I was recently flattered by a former colleague, Ilya Rostovtsev, about my knowledge of computer programming languages. I was surprised because I have always found I have so much more to learn about programming itself and the languages we use.

Intro

I am studying how IC routing is done in large chips. I am following advice I often give people that it is helpful to learn how to do something by hand before using an automation tool. I was skeptical about this for chip routing because the scale of the problem these routers solve (trillions of gates) is outside what can be done by hand. As it turns out a few of the things I know about routing PCBs helped prepare me for learning some of the conceptual and strategic aspects of what these tools do.

The mid-1980s was a good time to be in Paris. A highlight for me was experiencing some of the earliest concerts involving computer-aided musical improvisation: George Lewis brought his Voyager system to IRCAM and was around developing new work for a premiere in 1986. David Wessel worked up his first system for his enduring, “catch and throw” paradigm. I saw the premiere of that too in the Centre Pompidou.

When I left for Paris after my undergraduate degree in Australia, I brought the beginnings of a guitar synthesizer along to develop. My modest progress at that time to the challenge was a hexaphonic optical pickup and the unfortunate discovery that Phase Lock Loop (PLL) chips of the day would not reliably track any slightly interesting guitar playing I could come up with. Forty years later the situation is not much better.

This is the first of a set of thematic overviews of CNMATs work I am writing that cover the period since our inception to the closing in 2017 of the research sector after David Wessel’s death. The activities themselves are more completely understood with concurrent perspectives of many themes so this serialization is more a reflection of the cursed sequentiality of language than any suggestion that a particular theme might be more important than an other. Future themes may include Spatial Audio, Musical Programming Tools, Musical control Structuring, Instrument Building, etc.

Thanks to anonymous scanners who upload to archive.org and other archives: Today I found a long-lost publication - my first from 1975. https://adrianfreed.com/content/door-bleeper

Last week the world of wearables lost the light of one our shining stars, Valérie Lamontagne.

I invite you to celebrate her life by reading, citing and responding in your own way to one of her major life’s works: her 2017 dissertation: “Performative Wearables: Bodies, Fashion, and Technology”.

You can find it here: https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/982473/

She covers some examples used in her dissertation here: https://vimeo.com/196041125

It has only two base pressure sensors and uses a pre-Arduino era microcontroller

This overview of e-textile music controllers includes a brief demo of the Tablo 8 minutes in.

Position is sensed by measuring the resistance of each ring of 16 conductive plastic strips around the bowl. The resistance is lowered as the draped conductive fabric shorts out more of a section of the strip. Pressure is sensed using the piezoresistive fabric strips around the annulus surrounding the bowl. Each piezoresistive strip sits on a segment of conductive fabric taped to the acrylic base. The resistance between this conductor and the ground potential is established by the conductive draped fabric in contact with the conductive gold tape at the top of the bowl.