foreign
[Music]
good morning everyone
this morning we've got Maxim Lynn Maxim
is a freelance developer who's Co Who
currently specializes in flutter
development in his work as a developer
relations engineer at code Magic
in today's talk Maxim will take us
on a journey into the fascinating Niche
world of electronic music making using
Hardware synthesizers Samplers and drum
machines
please welcome Maxim
[Applause]
oh thanks very much everyone and thank
you very much for coming to my talk this
morning
um yeah so
just a quick bit more about me I've a
long time Android developer who now does
flutter for his sins and more recently
I've become a developer relations
engineer at code magic which is a mobile
and flutter Focus CI CD service
and also in terms of community like I've
been involved with our local Google
developer group here in Melbourne for
quite a while and we also a few years
ago spun off uh flood in Melbourne from
that for people interested in flood
development here in Melbourne
now all of these things as you may have
noticed have absolutely zero to do with
music and music production and to be
honest like until about a couple of
years ago I had absolutely no idea about
anything at all involved with music
apart from listening to it so I have the
distinct honor according to my year nine
music feature of having the lowest ever
score on note and Rhythm recognition
tests so I'm not only tone deaf but
Rhythm deaf
however this did not stop me during
covert from having an exchange with a
person called Bob Nystrom Bob is in his
day job on the dart of on the dart
language team writing the dark compiler
but in one of his Hobbies he actually
makes electronic music and I happen to
watch one of his videos
and afterwards
um just sent him a message on I'll
tagged him on uh Twitter saying this was
amazing I was so impressed how he and
other colleagues who I work with uh so
uh into music and very often quite
talented musicians and I just wished I
had like a modicum of that and Bob's
rather faithful words are well it's
never too late so I went well
I think this was just before the next uh
lockdown that we had here in Melbourne
so it's not that I had a lot of time on
my hands with kids at home but like I
thought well this might be a good chance
to learn a bit more about it and down
the rabbit hole I went
so
in terms of what I'm going to be talking
about there's a huge huge area when it
comes to
electronic music not just music in
general and so there are niches within
sub niches within sub niches and the one
I want to talk about today is
um
using electronic devices to make
electronic music and so here's to give
you a flavor of it this is the video
from my memory the first one that I
watched of Bob's he's made quite a few
um oh hang on I better unmute that
hopefully that comes up on
[Music]
yeah it starts quiet so this is the I
think the first performance that I saw
um of Bob using uh this device which is
a an electribe 2 made by a company
called Korg which is fairly big in the
music scene while watching this so I
wonder just show of hands who knows or
has dabbled in electronic music
production
so someone who might know what a
synthesizer is versus a sampler oh
awesome so there's a few people uh so
I'll try and keep um
my explanation short but um enough to
cover people who aren't across it so why
I said performance is that in this case
it's a standalone music or instrument or
some people might say it's just a device
but I think it's an instrument because
it involves the person in this case Bob
actually performing like making like
changes to the music on the fly as you
would with maybe a more traditional
instrument like a piano or guitar or
electronic synthesizer where he's like
manipulating
um which parts or tracks are playing
he's applying filters or removing
filters to different parts that are
playing so it really is a performance
um this in this one I think this is only
this first one so you probably admit
this is probably the lowest key one but
there are others which are much more
involved and like there are some
professional musicians who through these
performances and it involves a large
amount of manual dexterity and
coordination to control the gear that
they're using to perform with so I'll
just stop that there
and
oops
move on
so
what Bob was using there was a Groove
box and the reason I asked for show of
hands was I thought I better know if
everyone knows what one is I don't need
to explain it but in this case I'll give
you a quick rundown so Groove boxes are
these Standalone pieces of hard musical
Hardware like Bob was using that
contains normally they're not always but
they'll normally contain a synthesizer
or a sampler a synthesizer synthesizes
music from just raw waveform Samplers
will play back samples like little tiny
recordings of music or some other sound
they'll often have a built-in drum
machine so the thing that like in the
80s people thought might replace
drummers but didn't really but I used a
lot throughout music production
especially in pop music and sequences
because it's enough to it's not enough
to just have a sequence a synthesizer or
a sampler that produces notes or sounds
you want something that sequences it
into a track into a score of music so
all these things basically make up a
Groove what's called a Groove box
because you can often get Standalone
pieces of Hardware that do just one of
these functions but Groove boxes are
kind of uh a genre or like a set of
instruments that cover
like all most of all of those functions
and this is just for something that's
really a niche of electronic music
production because I should say that
recently most electronic music producers
use uh software called doors or diws
digital audio workstations basically the
audio equivalent of a video editor
to produce their music but there is like
this Niche like I said or
um a sub Niche where people do doorless
what they call dawless music which is
producing electronic music just with
these Standalone devices and for
