Try to think of your projects, ideas, and reasons why you actually want to learn Max and why you bought this book. Take the project apart in your head or think of some bits of code necessary to achieve the whole idea if you put them together the right way. In what environments (Max, MSP, Jitter, or something else) would these be written? Try to think of cases where it's not as clear as in a simple synthesizer.
Think about a project that incorporates audio and video. What processes are done in which environment? Draw a simple flowchart and think about where it's best to go from Jitter to MSP or the other way around.
Open our MSP counter/processing patch from the beginning of this chapter. Go inside [p counter] (a subpatcher, we'll learn about this shortly) by double-clicking on it. Try to think about what's happening in there and why it's necessary.