Mental Map of Paper Topics

I had a dream, I was looking for a paper topic.  First, I was looking for my computer, to do some programming, then I gave up because it was all the way on the westside.  Then I was wandering on the streets of North Baltimore, trying to figure out how to use my time before picking up my son at the daycare.  Walked by a funny conversation in the street, on "what crickets eat" versus what other small animals eat, like frogs.  I gave up on picking up my son early at the daycare, and I went to the public library.  There I decided I was looking for a book, one that I already had: "Music in Greek and Roman Culture, by Giovanni Comotti".  Wandering through the mouldering stacks, I gave up on finding this tome, and then decided to at least sit down at one of the nice windows terminal computers and type some text.  Searching the library, most computers were used.  Some ice hockey dudes were eating subs at one.  Likewise, lacrosse chicks were gossiping over sprained ankles at another.  One had some computer code on it but its user was absent, I imagine he had long red hair.  Actually many computers had projects going but users absent; I interpret this is a metaphor for my own multiple projects at various stages of fermentation or fallow.  A few students, perhaps chemistry majors, were typing furiously at microsoft word.  What were they saying, it obviously wasn't facebook but how can you write a paper so fast without taking it personally?  I guess you can always write a letter to your boyfriend as an official microsoft document too...  Searching the whole library, I could not find a terminal.  Until I almost gave up and was just about out the door, dwelling on its threshold where the office plants are in the tiled atrium, near the help desk; this is where I spied one free computer, that no one had claimed because it was probably to close to the aging librarians at checkout.  I thought, maybe I should ask these librarians for a hard diskette, like from the nineties.  Like in a dream, one showed up right in front of the computer; I didn't need to ask for it!  So I sat down, no excuse but to type: I googled "Ancient Greek Music" and got some results that were in Italian, in Greek.  Now this is where the dream ends, because it was a useful dream, the kind that is a process to a waking state of new knowledge.  I didn't even have to type anything into that computer in the public library.  The dream was about giving up, not deciding, letting computers and books go fallow,  listening to the subconscious environment, and creating a Mental Map of neighborhood streets and public library to wander in, so I could wake up with a paper topic: "The Application of Ancient Music to Electronic Music".  Chapters:

1. Personal History, making musical instruments inspired by the ancient ones.  On misinterpretation: we truly have no "recordings" of the ancients, and why this is important.
2. Ancient Music and analog synthesis.  Sounds to imitate nature, such as crickets, frogs.  Lessons on the platonic way to play a synth.
3. Ancient Music and computer music.  Tunings as theorized and transmitted by the ancients: Plato, Pythagoras, Archilochus.  Misinterpretation part II: Kathleen Schlesinger, Harry Partch.

On Creating a "Game"

I have to write a "game".  A computer game to be exact.  A squishable computer game to be super exact.  One that gives the ethos of Mario to my new product, the Shnth.  You see, Mario was the game that came with the console, nintendo.  MikeyWalker, as you shall see this game is called, is the game that comes with the console, the shnth.  Now I will begin by disclaiming that this article will be derivation heavy.  In fact, every word or symbol is to be examined historically, strictly.  First, the back story is "Mario", from "Mars, the god of war"; that is appropriate because usually, up until the computer game "myst", games are all about warfare.  Mario headbutts and stomps, but it is basically war against koopas.  Also part of the back story is "nintendo", meaning, "the way of waiting patiently for heaven".  A company established way back in 1889, when it did not have computers, but instead painted cards, hanafuda, for playing games.  The cards were pretty and flowery, but the game was in fact based on probability and other things useful things for Mario.  Also, the idea of painted cards was reincarnated in Macintosh's hypercard stack idea, and in general the idea of buffering graphics. 
But mostly i am sitting on the porch, still, asking the question, "what is a game?".  It has a player, who usually would sit in the middle, who punches monsters, no?  What is a monster?