something that is a niche it's amazing
just the amount of variety of devices
from a number of quite a large number of
Manufacturers some well-known ones like
Yamaha or Roland that people who might
say use electrical electronic
synthesizers or pianos would recognize
those names whereas others like electron
are much more Niche they focus just on
these devices and are much smaller
companies but it's amazing like just the
variety so the one in the middle here
there I've got uh here with me today
this is the circuit Track by a company
called Novation in the UK now the
interesting thing you might notice with
that is the complete absence of any
screen there is the UI consists of
buttons which light up dials and rotary
encoders there but there's no screen so
the whole can it's a fairly complex
piece of equipment but there is no
screen which in today's
um day and age if you like is quite
unusual like we're so used to having
basically a large high definition screen
in our pockets that having an electronic
device and controlling it with no screen
at all probably seems a bit unusual to
people these days now the other thing
that all these devices had in common was
that they are proprietary not even open
source let alone open Hardware these are
completely closed I briefly owned the
blue one there the electron that Bob was
playing just in a different colored
version and there was a chap online I
think he's based in England he was
reverse engineering the firmware and
binary patching bits of it to change or
modify or add functionality but that was
just like I I got into that for a little
bit but that was just crazy stuff like I
have better things to do in my life than
binary patch a proprietary firmware from
a manufacturer who cares nothing about
updating or supporting the device that
they are still like not that they've
abandoned that they're still selling in
the shops but they have not sent out an
update a firmware update for like about
four years so instead I kind of got
inspired to think about well what about
a DIY oh I groove box like being a
software developer and engineer is a
both a blessing and a curse because you
always see someone else's
efforts and go I could do that no I can
do better than that but what happens is
that when you start doing it you realize
there's a reason that there are
companies doing this rather than
individuals because it tends to be a lot
of work to produce a professional device
but anyway I didn't let that stop me so
this is a project I came to talk to you
about that I've been working on and off
on for about a year or so now
in various incarnations so my DIY Groove
box might look a bit like
um yeah a DIY version of those ones but
the main difference is that it's this
thing that you're seeing is not a Groove
box it's what's called a midi controller
it's essentially the equivalent of a
keyboard or a mouse or a touchpad it's
just an input device it does not make
any sound there is no Hardware in there
to make sounds of any sort so hence the
other bit that's in the picture which is
in this case a Raspberry Pi 4 whose job
it is to make the sounds based on the
inputs coming from this controller
so that was my starting point is I
thought well this is pretty much what I
want in terms of the hardware I do not
want to make something and like solder
up a bunch of buttons and encoders and
potentially even a small uh screen so
instead this I chose this is my starting
point which admittedly is a proprietary
like Hardware product but luckily it
uses midi now I've mentioned maybe a
couple of times there's probably people
here who don't know hands up who doesn't
know what midi is or hasn't heard of it
oh actually okay there's not too many
cool so I'll be really quick about this
because I thought I'd have to explain
this I've done this similar talk to
others audiences where midi wasn't a
well-known thing so it's basically both
a protocol and like a hardware
specification but the thing I'm most
involved interested in is it's like a
protocol that these days mostly runs
over USB originally it was over a serial
connection and yes 31 kilobits was the
original speed because it was a nice
mult oh sorry 31.25 because that was a
nice multiple of one megahertz which
which is what most of the equipment was
in the early 80s when midi got started
as like a popular
and I think it's become an industry
standard even though it wasn't quite um
like picked up by any standards body so
luckily for me even though this was a
proprietary device a really nice person
called Paul Curtis had published a set
of Articles a couple of years before me
or a year and a half before me where
titled decoding that kind midi fire uh
implementation where he figured out all
the non-standard midi bits because midi
is made up of both a standard set of
specifications and then there's this
kind of like vendor-specific bit where
vendors can just do whatever the hell
they like sorry for my language so like
unfortunately the acai controller had
some standard bits like say the button
LEDs very simple to figure out like you
could just basically do it with almost
no reference to any documentation and
Illuminating the LEDs was like a little
bit more work to figure out but he did
that really quickly according to his
write-up but then there were things like
figuring out how
those colored pads work and how the
computer can tell the controller to
light up those pads which was very
proprietary very specific to this
controller and note the bit about that
even when he tried to use Wireshark it
couldn't handle like the crazy
non-standard stuff that they did luckily
he did all that work
um to figure that out and so I got to
benefit from it the other thing you may
have noticed with the controller was
that it has an OLED screen a really tiny
like less than one inch screen but
actually up close or like at the normal
operating distance it's actually very
clear like even though it's tiny but it
has a yet even crazier over midi
implementation like for those of you
who've done Electronics you might have
