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.

In "Real-Time"

... as opposed to that "fake" time I was using before, right? Heh.

Anyway, I'm pretty excited today because the music program I've been writing just took a huge leap forward in it's capabilities. It is becoming a "real-time" sequencer. In a nutshell, I've coded a synthesizer that operates on vector data instead of midi data, which is really cool, because up until now hearing what was drawn in the program required compiling all the tracks into waveforms and playing back the wave files as compiled. Now, however, there is no need to compile each track into a wave file because the new synthesizer code is fast enough to compile the wave while it's playing back. So from a user-interface perspective, all you have to do is draw and hit the play button to hear what you drew, instead of the three step process of drawing, compiling, then playing back. Fun!

There's tons more that can be done with the synthesizer and how it interfaces with the main program, too! All in good time.

Keeping it "real",
Andy F.

To open source or not to open source?

To open source or not to open source? That has been the question, and after much deliberation I've decided to open the source.

There are many reasons for and against open sourcing but in my mind all the reasons boil down to the same choice. Do I choose God or the world? God says "open source" and the world says "keep it for yourself and get rich". Fortunately, I've had some experience with what each choice promises and know that God's promise is trustworthy while the world's is not. The funny thing about it, though, is that God's promise often delivers on both his and the world's promises while the world's promise ultimately fails to deliver on anything, including it's own promises. Even funnier still is that, until last week and the decision to open source, I was still considering both. What is there to consider? The choice is an obvious one, because as Linda says... "You ARE rich!"

So now I make preparations for opening the source, which starts with the odious task of documenting the code.

Why "Triune" Artistry?

--------------------------------------------
From the song "American Pie" written by Don McLean...
- "... the three men I admire most, the father, son, and the holy ghost. They caught the last train for the coast. The day the music died."
--------------------------------------------

There are multiple reasons for the name "Triune Artistry", the foremost being I believe in a triune God and feel He/They have led me every step of the way in my quest for creative genius. That alone would not have been "cool" enough for me to name this blog after it, though, because my sense of creativity often demands double entendre, so when I see a quadruple entendre, I can't resist.
So what are the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th meanings of this quadruple entendre? Well, there's actually only 3 meanings to the entendre but that in itself being "tri" makes it a quadruple entendre. Therefore we can immediately pare it down to just a 2nd and 3rd meaning, with the first being the aforementioned Trinity itself.
The 2nd meaning, though, is due to an awesome piece of non-fiction called "The Mind of the Maker" written by the mystery novelist Dorothy Sayers. In this book Sayers makes an analogy between the Trinity and creative expression, and being an artist, this book led me to a whole new understanding of how the Trinity can be perceived on a human level while at the same time leading me to a greater appreciation for art as a resonance of God. In the interest of brevity I'll leave the 2nd meaning's full exploration open ended for now.
Lastly, the 3rd meaning is due to the three different disciplines I'm currently employing in my creative process (another "3", who's up for a quintuple entendre?), that being sound, motion-picture and computer programming. All these disciplines make me feel like a renaissance man, which is appropriate since the world is going through changes of a pace and type similar to that era.

Stay tuned,
Andy Fillebrown

...and we're off!

...or should I say "on", this being my first blog and all.

No keen insights or witty observations today since time does not allow for now, so this first post will have to serve as a test and not much else.