Monstro Monstrare Monstravi Monstratus

Monster, of course, comes from latin.  It simply means: to show.  Or, the idea that a monster is a physical manifestation, "a showing" of an abstract fear.  Probably the first incarnation of "monster" was in Pinocchio, whose final challenge was Monstro the whale.  Monstro actually was not a villian in that he did not eat those who were helpless; he needed to eat food to survive. At Shbobo, our goal is not to show you fear, but to show you synthesis and perhaps some quantum mechanics.  So, this term, "monster", can in fact be repurposed here.  It will mean, some sort of operator that MikeyWalker can punch to resonate a synthetic tone. 
Punching, unfortunately, cannot be eliminated.  it is the ultimate squishable violent action.  Unlike a gun, which is triggered by binary action, punching can be hard, soft, jiggly, etc.  The energy of punching is transferred through MikeyWalker's toonhands into the "monster", whom we shall describe more of.

Chubes 

Mikey's enemies are chubes.  That means that they are composed of hard edges, vertices, in a quadrangular arrangement.  Quadrangles: square, rectangle, parallelogram, trapezoid, rhombus, and of course, the kite.  These can all be seen as rovibrational squishes of the square or rectangle.  Rovibrational implies that the worldview seen by Mikey can be rotated, but that the monsters walk on cartesian paths.  Mikey is a nomad, and an atom.  His enemies dwell on the striations of his world.  It is a series of library rooms, each containing generated chubes.  Chubes are square, whilst Mikey is organoform:

The goal is to punch the chubes in rhythm with their natural resonance, derived from their shape, width and thickness.  Then they fall over and moulder there, becoming an edible shroom of recycled data for Mikey to grow with.  You see, the analogy is that of humans always striving to be more than their machine, a la the Matrix.  But here, we not only conquer the machine, we can eat it after our allies the fungus reprocess it.  Vis a vis fungi that can eat oil, PCBs. 

"On any particular axis..."

So goes a line from Feymann's introduction to physics, about quantum spin.  You see, spin is integral no matter what axis you measure it on, as proven in the SternGorlach experiment.  That was to be the key to how Mikey works without openGL.  As of august, 2013, I was to write this game exclusively in Juce, with monsters as a simple square component that resonates in width and height.  But due to overtaxing of CPU, application of AffineTransform is out of the question, also in light of the fact that CPU is generating synthesizer sounds from each monster: showing us the sound of the enemy.  So, no monsters are tilted.  But this contrasts with the firstperson idea of Mikey, who waddles through the world rovibrationally, inducing that the world must rotate around him.  Two solutions: use openGL and do a smart mesh of vertices for the worlds of chubes encountered; or keep chubes always in the normal axis and read them as a quantum experimenter does: as a probability wave in the axis in question.  Would bring up some strange physics, but that is our goal at Shbobo, no?  Basically would have the broken nineties computer game feel of things stuck to the x and y axis, with no GPU unit installed. 

Conclusion

Either use SDL, a lightweight C framework, and openGL 2d meshes for a classical MikeyWalker program, or Juce and no GL for a radical, but broken seeming quantum MikeyWalker.  He must also be able to upload his theme to the shnth: transcribe Mario's theme with its intense quintuplet syncopation and mutate based on the organoform:martian:rectilinear motif.
All worlds must be scriptable: they have a moon.  Is Lua a good language?  It seems so, if I were to do what I was told, that Lua is good.  It is compact, and I listen to other's opinions.  I guess Ruby would be too big, because rooms of chubes don't really need radical OOP.  Lua means moon.   We'll leave it at that for the moment, and come back to this as development progresses.  I guess I'll leave with a few keywords of files on my desktop: SoManyJaggedShards, an "abstract game" by Neil Moody, that uses openGL and SDL with many rotations and object oriented "monsters"; lua; Juce; SDL; chubes use the wave equation or harmonic oscillator; worlds use the hanafuda concept mixed with the idea of "moons". 

