I’ve become interested in coding again. I coded in Basic when I first began using computers around the age of seven. You practically had to know how to code in order to use a computer in those days. When I was near 12 - 15 years old, I use to sit around and dabble in Turbo Pascal for hours on end. I had created an entire BBS system of my own. I’ve been finding nenewed interest in programming while working on a new Audesi website in PHP and setting it up to work with a database. I caught on easily and it was a lot simpler than I had imagined. I’ve been writing my html entirely by hand and using CSS style-sheets. Everything is up to web standards and the whole site can be redesigned by just editing the style-sheet. It will be the best website I’ve made thus far. Totally editable, without having to load up the files in an editor, edit them and re-upload them. The website will have a store where people can purchase digital downloads, CD’s and merchandise. So it will be nice. I’ll eventually be setting up a small production facility at the studio and begin manufacturing my own product.

I’ve been learning a lot about DSP (Digital Signal Processing). It mostly consists of mathematical algorithms. It too, was a much easier concept to grasp than I had previously thought, although on an entirely different level than web programming. It has become another thing within my grasp and therefore a new possibility. I have been working on the DSP replication of the Roland JP-8000 into software form. The JP-8000, being my first hardware synth, it formed a lot of the ideals of what I think a synth should be. I can program the JP with my hands behind my back. I love the sound of it’s filters, cross-modulation, super-saw, and even the feedback oscillator. I like how the waveforms can be warped into different shapes by adding or subtracting the fundamental harmonic, or by other means using the CTRL1 and CTRL2 settings. On top of that, you can throw an LFO on top of that to modulate those controls of the oscillators. I’ve been learning to code in C++, so that I can conceptualize the algorithms into a VST instrument of my own and then release it so that other people can benefit from it as well. I’ve been considering going to school for a Computer Science degree to learn coding as well as DSP, which would encompasses a lot of Electrical Engineering knowledge. I’ve probably used mathematics more in the last few months than the entire time I’ve been out of high school. I’m happy I’ve found a practical use for maths in my life.

I’ll be in the studio tomorrow to get some work done. I’m trying to divide my time in useful ways. I have so many things that I want to do, but it never seems there’s enough time. It’s hard to do everything yourself, but perhaps it will be much more fulfilling in the end when everything is in it’s proper place.  I’m trying to write more, for my own sake; I’m trying to get more thoughts out of my subconscious and into the air. While practising piano, I need to concentrate a bit more to the intimate details of velocity, duration, counterpoint and better sight-reading.

I just barely finished reading a book called ‘Blink’ and have now gone onto a book by the same author, Malcolm Gladwell, called ‘The Tipping Point’. It’s a book about Social Epidemics. It’s pretty interesting. Malcolm talks about people in society called Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen. Some people have personalities so expressive that if you put them in a room with another (less expressive) person, and the highly expressive person will actually affect the mood of the less expressive person. While the less expressive person may have gone in the room sad, or somewhat depressed, if the other, more expressive person was happy, they will both come out of the room happy. That would actually suggest that mood can be contagious and that mood is affected from the outside in. Reversely, if the higher expressive person were depressed, he would influence the other persons mood similarly. There have been scientific studies of this and Psychologists call this expressive group of people, ‘Senders’.

I’ve read of an experiment that was conducted with a group of people who all wore headphones and listened to the same radio broadcast. They were split into three different groups. One group nodded their head up and down, or a ‘Yes’ motion. The other test group sideways, in a ‘No’ motion. The third group acted as a control group, which didn’t nod their head at all. They only listened. First, a song played and then an advertisement talking about raising college tuition from $578 to $769. Absurdly enough, the group of people who had nodded there heads in the ‘Yes’ motion, when asked if they believed that tuition should be raised, they came up with reasons why it would be a good idea to raise the tuition. While the group that had nodded no, they believed tuition should definitely be lowered below $578, to something like $468. The control group believed that $578 was sufficient and should be kept where it was. It’s insane to think that people’s brains actually react in this way when receiving subconscious stimuli of this nature, but I don’t have to think to hard about it before realising that when people are at home listening in such a passive manner, they’re so relaxed that they’re brain is in a venerable state of influence. Sort of scary, isn’t it?