Whether your electronic music practice primarily works with hardware, software, or a mix of both, there's a good chance you've heard of Tom Hall. If not, you're almost certainly aware of projects and instruments that he's been involved with. Tom is perhaps most well-known for his work with Cycling '74: the team of folks behind Max/MSP. Logically, this extends into some crossover work with Ableton (especially in the Max for Live domain), but you'll also find Tom's work behind several well-known artists and instrument makers.

But beyond the work he does for others, Tom is also a killer audiovisual artist in his own right. In 2025, Tom released his latest studio record Trip Computer, after a three-year arc of live performances and refinement of a fully Max-based performance system. This journey is also chronicled in a compilation of archived live recordings, Boards 22_25, which was recently released in December. And speaking of said live performances, Tom always puts on an incredible show.

If you haven't heard the news: we're launching a new series of live events, Plastics Dept., here in our hometown of Los Angeles. We've booked Tom to headline our inaugural show in downtown LA at Coaxial Arts, and, in addition to several of us on staff being big Max-heads, we figured it'd be an excellent chance to interview him. We're incredibly grateful to Tom for exchanging some emails with us and sharing some valuable wisdom and experience across several intersections of musical technology and artistry. Enjoy the read, and maybe we'll see you at the show?

An Interview with Tom Hall

Perfect Circuit: Hello Tom! We're stoked to be speaking with you. Before we get into things, could you share a bit about yourself and your background for our readers who might not be familiar with you?

Tom Hall: Thanks for having me! I’m a Tasmanian/Australian-born audio-visual artist, though I’ve called Los Angeles home for quite a while now, 1/3rd of my life now, sheesh! My background is a mix of media arts and sound design—I actually started out studying in Australia and Japan, which eventually led me to create one of the first Australian Ableton Live user groups back in 2006 and one of the first in the world.

That community work snowballed into a career working at Cycling ’74 (almost 15yrs now), an Ableton Live & Max for Live alpha tester and I created the first original Max for Live educational series in 2011 with millions of views now. Over the last decade, I’ve been lucky enough to do R&D for hardware companies like Arturia, Moog, Eventide and more, and build custom tech for artists like Nine Inch Nails and many others. Currently, I juggle working full-time at Cycling ‘74, my personal audio-visual art practice and my role as a Professor at USC’s Thornton School of Music, where I teach Advanced Audio Synthesis, Performance Technology and Computer Music.

PC: You've worked with a variety of tools in the past, though you've stated in other interviews that Trip Computer is 100% made with Max. Presumably, this extends to the performances heard on Boards 22_25 as well. Given your relationship with Cycling '74, this seems obvious and natural—was this actually the case or a conscious decision on your part when entering this new artistic chapter in your life?

TH: I’ve worked with Max/MSP for well over 20 years now and used it in the studio and live sets years before I worked at Cycling ‘74, granted since I work with it on an almost daily basis it does make it easy for me to use as a tool.

I love playing live over anything else and over the years it just got more difficult to take hardware out to play live, and the second you have to fly that difficulty increases 10-fold. Post pandemic airlines have gotten even more stringent so flying with a single carry-on Pelican case, RME Baby Face, Melbourne Instruments Roto Controller and Launchpad Mini and some lights means I can avoid the migraine of the past, turn up and play at 110%.

I love hardware though and use it a lot - but these days it largely stays in the studio.

PC: I think Boards 22_25 is a unique glimpse into the iteration of musical ideas from one performance to the next, before (or after) they appear on a studio recording (or not). Especially in Max, where it is so easy to mix-and-match the synthesis, sequencing, and processing elements of patches. What are your metrics, subjective or objective, in determining what works, and the direction that an idea should grow into?

TH: I’m always considering the “cohesiveness” and the delivery. Even if the intention for the sound is to be abrasive I want the delivery to be smooth and intentional. Over the past 5 years I’ve worked really hard to ensure that I’m delivering both a “live” performance but also a balanced mix as accurately as I can while still being live, not the easiest thing to do in Max.

The audience is important to me, I like to see how they react, what makes people move and what do they respond to or talk to me about later. [Sometimes] something just doesn't work though, and rather than try to force it sometimes the best thing is to just retire it, maybe for good or salvage the idea/sound into something else entirely later.