Perspexed Alive

PB::PA
Reprinted from Sejayno blog,  October Ninth, 200nine

It was an early fall in our fair city of Baltimore.  My knees had already begun to ache in their manner which was characteristic of the colder nights and rubrefacted sumach leaves of my autumnal front yard.  My wife, too, had begun her celestially timed plaints of “cold, cold” in the middle of the night in the middle of her dreams.  It seemed the perfect time for a feast of dusky and gothic poetry by our patron saint Monsieur P__, who has been corporeally absent for at least 100 years but now still here with us in spirit, as a sort of phantasm du consensus; morphic resonances  abound in the ravenous burgundy costumes of street arabbers selling purple grapes, or the gothic strains of strange avant-garde organs wisping out the windows like purple haze from the chimney pipes of so many stoned and paranoid brain-skulls of our city of languishment.  And the ravenous crows congregated in so many sycamore trees in the dilapidated graveyards tucked down by the river, accessed by the train-tracks by hobos and bums and me, on a mission driven by my en-purpled darkened brain.  The crows, looking like black spots stinging the skeletal white sycamores, and speaking their hoarse caws as I walk in the abandoned quarry, the quarry where wolf dives like a manatee to search for thrown daggers, treasure, and other macabre implements of abandoned urbanity. I was just back from a walk in these woods when my good companion M__ visited my hovel on Bentalou street, for the purpose of a tandem journey out to the oriental grocer at the rim of the town, via combustion engine.  Driving through the dense forests at the suburbs, no doubt where highwaymen are dwelling in the shade, celebrating some Ravens victory with burgundy ale, we reflected on the truly gothic spirit that comes to our town at this time of year.  Guillotines are on display like some sort of decoration, and strange violet lights are to be seen in the leaves of hollies at night.
It was upon exiting these ghastly suburbs and re-penetrating the industrial ruins which marked the spot where i live, that my companion M__ told me of the house of Monsieur P__ where his body is enshrined along with his gothic poems of fantasy.  Today and only today, said M__, will his body be on display inside the historic house.  What, said I, how macabre, it must be a simulation?  But a good simulation at that, M__ said, many have been fooled.  We must go to the historic house and find out, so we packed our oriental groceries into the coolers and headed down into the basin of our town Baltimore, to the historic district known as “Scarey”, where the historic P__ house is.
Wherein we found old scrolls and parchments of the long deceased poet.  Having read and reread no surfeit of the scriptures of darkness, I motioned to my companion M__ that we should enter the atrium and view the corpse.  Why is there no thicket of visitors besides ourselves to this historic moment?  In fact the house was empty with lack of concierge or mouse for that matter.  Perhaps they had been scared by the meaning of the moment.  Well lit for such a dark house was a perspex cube in the center of the atrium, tarnished by the smoky gray cloud-light seeping from the windowed roof above.  As we approached our steps became slower exponentially, like a field of force was pushing us away from the momentous corpse inside the perspex geometer.  After an eternity of echoing marble footsteps, we were close enough to make out the lines of the face, the sunken eyeballs, thin lips stained by a final pre-mortem slake of wine, high off-keel forehead, and dandy collar of our ancient literater.
Look at the jewel on his ring, exclaimed M__, and I bent over the plexiglass to see his hand within, and the soot-black jewel encrusted on a platinum band.  No, it can’t be, I see in this shiny piece of coal little movements, micro-movements, I think his hand is moving!  After 100 years this must be coinkidink, some draft of cool historic air moving his dusty mummy.  But no, it seems to be making methodical movements, some sort of script writing in the air, searching for a platform on which to be manifest.  The hand continues with this simple message but we have no way to interpret it.  I blurt out, after reverie, “Monsieur P__, if you can hear me through this perspex cube, then understand that you are encased by a modern substance, plastic, which we can see through.  Knowing this then, you may write your strange cypher by scratching the black gem on its inner surface for us to read retrograde”.  With a slow creak of ancient bone and a moan that seemed to come from beneath the historic house, yes, the hand moved to the inner surface of plexiglass and slowly scratched it, sonically like a dapper crow cleaning his beak on a skull.  Here is what it wrote:
“PERSPEXED ALIVE”

Tunings

None of the instruments i make are in tune.  They all feature direct access to the raw mapping of the underlying machinery of the oscillator or resonance.  Contrast to midi instruments that are always mapped exactly to 12 tone equal temperament, the scaling of Bach's "Well Tempered Clavier".  Not dissing Bach's work, but have you noticed that when a Klingon wants to fire energy torpedoes at a peaceful federation vessel, he says "BACH!".

