New Beginnings

It’s been so long since I’ve posted here or updated this site I almost forgot how the WP back-end works, yikes!  I hereby acknowledge I have been remiss and offer a formal mea culpa.  I have projects and experiments on my desk that warrant a post or three, some musical discoveries, and lots of news to share.  I won’t be able to cover all of that now, but I have some exciting news I’d like to share.

First, I couldn’t be happier to announce that I have been appointed as a full-time Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at Yale!  I have already completed the move from the Department of Music to my new office in Arther K. Watson Hall.  You can see that it is already cluttered and in need of a cleanup, which means I’m right at home and work has begun.

My primary teaching responsibilities will center around two classes that are required for the Music track of the Computing and the Arts major.  The classes focus on advanced programming techniques in the areas of algorithmic music and digital sound.

Additionally, there is a beautiful studio on the first floor of AKW where labs can be taught, recordings made and processed, and four workstations await students to realize assignments and projects.  Those machines will be replaced with the four beautiful, new Dell XPS machines that I was able to purchase for the labs thanks to a generous teaching equipment grant made available through CS.

These machines will have an updated version of the Open Music Initiative image we have used for the last two years in the Department of Music: Ubuntu 16.04 with a low-latency kernel, the KXStudio audio packages, and several other customizations.  Additionally, the funding allowed me to trick-out the stations with new MIDI keyboards, monitors, Focusrite audio interfaces, headphones, and more.  When we say “digital audio workstation” we mean it.  😀

Over the course of the year I hope to recruit new members to OMI in an effort to create a culture in CS that not only explores and extols open hardware and software for music coding and production, but acts as a support system for the students of the computer music courses as well.  Between CS, Engineering (right next door) and Music/Art, there are bridges to strengthen and amazing projects to be undertaken.  I am really looking forward to contributing to an environment where artistic and scientific work, as well as inter-departmental collaboration are a reality.  As they say in Japan, 頑張ります!  (I will do my best!)

In addition to my move to CS, I have been contributing on a semi-regular basis to LibreMusicProduction.  This is why I have been posting less here.  Because of the difference in readership, contributed articles there reaches a wider audience.  I have meant to link to those articles here, but I have been remiss as you know.  There are a lot of fantastic articles there, tutorials on software from SuperCollider ( 😉 ) to Ardour and PureData, and interviews with musicians, inventors and programmers all of whom contribute in one way or another to the growing open music community.  I hope you will spend a little time there and if you have suggestions for improvements leave comments or suggestions.  We usually respond same-day and suggestions are very often realized just as fast.

Okay, that’s it for now.  I have a few projects that I need to post about.  Hopefully I can write those up before 2017.  Keep your eyes peeled…