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Wednesday, 28 January 2004

5 Questions ::

Five questions from Keith Snyder (reordered):

1. Do you have a coherent guiding philosophy for music software?

My job is to write software that enables other people to write music software. I don’t write many audio applications any more, just test code, or quick hacks (for example, I have a Unix command-line tool that will record multiple audio files from my 828 so I can capture an improvisation without having to launch Logic—or while I’m playing one of Logic’s software synths).

When I do write music software, it’s almost always from an urge to create a tool that I would like to use myself. I was fortunate to have a job for 12 years (Opcode) where most of the projects I worked on appealed to that urge. It also seems to turn out that if I make something I find useful, someone else will find it useful, too. But there’s a danger of engineer’s myopia when it comes to designing software, seeing it from the inside instead of the outside. In the end, one has to listen to the end users and know what problems they’re trying to solve with their tools.

3. I remember testing homebrew MIDI-over-the-phone jamming software with you during the heyday of PAN. Do you still write creative little apps for your own fun?

Yes, my hard disk has always been strewn with little experimental projects in various stages of completion, though I’m not as impulsive to jump into tool-writing mode now as I was when I was younger; I try to step back and ask myself, would I really rather spend my free time programming, instead of writing and playing music?

I still choose to do some “recreational programming” sometimes—for example, I used a free library as the basis for a system that builds this website, and I’ve posted a few things that are polished enough (mostly because they’re so simple!) here.

2. Everybody probably asks you about music software. What enthusiasm does nobody ask you about?

Sex. (Then again, what’s to say about it? :-)

But seriously, I’m fortunate to have a few close and quite inquisitive friends, so I can’t think of anything that no one asks me about.

My friend Justin called this afternoon, having just left Disney World. He observed that some people there were having perhaps as much fun as they would ever have in their lives. He wondered how to help people realize that they’re like him, “self-contained, portable fun factories,” (as I dubbed him), and he asked me for ideas. We didn’t come up with any concrete answers, but we had an enthusiastic conversation about that—and about going snorkeling together in Key West next week.

I’m fascinated by the unknown. How does the mind work? Why are some days like fairy tales, too good to be true, and others like Kafka stories? Every discovery in modern physics seems to raise as many new mysterious questions as it answers. Is the universe a hologram? Are there parallel universes?

4. What practical use, if any, does religion have in life?

If I fully and honestly examine the workings of my mind, I have to admit that there is very little that I know for an absolute certainty to be true. The rest is belief.

What is belief? From dictionary.com: believe—"to have faith, confidence, trust;” “to have an opinion; think.” Believing is one thing. But what do we know for sure?

I’ve seen a few copies of a bumper sticker around the SF Bay Area: “don’t believe everything you think.” (A wise friend suggested that “don’t believe anything you think” was better.)

So, if by “religion” you mean a set of prefab beliefs we can pick up from a book, friend, or “religious authority,” I find no use for it. But if you’re referring to a dedication to separating truth and reality from the presumptuousness of belief—to me, that is more valuable than anything.

I consider Einstein to have been a religious man; he had a sense of cosmic awe and apparently, his curiosity about the universe motivated his work. Yet he turned established belief systems on their heads.

5. Who’s the last person who really amazed you, musically?

Beethoven. Would you believe I’d never listened to his Ninth Symphony before last month? (Oh well, he never listened to it either! except in his head!) I was between the edge of tears and crying for joy all the way through the chorale.

Thanks, Keith!

RULES:

1. Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
2. I will respond; I’ll ask you five questions.
3. You’ll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.
4. You’ll include this explanation.
5. You’ll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.

References:
Change the world ( 2 February 2004)

<< Scribe, Colorist

2004 > January

Bus automation in Logic >>

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