Moving on, I would like to list for elucidations sake, a few of the raw mappings I have promulgated over the years, in chronological order:

• Ancient Greek Kithara, with seven or twelve strings tuned to the tetrachordal scales catalogued by Aristoxenus.  Plato's interpretations of the scales: lydian being whiney, mixolydian for bachanales, phrygian for war, etc, feel contrived in a modern sense, but Aristoxenus gave us a fine matrix of microtones.  However, they are probably wrong or at least "transmitted wrong" for we actually know nothing of the ancients.
• CSound virtual instrument using the, again wrong, catalogue of Ancient Greek scales by Kathleen Schlesinger.
• Electric and classical guitars, as well as a banjo, with the frets ripped off and replaced with the following systems: 22 tone equal temperament, a mainstay; 31 tone equal temperament, crazy; also several thrift store guitars with completely arbitrary fret placement based on no system whatsoever other than whimsy, these created the most wonderful "north african dusk" pitch relationships.  Later, helped my friend also to build a nineteen tone equal temperament guitar, and seventeen tone, which is currently in 2013 my favorite.
• Using 8038 sine/triangle/square oscillator chip with linear current input to tune a drum/drone machine by ear.  Linear input means that when the voltage, converted to current by a resistor, doubles, an octave is made: 1volt, 2volt, 4volts roughly for the octaves.
• Learning to use transconductance amplifiers with linear input for the same purpose, then the Arp exponential converter is encountered.  This comes closer to the idea of "1 volt per octave", i.e. a logarithmic but continuous tuning scale.  Note that there are little humps and bumps, subtleties of resistor configurations, that give variety across its uses.  We are still discussing a transconductance triangle wave oscillator, which takes a current input to manifest "slope speed": higher current is faster waveform.  But the width is set.
• In Fourses experimental instrument, taking this triangle oscillator and, in addition to controlling its slope speed, also gating different signals, static or dynamic, to the edge boundaries of the triangle wave.  A smaller/closer boundary means a higher, quieter waveform, and wider means low pitch and loud.  Finally, using other waveforms for the boundaries, a simulation of four "bouncing balls in a box" that bounce off of each other and thus have chaotic/undefined bounds.
• In resonant filter using transconductance state variable circuit, an Arp exponential converter is used to make the knob logarithmic, and its output which is naturally current because it is the collector of a transistor, is fed into a Serge style differential pair which also has a "pseudo logarithmic" feel.  It actually is in the shape of an s curve: steep and linearlike in the middle, and then sloping out on both ends.  It has two inputs: verso and inverso.  It can also feed two separate outputs, although I often use just one.  Thus it can lower one current, and at the same time raise another, on the other side.  Both sides, as I said, have a pseudo logarithmic taper on the bottom, making it somewhat like "1volt per octave", but also it tapers on the top, so at a certain note it really becomes a fine tuner for that one note.  Thus the Arp at the base can feed a base pitch and the Serge at the top can be a tuner.  This configuration is what i use for most of the analog circuits now.  The Arp part gives it that nice wide range feeling, and the Serge adds its own "s slope" on top.
• Not to forget all the other, "homey, drifty, and rustic" styles of pitch control, such as a raw singular transistor biased ever so gently, that it is highly sensitive to heat, you wave your hand above it and the pitch drifts; using a sort of emitter follower to generate current at the collector that is bound within a certain region, good for noisemakers; and the other things like using cadmium sulfide which has its wonderful "warm up period" and each piece has its own range, here is a simple transistor calamine resonator and multivibrator, from the "TIMARA CURRICULUM"
  
