Cycling 74's radiaL

Designed for live performance and loop creation 'in the moment', we take radiaL for a spin...

In the murky world of computer composition software, long-time Mac musicians may remember David Zicarelli. He created M, an algorithmic music composition program (originally published by Intelligent Software and later by Dr. T in the '80s), and he was the brain behind Opcode's Max, a graphical music programming language.

With the demise of the publishers, Zicarelli retrieved his rights and set up Cycling 74 to continue support and develop new software. Both M and Max are still available and one of Cycling 74's first new products was Pluggo, a collection of 74 plug-ins created with Max which originally sold for an amazing $74 (although it now contains over 100 instruments and costs $199).

Master of Max

radiaL - as funky David spells it -  as anyone familiar with Max may have guessed, was designed and programmed with Max. This is quite an achievement, although one suspects that a little advanced programming has taken place under the hood and it's doubtful that the average Max user could create anything quite as sophisticated.

Installation is easy and straightforward and radiaL is compatible with Mac OS 8.6 ot later and OX X. The program will run for 15 days and then needs to be registered and authorised using the slow and draconian Challenge and Response system.

Channel hopping

radiaL was designed as a performance instrument and to encourage loop creation in real time. The main part of the program is the Channels window which initially shows four loop displays which look like CDs. Each channel holds a single loop which can be controlled from the various sections of the window.

Although four loop displays appear on start-up, you can open up to 99 of them, or at least as many as your computer can handle. If you load several loops, radiaL automatically synchronises them on playback.

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