PC: Do you archive versions of your patches in the same way you stash away audio recordings? Or is it a continuous flow of evolution and refinement?

TH: I absolutely archive, I can pull up stuff from decades ago and it’ll work, I could even walk out the door and play a 2015 set tonight exactly as it was left, although I'm not sure I’d enjoy it the same as I did back then.

I typically work on a month-by-month basis so each month has an ending state and that's archived in time and never altered again. I can revert to that state should I need to. I might reiterate with a version during the month but it’d only be if there's something major coming into/out of the system, like a new sequencing idea, synthesis engine etc. something that could potentially break my system in case I need to revert quickly.

WRT sound, each year on or around January 1st I start a folder called 20## [and] I have a few decades of folders these days full of sounds.

PC: Was there a distinct moment where you decided to direct the output of these performance patches into what would become Trip Computer? Is there a distinguishable difference—whether in patch construction, mindset, or otherwise—between your preparation for live performances compared to studio recordings?

I sent it off to Shawn Hatfield at AudibleOddities to master it, Sean did an incredible job. Then it went to ONYX Records, run by a bunch of mates I’ve made through music over the years, it felt really great to not just be doing a vinyl record for the first time but to be doing it with friends who I’ve admired for a long time, I was very happy with how it came out.

PC: Anyone who has seen you perform knows that it's not just about the music and sound, but visuals are also deeply woven into your live sets. And more recently, you've upped your game further for several Trip Computer shows by adding in custom lighting rigs and fog machines where possible. There's something special about transforming a show into an immersive experience for the audience, isn't there?

TH: Absolutely, the complete experience has always been really important to me. I’ve always felt that turning up and playing, but leaving the visuals, lights and other aspects of the space and experience to others without any dialogue can lead the show to be compromised. It takes a lot more work & planning but you can really transform space with even just a fog machine and some careful light programming.

Sound check is important, we know this, but what the visuals will be projected, what will the audience be looking at when you’re playing? Will that thing be cohesive or just some completely unrelated blinking light because the lighting tech felt a rush of blood, lol.

Needless to say I come from an arts background first, so visual elements and space/negative space have always been important to me, so that carries into my music and live performances.

PC: I've recently been reminded of Tarik Barri's concept of Birds while developing my own Max projects. I'd assume that your audiovisual performance patches are constructed from a holistic point of view, rather than tossing together disparate elements in the hopes that they all work together?

TH: Max & I are in some quasi long term relationship these days, it’s completely symbiotic at this stage. My wife recently pointed out that I must have my 10,000 hours with Max these days and I added it up with some room for error and realised I’ve easily clocked it and I’m well on the way to 20K.

Tarik’s great, I’d completely agree. My live set development which in turn becomes my studio based work too, generally is about “playability” first and foremost, I think of Max like an instrument, when I’m playing live with it I want to play, I’m careful these days not to get caught in the weeds dialing in 3 decimal place deep settings if that’s something that can be pre-set and forget.

But yes, sum of the parts, Trip Computer for example, I was playing ‘that’ period of my live Max setup for 6-8 months largely unmodified at a patch/object level apart from continually mixing, refining, dialing in sounds that are stored as a preset state. So what happens in a period like this; well I’m still developing stuff in Max, patchers, bpatchers, abstractions, ideas that can then come into and tried in the main system now before the 2026 shows start.

It’s kind of a fun period actually, not that the Trip Computer shows weren’t a blast, but now I’m entering a new experimental period where I can push the live setup further again.

PC: Max is, of course, an ideal environment for building out highly personalized interdisciplinary performance systems. Though this is not without the risk of blank canvas paralysis, getting sucked into debugging rabbit holes, or needlessly re-inventing the wheel. Now that you've been a heavy Max user for years, do you have tactics for keeping yourself on track and moving forward?

TH: I still get caught in “Max Holes” but these days I know better than to believe that the solution will come to me if I just grind all the way to 3-4am, lol. I recall too many times of doing that and going to bed defeated only to wake up with the solution already in my head, not even out of bed. I even solved a patching bug in my dreams once, lol.

