Atoms

Maths produces a voltage-controlled triangle LFO by self-cycling one channel with SUM patched to Both CV

Maths Signal IN accepts a gate to generate an ASR envelope whose sustain level tracks the gate voltage

Maths SUM output adds or subtracts control signals using attenuvertor polarity

MATHS Trigger Input makes a fixed 0-to-10V transient, while Signal Input makes a sustaining envelope that tracks gate level

MATHS Vari-Response continuously morphs the function slope from logarithmic through linear to exponential

Max executes right-to-left so cold inlets are initialized before the hot inlet fires, avoiding stale-value bugs

Max for Live devices come in three types — Audio Effect, Instrument, and MIDI Effect — each with distinct signal roles

Max Overdrive and Audio Interrupt tighten timing of MIDI and metro events against the signal vector

Max's transport object provides a global master clock syncing objects to musical time values

Max/MSP is a graphical dataflow language whose objects are wired with virtual patch cords, like a modular synthesizer

Max/MSP's cycle~ object generates a continuous cosine wave at a specified frequency

Media facades use building-scale LED or light matrices, not projectors, as a reactive audiovisual output surface

Melodic contour (the shape of rising and falling) is what a listener remembers more than the exact notes

Melodic dictation combines key-context listening with sequencing: the listener transcribes a short melody as scale degrees

Melodies are built from motives (short rhythmic/melodic cells) grouped into phrases

Melodies built from one or two short motives achieve coherence through variation rather than invention

Miami bass doubles snare and clap on the same pattern, layering a rimshot, for a hybrid backbeat sound

Miami bass groove uses 16th-note hat rests to create a jerky disjointed feel

Miami bass percussion (zaps, rimshots, 80s hits) is placed to avoid the hat's gaps and to play around the bassline

Micro-looping tiny windows inside a longer sample disguises the source and creates glitch texture

Microhouse places glitch clicks and noise inside a four-on-the-floor house framework

Microtiming — small per-hit push/pull offsets of a few milliseconds — is what separates a sampled break from a programmed one

Mid-Side recording decodes to stereo via matrix multiplication: L = M+S, R = M-S

Mid-to-late 1990s software democratised music production and enabled laptop performance and live coding as new techno practices

MIDI carries digital performance data — notes, tempo, position — over one cable across up to 16 channels

MIDI Channel Voice Messages carry per-note performance data including Note On, Control Change, and Pitch Bend

MIDI Clock sends 24 pulses per quarter note so slaved devices can synchronise tempo to a master sequencer

Mimicking the TR-909 accent means boosting velocity on all elements landing on accent beats

Minimal motion is a single well-timed easing-curve drift — one move is the whole event

Minimal techno is less afrocentric than minimal house and focuses on middle frequencies rather than deep bass

Minimal techno uses two contrasting approaches: skeletalism (few sounds) and massification (many layered sounds)

Minimal techno's parallels to Reich/Riley/Young phase and drone music may be an accidental artifact of loop-based tools

Minimal techno's signature quality is how deeply it explores repetition rather than conventional development

Mix against a reference track and check on multiple systems before release, because release is irreversible

Mix collapses an array of signals to mono; Splay spreads them across stereo

Mix folds a multichannel array to mono; Splay spreads it evenly across a stereo field

Mixing at a consistent calibrated monitoring level reduces loudness bias and builds reliable balance instincts

Mixing at different levels reveals different problems; final balances work best made at low volume

Mixing is subtractive by nature: good balance comes from removing conflicts, not adding more

Mixing on a single small speaker reveals balance problems that stereo nearfields hide

Mixing several wave tables at once with modulated weights lets a wavetable oscillator morph timbre continuously

Mixing the loudest, densest section first sets the headroom ceiling the rest respects

Mixolydian mode is a major scale with a flattened 7th degree, giving it a folk-rock character and removing the leading-tone tension

Modulargrid is the standard tool for planning a Eurorack system — it tracks cost, power draw, HP, and module placement before purchase

Modulating a low filter's cutoff with an envelope while resonance is high adds spectral movement and bite to each bass note

Modulating a signal at audio rates generates new sideband frequencies in the spectrum

Monitor-output EQ cannot reliably correct room-mode colorations

Montage creates meaning by juxtaposition: image A cut with image B produces meaning C that neither image alone contains

Motif development turns one short idea into a whole track's melody via transpose, invert, retrograde, augment, and fragment

Motorbass's Pansoul (1996) established the sampled filtered-loop formula that defined French house

MouseX and MouseY turn cursor position into live control signals, making a synth playable in real time

mouseX, mouseY and pmouseX, pmouseY give current and previous cursor positions for interaction

Moving a stereo mic rapidly during recording creates a disorienting, nauseating image shift

Moving chord tones across octaves (octave displacement) improves voice leading and creates stepwise melodies from otherwise static chords

MP3 encoding quality is maximized by starting from the highest-quality source and filtering the extreme top end

Multi-producer albums are the hardest to master: forging sonic cohesion from tracks with different tonal characters

Multiplying a single generative element by many instances reveals emergent system behavior

Multiplying vertex positions by 0 collapses geometry to a single point, which the GPU silently discards — an efficient way to hide inactive instances

Music aimed at home listening rather than the dance floor creates different aesthetic demands

Music feedback-loop and visual feedback-trail are the same self-feedback mechanism — a signal fed back into itself with less-than-one gain — expressed in two domains