On 2014-10-16 07:08:04 +0000, Lostgallifreyan said:

Oregonian Haruspex wrote in
:

Writing software is generally one of the most frightfully boring tasks
that one can possibly do.

True, but the payoff is amazing at times. I'm coding a phase modulation
synthesiser based on Yamaha's DX7, with months full on, then slightly less
months full-off, as the only way to get free of it, and to come back at it
and see it as another person would, because I work entirely alone. Now, it si
tough, for sure, never mind 'Doctor's hours', try 'Edison's hours', sometimes
missing out whole days and nights of rest to see somethign through. Nothing
has ever imposed discipline on me like my want to make this happen, I taught
myself more than a childhood of schooling, by magnitudes, not multiples.

Now, the payoff... WHen I got past basic principles of audio and MIDI on a
PC, logarithms and bitshifts and lookup tables foe speed, etc, designed my
own realtime interpolator for MIDI data and got the pitch control engine
taking linear signals for log domain calculations, the response of pitch over
ten octaves is swift and clean, NO digital zipper noise whatsoever despite a
mere 7 bits avalaible to direct the sweep, regardless of speed. MIDI is
usually scorned for failure to acheive this, but I did it, and you'd be hard
pressed to find a commercially available synthesier that can do this. I have
a good 'analog' simulation, and a realtime variable non-linear compression
and expansion method capable of extremely realisting imitations of horn and
string sounds. This instrument has polyphony and multitimbrality enough to
allow composition for a small symphony orchestra.

It's too off-topic for me to go on here any further, but I hope this is
enough to convey the reality: that writing software, while almost
insufferably tedious at times, can lead to long moments of exhilaration like
orbital flight, it feels like achieving the building of a space shuttle in a
back yard. To be able to play a moderately realistic piano, knowing that
every part of its existence except the host machine and the coding language
used, is beyond parallel, at least for me. I think if Bach or Beethoven had
been sent a time machine with a message to the effect that they could have
had this, they'd have got in and things might have been very diferent for
music. On the other hand, it is because of what they did do that this is
possible at all...

I appreciate the sentiment and I have in fact been excited about
writing software. I am enjoying myself tremendously now, though with
Mathematica the goal isn't exactly to create self-contained
applications, but is more akin with exploration. I am an amateur
musician myself and I really enjoy tinkering with MIDI. To my ear the
zipper noise as you change envelopes and whatnot is quite
synth-dependent. Anyway good luck and have fun!