I think it’s absolutely important for your own creativity, mental health, progression etc. to compartmentalize the process. Set aside “development” afternoons or mornings, and then “playing/making” where you just use the patch like an instrument, explore and fight the urge to unlock and edit, if you do get an idea write it down and save it for the “development time” and the same goes for “recording” time. Otherwise progress will just move at a glacial pace and may never get “finished”, “recorded”, “developed”.

Setting up time like this helps me focus without pressure, but also keeps it explorative and moving forward. Of course rules can be broken, time bent ;) and this may or may not work for others, but when working with something as open ended as Max some kind of plan is helpful, I have seen this work more often than not over the years.

PC: Beyond your personal artistry, teaching work, and all you do for Cycling '74, I know you've done some work beta testing, sound designing, and more for several companies making instruments and controllers. I've definitely seen your name appear several times in product manuals when researching products for my various roles here at Perfect Circuit. How does this work cycle back into influencing your art and patch design/interaction?

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TH: It’s a huge influence, whether it’s R&D on hardware, alpha/beta testing or sound design, sometimes I’ll take whatever it is and incorporate it, but also in the process of doing this work ideas will come to me, ideas for other types of synthesis, other ways to sequence or arrange sounds, and as soon as I can I’ll make a Max patch to capture that idea. I also get inspired by the sounds, often trying to produce them across several synths and domains, each synth/software etc. is always a little different.

It’s not always an immediate adaptation or integration, and sometimes it’s purely subconscious, but funnily I’ve caught myself enjoying a sound in a synth or software I’ve done work on in the past only to find that I designed the sound, ridiculous lol.

A lot of this type of work I think of as a creative extension, super-mini “releases”, not unlike making and releasing patches, I love seeing where they end up and develop further by others, used in music and so on.

PC: In addition to the established heritage of Max knowledge and resources that now go back decades, the last 15ish years have seen the introduction of gen (in its various forms), MC, Node.js integration, RNBO, the incorporation of Ableton DSP, and so much more into Max. How has it been for you to have played a role in some of these developments, and how have these new platforms impacted your personal artistry?

TH: I joined Cycling ‘74 just after the launch of gen~.

Being a part of all these excellent additions and improvements to Max has been incredible, there’s no denying that getting to be a part of their early development, testing, feedback and internal content development to support their public release doesn’t impact my own creativity. But in saying that the vast amount of updates and developments of the past 10-15 years is huge, keeping up and even trying to integrate it all into one's own work would be paralyzing, I have to be careful to stay focussed on my greater creative objective or I’d just be patching 100% the time (not that it’s a bad thing).

I definitely structure development phases or my work and release/performance/share phases, more now than ever.

PC: I'm personally a big fan of your Office Hours series with Cycling '74, which covers everything from the latest fun features in Max to interviews with artists and knowledge-sharing sessions with educators. Obviously, this is a great way to spotlight some of the incredible things folks are doing with Max—how has this series broadened your own perspectives in patching and art?

TH: It’s funny, this series in a lot of cases is me chatting with friends I’ve made over the last 20yrs, catching up on calls, these types of conversation with the Max community and beyond happen for me multiple times per week, they’re just not recorded and livestreamed, lol.

But there’s something about ‘putting it on tape’ that shifts up the context, it’s been really special and the response from the greater community has been excellent. I think patching in Max is often a pretty solace exercise, less so these days with all the communities, but still somewhat of a solo activity for the majority of the time. But getting to know that there’s others out there on the same journey, and how they tackle it is both enlightening, exciting and motivating, I too walk away from these streams motivated.

On a day-to-day basis I’m not sure the world generates more Max patches now than they did 15yrs ago, But we definitely have several new generations taking up Max for the first time and in our new content forward society Office Hours seems to have hit the mark.

PC: Finally, we're stoked to be bringing you into LA for the first show in our Plastics Dept. series on February 28th at Coaxial Arts. Care to drop any hints as to what folks might expect when they come out to see you perform?

TH: Coaxial holds a very special place in my heart, it’s been a cornerstone of Los Angeles experimental music, art and beyond for well over a decade now. I’ve seen some incredible performances there.

For me it’s always been a place to "experiment," try something new and see if it sticks or not, no need to play it safe so with that in mind and with Trip Computer behind me, I’ll be trying something different

I’ve got some new stuff planned both in the physical sense and new music, and the bill is stacked so I can’t wait.