• And now, I would like to speak of some of the digital tunings I developed for Shbobo, for use on the Shnth device.  It all flowed pretty naturally from my analog experience, especially with the triangle oscillator that has two controls: one for the slope/speed, and the other for its bounds.  The former control will be called the "nume", for numerator; the latter control is the "deno" for denominator.  You see, they two actually come together to make an "alternative" form of expressing pitch than logarithmic 12tone equal temperament, or what might be used in virtual synthesizers, floats which are converted exponentially.  The nume/deno system is Just Intonation, and you can of course read Harry Partch's book for more info on that.  Also you can see his wonderful misinterpretation/California embellishment of the Ancient Greek kithara.  The first program I wrote in this system was called Just Ints, and like the name it only uses the int type, but it can express pitch in actually very fine increments, using only 8 bits for nume and 8 for deno.  You can multiply that out and not discounting repeat tones, there are about 64k pitches there.  Of course some of them are in very high prime limits, like 197, 199, 211, or 223, so I also developed a way of expressing/modulating the prime limit as you scroll through pitches.  There are two ways developed to scroll through pitches: kingal, tuning the nume and deno separately; and queenal, which uses a dictionary of pitches to allow you to scroll through them "chromatically", although with a high prime limit it almost sounds glissando/analog scroll.
• Speaking of analog scroll, backing up to the triangle wave of my mainstay analog line; for years the Sidrazzi organ had this arbitrary tuning system called the "analog scroll".  You could push a button for each bar, and it would go "woowoowoo", moving at a brisk pace up and down.  When you released the button, it would hold whatever pitch it was on.  The philosophy behind this is quite whimsical: in the age of arbitrary invasions by an arbitrary president GWB, i wanted to create an organ so that such energy could be diverted into musical arbitrariness, not physical harm.  That is how the analog scroll came about.  It was originally quite fast, like a sub bass oscillator, so you couldn't even pick the pitch: it would give you a random one each time.   You could go, "i don't like that one, there's no oil there, let's invade another pitch," and press it again.  The button eventually slowed down so you could pick the pitch, and now it is replaced by a slider pot, so you actually pick pitches in a conventional way.
• Although when I say conventional, I must point out there is a whole tuning system of slopes on the tetrax organ, that has its own intricacies that leads to a wonderful variety of timbres.  On that organ, there are two separate master pitch controls: one for the "up slope" and one for the "down slope".  If they are set roughly the same, then you get a triangle wave.  Anything else is some mutation of triangle or saw wave.  And then the individual tuning pots also work in this system, scrolling the waveform from energy on the up slope to energy on the down slope.  So you see, it is really tuning both pitch and timbre at the same time, and it leads to some interesting modulations that are solely due to the fact that it is not 1 volt per octave or any old fashion like that.
• Also, when you make a State Variable Filter as a resonance, there are actually two current inputs, because you use a dual transconductance amplifier.  To use it in a normal, VCF type fashion, you feed both sides the same current, so it can get higher and lower in unison, for wet analog sounds.  But also there is another hypothesized way, where you take a serge differential current source, and use both sides to modulate the two separate integrators of the filter.  I think one is bandpass and one is lowpass but it really doesn't work like this, actually to understand the State Variable Filter, you must understand the wave equation/harmonic oscillator of physics; it's all there in that equation.  It's second order differential which means it has x, dx, and d2x.  It is the x and dx which have an omega miniscule input, which means frequency control.  It is the omega miniscule which is usually varied in unison, but here we are talking about varying it inverse proportionally.  If you think about it, it is bringing the lowpass and the bandpass in and out of each others phase, so sometimes the resonance is highly damped and sometimes it is very ringy: we are thus able, like in the tetrax organ, to modulate the filter's pitch and q at the same time.  BTW, this solves an age old 20th century problem, which was how to make a VCF with only one transconductance amplifier?  Buchla, I think, would pop in a third stage, a CM3060, just to modulate the Q.  But Q modulation is a tricky thing and not many synthesists actually use it.  However, on the Plumbutter, you can flip the switch of "Gongue" into "Gonz" mode, and you will be using this type of modulation that affects both pitch and Q.  It makes for some wonderful woody, ringy type effects, and it is a great variation from always just "modulatin the cutoff" up and down like an ambulance.  The ambulance effect, BTW, is the worst.  I should make a CD someday of songs made exclusively from the ambulance effect.