thought it's i2c or it's SBI control
that's how these devices normally are
controlled and internally it probably is
like an i2c device ins with whatever
microcontroller controls this
contraption but externally you talk to
it over midi with this absolute really
crazy mapping that thank God I did not
have to figure out Paul did that for me
and had like published that um mapping
so for all that was left for me was look
at his C code and basically translate
that Matrix into Dart code now use it
even though I'd done this and I got it
working it wasn't super fun to do all
this low-level
um stuff on these days I have done
embedded C long time ago these days I do
like Dart and flutter much more high
level stuff so I quickly package all
this up into some Dart packages like npm
modules for those of you as npm that
sort of thing just into a library that
hid all this away from me so I once I'd
done it I never had to think about it
again and those packages basically
presented me with a much nicer into or
presented me and whoever else is much
nicer interface so for instance you just
get a list sorry for those who don't
know Dart but hopefully this is very C
like you can understand what's happening
here it's just an array of booleans
because that OLED is just monochrome
it's just each pixel is on or off and as
you can see by the sizing it's actually
120 I buy 64 pixels so not exactly high
res so basically it's just an array of
booleans and whichever one's on off
that's how the screen gets lit up
so these are the packages I made that
wrap up
on a Next Level kind of like the more
um everyday bits of uh code that I
needed to draw onto this so doing a font
luckily another old just by sheer
coincidence a really old colleague of
mine Susan Hinton had created a bitmap
font for these devices because she was
mucking around with them using node.js
and I she also had some drawing routines
that I shamelessly pinched and converted
from typescript to Dart and so I had
these more still low level but slightly
higher level API so I could just have
basically something that is a canvas and
you can just do drawing operate you know
the standard draw line draw Square fill
those sort of really basic canvassy
things that people are probably familiar
with lots of different apis like the web
canvas and so forth
okay I've talked about the input and a
little bit of the output but the main
output is sound we want music well
hopefully in my case at least sounds if
not really listenable music now what
people who may have done any kind of
sound programming that required low
latency would realize is it is
absolutely insane to try and do that
with a garbage collected language like
Dart because there's whole papers that
have been written about how crazy it is
to even use Malik for those of you who
are C literate to allocate memory while
you're in the time-sensitive bit of the
code that actually is pushing audio data
out to the sound card when you're doing
low latency like it doesn't matter if
you're playing back an mp4 or something
like that's not low latency low latency
is when you're pressing a key and you
want the sound to come out as fast as
possible out of the speaker not when
you're like listening to us like a music
track or watching a video so for that
sort of thing a garbage collected
language is no good like even like I
said they people tell you not to do
memory allocations on the thread that's
doing that because the Malik might
potentially take too long so this was
yeah using Dart was no go so what could
I do well I shopped around for different
ways of getting sand out and I settled
on this which was a thing called sunvox
sunvox is
again like a niche within the niche it's
a small fast and Powerful modular
synthesizer with a pattern-based
sequencer brackets tracker so it also
comes luckily for me in a library
version because sunbox itself is not
um open source it's like a free or
slightly paid for product
but it had it's Core Audio library is an
MIT licensed open source Library
perfect for what I needed I just wanted
the sound bit I did not want
um a full basically audio package now a
little tangent because of those brackets
tracker what is a tracker for those of
you who had a misspent youth like me in
the 80s might have heard of trackers
because they were often used to it was
the software that was used to produce
the audio tracks that played when you
applied the crack on your favorite game
that you did not legally purchase and
hence did not have the whatever DRM was
trying to protect and so this was the
days like we're talking 80s like days of
the 16-bit computers like the Amiga 500s
trackers became very popular they
basically preceded these digital audio
workstations that are now the mainstream
way of making electronic music
so the track is like gradually died away
on computers like they're still used
like in um some places like the demo
scene but what's happened strangely to
me recently that I've discovered it is
that there's been a Resurgence in
interest based on Hardware trackers so
these are coming back again to my
original kind of topic these are like
standard these Standalone groovebox
devices but now done in the format of
trackers now what I guess the key thing
about trackers is that they have this
grid like people call a spreadsheet
Excel like way of laying out the tracks
unlike digital audio stations which
usually look like more a piano roll for
those of you who are musically in kind
UI
so for me sandbox like was perfect
because it was a really as you can see
mature long-term project it's been
around so long that it had a palm OS
version
but also meant that it was super that
meant it was super lightweight if it ran
on Palm OS even like back in the day
that meant if I wanted something that
was going to run low power at
singleboard computer like a Raspberry Pi
and my intention isn't to use a
Raspberry Pi 4 in the end but something
much more low powered this is just a
convenient prototyping device this
looked like a gold mine this looked like
