In tune

A few days ago I discovered MusiCAD was rendering its wave files out of tune. It was in tune with itself so I didn't notice it until I tried to match the files up with waves made by an external program, only to discover MusiCAD was off by more than a half step. After an incredibly strange and mind-boggling bug hunt I did finally find the problem and MusiCAD is now in tune with the rest of the world. Interestingly, this bug parallels recent occurrences in my life and faith. In a lot of ways I've spent my life feeling like I was out of tune with the world, and more importantly, God. I was never able to put my finger on the reasons why until about a month ago when I put a lot of thought into programming interfaces. What came out of those thoughts is very interesting to me and may be useful to others so I'll put it into words as best as I can...

If you think of yourself as a body, a mind and a spirit, then those elements can also be thought of as three separate interfaces with God. We aren't always forced to use those interfaces with God but we are strongly encouraged to because God knows it's good for us and He loves it when we do, and as anybody that has used all three interfaces with God at the same time can tell you, the experience is amazing!

Interestingly, though, we only interface with each other through our bodies. A direct connection from one person's mind or spirit to another person's mind or spirit may be possible, but it is very rare and is often terrifying because we can't trust each other to connect on those levels and we really wouldn't want other people reading our minds anyway since there's a lot going on in there that we don't want others to use against us. Only with God can we safely use all three interfaces.

Fortunately, much of what goes on in the mind and spirit is visible on the body so we're not completely disconnected on those two levels. Seeing the effects of the mind and spirit manifested in the body is what computer programmers would call "read only" as in you can see what's going on in someone's mind by what is shown on their body but you can't directly enter that person's mind to read it fully or make changes to it. To make changes to someone's mind you must use your body to communicate to the other person and the other person must allow their mind to be changed by that communication. It's an inefficient way of doing things but it's much safer than just allowing everybody direct access (just imagine the horror of someone being able to maliciously "hack" into your brain).

What's really awesome about the three interfaces is that in the perfect world made available to us by the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus, we will be able to interface with each other using all three interfaces. Not only that, but the interfaces will be wide open and nothing will need to be held back. Can you imagine that! No wonder Moses was glowing when he came down from the mountain.

By defining things this way I've come to many realizations regarding why I felt dissonance in my life and now that things are a bit clearer for me and my interactions with the world are more defined, I'm finally able to start taking the steps necessary to get into tune.

3 months later...

Alot has happened in the last 3 months so here's the synopsis.

- Didn't really release MusiCAD. Pulled the preliminary releases off the site completely because...
- Discovered the X3D file format specification and 3D browsers that read X3D files (Octaga being the only one that plays mp3's).
- Retooled MusiCAD to output the score in X3D (thus making them viewable in Octaga).
- Started uploading 3d scores/audiosculptures to my site.

... which brings us up to last Friday (2 days ago) when I re-discovered what I'm now calling parametric counterpoint.

I'm not even going to try and describe what parametric counterpoint is because I haven't thought about it long enough to be able to put it into words, but it has to do with composing in pitch-bends and the relationships that are created in time when bending notes at various angles. It's theoretically intense, it sounds good, and it's easy to implement with MusiCAD since it's all based on simple trigonometry which is inherent to AutoCAD. Check this sculpture out for the first rough example I've put together.

I could do a lifetime of work on parametric counterpoint alone, but the most exciting aspect of it is the possibility of unifying microtonality with the 12 tone western scale that I'm already well versed in. I will be making several attempts at it this week and posting the result on audiosculptures.com.

MIT Lectures on Computer Science

...so I was wandering around the net the other day and stumbled into 20 videos of MIT lectures on the subject of computer science. Interesting stuff.

I'm finding I can actually follow what they're saying and keep up with the subject matter which makes me feel smart (finally) because I've been grubbing around the MIT sites for a while now and most of it is way over my head. They must be a first semester lecture series, or something, because they start the first one assuming you know absolutely nothing about the subject and everything that follows builds only on what is in previous lectures.

Problem now is I want to rewrite MusiCAD again with all this new knowledge, lol.

MusiCAD version 0.0 is complete.

It's almost too much to fathom for me, but after many years of programming trials and tribulations the first publicly usable version of my music program is finished ten hours ahead of my 1 month old self-imposed deadline of December 1st (10 hours ahead after 7 years of programming, lol)!

I will be testing and documenting in December in anticipation of the January 1st open-source release so there is much more work to be done, but, wow! I can't believe it's come this far and is as excellent as it is. It has already exceeded what I thought was possible all those years ago when the idea first germinated and it is much faster than I ever thought it could be. I'm already "walking" around virtually in my latest scores and it's still only scratching the surface of what will be possible down the road. Amazing!


Let's hear it for perseverance and faithfullness.
And let's hear it for God, the creator of creators.

Andy F.

Anticipation.

Anticipation is a musical term but the more common non-musical definition is what I'm experiencing at the moment. As each day brings us closer to the January 1st release of MusiCAD, I'm finding it harder and harder to sleep. It looks beautiful, sounds beautiful and is beautifully easy to use. If anybody knows of a way to make it smell beautiful, too, let me know, heh.

Here's a quick pic I took of MusiCAD in action yesterday...

Youtube video generating some interest.

Check this guy out...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhhbOw_qdK4

He saw my video on youtube.com and sent a message. He's got a bunch of stuff posted and has been working on it for a long time (since the 70's it looks like). Cool stuff!

I've also reconnected with Dave Keenan this past week. Dave and I connected in an online microtonal forum and worked on a musical 3d spreadsheet years ago called the Tumbling Dekany. He's doing some cool stuff now, too. Google "keenan choob" to see the tubular guitar he makes and check out his Sagittal notation idea.

I'm still head to the grind-stone coding for the January 1st realease so you probably won't see much activity until after then. Stay tuned, though. It's worth the wait.

Riches, I Need Not...

...nor man's empty praise.

This week has been a lifttime paradigm shift. God is so good, Hallelujah!!! enough said.