• By the way this is how the human mouth filters our various vowel sounds: there are two or three completely separate formants that move around independently to put various information onto the signal.  Some vowels are very resonant because all the formants act in unison, whilst other vowels are more "woody" because the formants are more spaced.  Note that there's at least two tunings in human voice: the rich wave from our vocal chords and then the resonant filterings created by mouthforms.
• Making my way back to the digital discussion.  We already covered the Just Intonation triangle oscillator with nume and deno.  That is the "Yang: sunlight", and its moon should be the wet State Variable Filter, which is also programmable digitally.  An oscillator and a filter: a song for Becke.  The State Variable Filter, or wave equation, is commonly programmed for all sorts of simulations/stimulations.  But you will note that there is usually another block of code before it which is to "linearize" the pitch.  Yes, the pitch control is actually in a sort of "s curve" kind of like the one for the serge differential amplifier: tapered and logarithmic at the bass and also dwelling in microtones at the top, whilst linear in the middle.  Needless to say, I eliminated the compensating block of code at the beginning.  When you use the "Wave" as it is called in Shlisp, you give it a "rate" parameter, and it is this rate that exhibits its own tuning system, that is like an s curve.  So if you use the same control for the rate of a wave and the nume of a triangle, you will get a slightly different mapping.  It is this mapping difference, this "dissonance of curves" that brings more variety to any composition, i feel. 
• Then there is also the digital version of the Tetrax wave, which is a triangle, mutating through different varieties of saw: controlling both pitch and timbre.   
• Another one pops into my mind, and this is from farther back, in the "homey, whimsical, and rustic" category.  It was a paper circuit called the "Dogvoice", that had two sections, like the Yang and Yin triangle and resonance, but much dirtier and doggier.  The first, an oscillator, was made out of two ultrasound harshers, using a strange comparator to heterodyne them.  Then the product of this heterodyne was sent into a Moog type ladder filter.   Now there are two tuning systems at play here, like as discussed earlier with digital Yang and Yin.  The first: a heterodyne signal, has a lightly linear feel, but also due to aliasing it wraps around and around.  So there is a repeating, ever changing fractal tuning system.  The second system, in the ladder filter, is quite dependent on the ladder itself: a stack of four or five or more differential transistor configurations, each one contributing a hump to the mapping of control voltage to pitch and also, q or timbre of the filter.  The ladder filter is known for its sweet and salsafied humpy nature, looking like terraces on a mountainous rice paddy, it also creates whirls of phase change around each steppe.  These "homey, whimsical, and rustic" categories of tuning definitely have a great attraction for being programmed and emulated in digital, but unfortunately it is quite difficult.  They are great as paper circuits though: accessible, circuit bendable, and sublime/enigmatic in their workings.
• The most newest tuning I have been listening to a lot lately, is the unintentional sounds of my CNC wood working machine as it prepares parts for analog instruments.  It uses sine waves, cosine waves, but I usually express these as a complex Euler that is taken apart into real and imaginary.  It uses triangle waves to create standoffs for the parts, and much of it is box shapes too.  The bit is a chaotic little squealer, for which I am always wearing ear protection, but I can still hear it vibrating at a plethora of frequencies at once, the resonance of the wood comes into play too.  It is quite complicated, and 100% controlled by my signature ruby gcode scripts.

Discussion

It should thus be apparent that there are many ways of tuning electronic instruments, string instruments, and digital instruments, not to mention woodwinds and brass, and drums.  A platonic tuning system would only control the pitch, and only according to strict, universal rules that are for the betterment of the metropolis.  However, tuning systems are not always quite this way, and I have found it worthwhile to explore the differences amongst tuning systems.  The control of pitch and timbre at the same time are quite common in electronics, but you can also have like a buzzy fret on a guitar, or a squeaky note on a bassoon. I have always had a mantra: "eliminate compensation", which has always brought users closer to the machinery, making it more visceral, rather than farther away, more Platonic, more classical, and "BACH".  I want to emphasize that there are infinite kinds of tuning systems, and most stem from some underlying machinery, like the triangle wave with nume and deno, or the tetrax wave with timbre/pitch duality, or the digital state variable filter with its scurved mapping.  They are like what you get on playing a microtonal guitar, some arbitrary system within which to work.

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