the community. And it’s super important to keep that going for sure. This group of people, we’re all part of it.”

READ MORE: A daring move to Germany gave Vagabon “purity” to write her first album in four years

Four years later, on a September South London morning, Joy Anonymous sip tea in Counsell’s cosy flat. It feels like the calm before the storm.
They’ve just finished their second album, Cult Classics, and in the morning are about to step up from Southbank to the global stage, playing Las Vegas and a few shows in New York. That’s not to say this storm’s not been brewing already, however – in March, they released a track co-produced with British producer superstar Fred again.. featuring one of their joint heroes, The Streets. Just days before, they DJed to roughly 10,000 people alongside Fred Again.. and Skrillex in Alexandra Palace.
“It was mad,” Counsell, the Australian-born singer of the two, recalls. “The moment when I was singing, then Mike Skinner came on – at Ally Pally – us in the booth… it couldn’t get more childhood dream than that, to be honest.”

“The way it started was amazing as well,” Curran laughs. “We were playing tunes to an empty Ally Pally, and then all of a sudden the doors opened and it was just people sprinting towards us. In about 10 seconds, it was a full venue. Coming from a DJ background, that was quite literally a dream come true, that night. We’re still recovering.”
While Joy Anonymous’s 2021 album debut Human Again was “introspective” and at times “melancholy”, they say, their new album, Cult Classics is a “celebratory” shout-out to their day-one Southbank squad – hence the ‘Cult’. It’s a refined greatest hits album from projects that started during that special time, when each Friday their community would gather to party in a safe space.
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“This feels more celebratory than our first album, Human Again,” says Curran, “which is an introspective documentation of lockdown and what we were doing on the streets of London during that time. You listen back to it now and it does feel melancholy at times.”
“Even in lyrical content,” Counsell adds, “Cult Classics feels more like the soundtrack of Joy meetings: “make some noise for yourself”, “breathe in those around you”, “this is a place you belong”. These lyrics feel more ‘right now’. We’re a unit going out in the world going into different countries, and trying to make music that feels like it’s bringing people together.”
Joy Anonymous jamming in Henry’s flat. Image: @Sully
In many ways, Joy Anonymous isn’t just two people. It’s all their fans together as one huge collective. Everyone plays a part, and samples of the crowd singing along, clapping and reacting are even weaved into so many of their tracks to the point where you feel like you’re there in the crowd. Breaking the fourth wall in this way is a refreshing approach to making and outputting music, far removed from conventional ways of releasing music and much more inclusive for the listeners.
“The crowd contributes to the music, 100 per cent,” affirms Counsell. Joy Anonymous’s process now actively involves their audience, and they feed the crowd’s live reactions and even their suggestions into their music.

“Now, we go and play these tracks out in meetings [street-based gigs] and in other countries, and we’re tweaking the sound because of their reaction and how they feel about the records. We make that a real part of our music. It’s not like we go away and chisel away by ourselves and hide it and then release it. It’s like, ‘People are moving. People like it. This is a done record now.’”
The making of Cult Classics
The tracks on Cult Classics, like many of Joy Anonymous’ music, start by sampling the world around them. They tell us how they pride themselves by documenting everywhere they go and injecting that into their productions, “wanting them to be present in the record”.
Roland SP-404 MKII sampler used by Joy Anonymous. Image: @Sully
The first track on the album, Beezley’s Poem is an exciting example of this. The recording is a poem told by Beezley, a former security guard, to introduce the band at a club called Elsewhere in New York. We say former because Beezley lost his job after hyping up the crowd during a previous Joy Anonymous show at Terminal V festival in Edinburgh. Since then, he’s become part of their entourage, making regular appearances preaching poetry at their afterparties.
They go on to discuss their music production process, emphasising their use of samples from records but also sampling their own acoustic recordings, later looping them with a Roland SP-404 MKII sampler. Often they’ll use the likes of Soundtoys Decapitator – a “fun to use” saturation plugin – and FabFilter’s Simplon filter to zhuzh things up a bit.
Lou Curran of Joy Anonymous using the Roland SP-404 MKII sampler. Image: @Sully
They spent two weeks at musician and singer-songwriter Imogen Heap’s house in February 2022. Here, various instrumentalists popped in and together they’d all jam out “jazzy, guitar-y” music that sounded nothing like dance. Then, they’d re-sample the tracks they had made, re-contextualising them into their own distinct R&B-tinged dance sound with the help of a five-channel loop station. This was, they say, a whole new process.

They used this recording on How We End Up Here, a track that’s a perfect example of them “showing their working” – displaying the raw sample and then flipping it within the track to show transparently how it transforms. They sampled it like they would a “random soul sample”, but with their own “ingredients”. It’s wild. Counsell whips out his MacBook and plays the original recording to us, which sounds, for want of a better example, a Jamie Cullum song. Then he plays what this turned into, and the transformation is awesome.
Henry of Joy Anonymous playing the piano. Image: @Sully
After the foundations were set during those two weeks of sessions at Imogen Heap’s house, the record started to take shape on the road, with their live shows acting as their practice room – “a feedback loop”, as Curran says. This process went on for about a year and at the end, they realised they had an impactful, pretty-much-finished body of work.
“We managed to refine them and finish them by being on the road playing live, especially when we were opening up for Fred [Again..] – a bit less pressure. If you’re the support, you can try loads of these different versions, tweak it that night, and try it again the next night. You can react to how the crowd reacts. That was our feedback loop basically.”
Joy Anonymous jamming in Henry’s flat. Image: @Sully
It’s a testament to how skilled Counsell and Curran are that they were able to identify – with a laser-sharp focus – where tracks needed to be amended. And their output is prolific, too; they’re constantly creating. It’s no wonder, then, that Curran’s top piece of advice for producers and musicians is, drumroll, please: “fall in love with the process, not the destination”.
Counsell adds to this: “And don’t get stagnant in that process. Meeting other artists and other musicians who come from different schools of thought and combining them brings endless possibilities. It always keeps it exciting. I know a lot of great producers who just stay in their own room and make amazing sounds but I think working with a bunch of people is always going to bring great results.”
Sylvania turntable record player in Henry’s flat. Image: @Sully
A modular, unconventional and inclusive approach to their musical output, an incessant, admirable work ethic and an overall appreciation of creating joy through collective energy makes Joy Anonymous one of today’s hotly-tipped acts in dance music. Talking of dance, we highly suggest you put on your classics and have a little one to this, a brilliant second album by two radiant beings. Oh, and be sure to keep an eye on the tides of the Southbank.
Joy Anonymous’s second album, Cult Classics, is out now.
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