RLPF.ar

(Geek humor in 3... 2... 1...)

In the Spring documentation Jimmy's been reading lately: "[an] MVC controller stereotype." Really? And which controller stereotype would that be? Jewish mother? Chinese mother? That's even better than new Person() in the same document.

In the "Why didn't I find this months ago?" department: The gersic.com free audio plugin database. It's huge! Granted, a lot of it replicates what I could do with a few lines of SuperCollider code, but when you're dealing with a closed-source audio environment, what other choice is there? Well, there is one other -- learn Faust and compile the stuff into VSTs. Downloading is easier. (I even found a way to do something like the BT Stutter Edit from This Binary Universe: faderratic + a quad Group Channel. Heh!)

And, a rewarding teaching moment. In my morning class, I played one of my favorite songs, "Humble Daisy" by XTC (preview on Amazon). I wanted to get the students thinking about how sophisticated harmony can be part of a pop song, and also about using space and production effects expressively. (A couple of times, this song snaps from a wide-open reverberant space to a very dry, small space, right in time with a sudden harmonic shift: spectacular!) Admittedly, it's an odd song, and many of the students laughed. But one of my afternoon students, in our SuperCollider lesson, wanted to hear it again and asked how to make some of the sounds!

Made. My. Day. When you show something new to someone and it piques his curiosity, and he wants to go deeper and understand how it's done and how it works on the listener, all the class prep and all the grading are worth it.

If you don't know the song, do check it out. It's a rare beauty, on a par with the smarter creations of George Martin for the Beatles. (Which reminds me... I also recently heard a horrific arrangement of "Eleanor Rigby." It bled all of the music's depiction of urban drudgery right out of it. Missed the point!)