Weather Update
I don’t know why I called it weather update, but it is an update of what’s going on in my life. Add a bit of humor perhaps. I digress. My final semester of university has officially kicked off, and I have a lot going on both for school and in my personal life. I want to provide an overview of some of the interesting things I will be digging into in the coming months!
Senior Capstone Project
With my open ended degree, I was faced with a large amount of options for what I wanted to do for my capstone project. What my professor and I decided on will certainly be a new kind of challenge for me but equally exciting. I am undertaking the challenge of implementing synthesizer modules as plugins for Supercollider. This will involve understanding how the modules themselves function and generate and manipulate the sounds passed through them and learning to implement those processes in the Supercollider plugin framework. The plugins themselves are programmed in C++, which I honestly haven’t touched since my class on the language in junior year. Getting back into C++ and putting it towards something practical that could potentially be used by hundreds is exciting. Supercollider is an open source project, so of course my code will be as well. I wouldn’t have it any other way!
Honors Capstone
As a part of the honors program at my university, I am obligated to do a final capstone paper on an issue facing the modern world. How this will shake out I’m not entirely sure yet. The goal is to write about an issue in the modern world through the context of my major, but there is a direction I’d rather go instead. Only time will tell.
Data Communication Systems
As someone who has always been fascinated by networking, it was fantastic to know I could take a class about it for my major. I spent a lot of time working on setting up my own home server over the past year, and with all its ups and downs, I did learn a lot. If this class goes well and I maintain my love of networks, I may seek out a CompTIA Network+ certification. Networks also have such a fascinating role in live sound that I would love to learn more about.
Studio Production
Getting down and dirty into recording, mixing, and mastering. While my skills have been growing over the years, I get an official class about the intricacies of the subject. The many projects down the line will provide me with great experience. I’m a little backlogged in uploading some of my fun audio projects to my Bandcamp, but I’m excited to get started on new projects to show off my skills.
CRISP
Also known as the Captains’ Real-Time Interactive Sound project, this is the electronic music ensemble at CNU. I am incredibly excited for our concert this semester. We’re collaborating with the Department of Dance for a live coding improvisation. Our ensemble uses TidalCycles as our programming language of choice. It throws me for a loop sometimes because it is based on Haskell, and I haven’t had much exposure to functional programming language beyond Java lambdas and streams. We are also going to be using modular synthesizers in depth which will be a fun way to understand them more. I am particularly excited about doing Steve Reich’s Pendulum Music. Look that one up.
