In one of the first incidences of its kind for me, (he knew who i was, I didn’t know who he was) a fresh faced looking guy in what I think was some sort of football jersey approached, and asked when the next cyclic defrost issue is coming out. I said I didn’t know. We stumbled on, yelling over the pretentious prog which the band at this trashy gig was pumping out. Most of the conversation escapes me, but I do remember explaining briefly how some of my favourite plugins, which I used heavily in making the last album for Feral Media, (including this garish one above), won’t work on an intel macbook. Pretty boring stuff. Unless you happen to be a benevolent programming guru, who’s keen to help strangers.
Couple of days later, ported versions of these plugins appear in my inbox, accompanied by a short note. Suffice to say, everyone should have a personal code monkey. This sort of largess is ridiculously rare – Lachlan, if you read this, know that you rule.
I suppose what’s most interesting about this is not the anecdote, but how different minds attack different problems. I’ve been thinking about learning max/msp, or Pd lately. But when I sit down and try and nut it out, I hit brick walls. It’s as if my musical intelligence is rooted entirely in sounds themselves; their textures, rhythms, dynamic. It must be visceral. Whereas for others, the mathematical abstraction that coding provides opens up all sorts of possibilities, and is in and of itself an art form. The tedium and frustration is pleasure, the endless nutting out and testing is mental exercise. I’m hoping one day I’ll reach that point, where I can operate on both levels at once without feeling the need to separate modes of thinking.
I’d like to think specialisation is for ants, that people are smart enough to be true polyglots. But at this stage I’m unsure.