the thing I wanted thankfully it's
maintained an author it's still been
going at it for like over 10 years or
maybe close to 15 years now so it looks
like it's not going away anytime soon so
like I said the sunvox app itself has a
UI like this I don't want any of that UI
that is the thing that I'm not trying to
do I am trying to build a hardware
device so instead I've got a lightweight
library that lets me put out the sound
its source is available there's if I
have time there's a little bit of a
complicated story about how open source
open source
um lib sandbox is but anyway it's open
source enough
um and so basically all I need to do is
a way to call it from Dart nice thing is
Dart has and I'm going to like put on my
Dart Advocate hat here Dart to me has a
beautiful ffi that's a foreign function
interface for those of you who haven't
needed to call basically
um one language from another language so
in this case it's a way of calling any
basically any c code NEC library from
Dart
and what it means is that I have
basically in Fairly non-technical terms
it has it gives me a really easy and
clean way of making use of a C library
which is what lib sandbox is from my
Dart code which is no good for
generating the audio itself so live
sunbox does all the audio playback in
generation for me Dart is kind of like
the Puppet Master it just sends things
like play or go to this point in time or
stop or pause that sort of thing or
switch tracks or mute tracks so it's
just like the control system as you like
so it gives me a nice high level
language to do all my control stuff in
lib sandbox does all the low level
nitty-gritty audio uh
playback and synthesis for me and so
that's one thing I probably should say
when I say the word synthesis I said
mentioned synthesizers and Samplers a
little while ago so basically
synthesizers use raw sine square
triangle waves to create audio or
another technique called frequency
modulation Samplers Play Back Little
Bits so you might have a recording of a
piano recording of a snare drum kick
drums some guitar and just use those
little Snippets of audio and sometimes
Tunes them up and down to get the notes
and so those are kind of like the two
main ways these instruments generate
musical sounding sounds so the track is
in bygone days we're all Samplers
because all those computers had really
minimal CPU power these days we've got
huge amount of CPU power in our phones
let alone on our laptops and desktops so
synthesis
um is quite feasible in terms of a
modern tracker and so sunbox does both
it lets you play back samples but it
also that's the where the modular bit
comes in this description it's kind of
gives you all these little modules that
generate different types of sounds
different types of waves that you can
stick together apply effects to and get
all these different kinds of musical
outputs
so having that basically I need to get
back to my core goal which is getting
something running on a device so the
idea is has to run on something like a
pi because I want to put a singleboard
computer Plus Battery into that
um
acai controller's case and have
something that's reasonably Standalone
like those group Standalone Groove boxes
they're like usually battery powered
Standalone devices like the like this
one
that I showed you see no cables it's
just running off an internal battery and
it's fairly lightweight not too thick
that's kind of like the end goal so I
need something
that is low powered enough probably low
power than the Raspberry Pi 4 that is
going to fit in my MIDI controller case
long along with a battery
so basically these are the steps I took
to get sunbox running on the Raspberry
Pi
fairly straightforward like you just
basically
needed to compile the doc code sorry I
should have said for those who aren't
familiar with dart Dart has an option to
compile to Native binary so it's not
like say JavaScript where you have to
have the JavaScript runtime engine
interpret or just in time compiling the
code when it runs what you can do with
dart is you can actually compile a
standalone executable Standalone is and
the only thing it links to is the C
library everything else is bundled in
that executable file and you can now put
that on like Windows Mac OS iOS Android
and for me Linux and arm Linux as well
so there's like x86 and um support so
thankfully I can do both
and actually risk 5 support coming which
is what my kind of final Target is but
more on that in the SEC
so basically I had a
compiled XZ Link in my case it actually
does like at runtime link to the sandbox
library because I need that so it's not
completely Standalone but close enough
and then I just put it into
etc.rc.local to start up on boot and
essentially there we go I've got a
standalone Hardware device if not in a
commercially viable form factor
um like I said a moment ago even though
I'm using arm I think I need something
Lop out and the current crop of risk
five boards are very immature and very
new but luckily are already supported by
Dart so I can run my dark compiled Dart
code on them and more importantly
they're they're significantly lower
powered than say the Raspberry Pi 4 but
yet powerful enough that they can cope
with running sunbox so essentially I
think I've got something that's going to
be a viable proposition to put into a
case so maybe next year I can come back
and actually show you a fully built
Standalone device and not just my
jewelry rig prototype
so with that hopefully I've got enough
time for a very quick demo
um I'm just going to
run oops oh for good mistakes
yep
sorry
I was going to try and run a webcam if I
click on the right button
so here's the device running here now
unfortunately my cable is a little bit
audio cable I've just found out is a
little bit wonky so we may not get sound
but basically I just wanted to quickly
show you where the into where where I'm
up to at the moment with interface so I
have the beginnings of a display for
this sequencer for the steps but it's
very rudimentary so I'm going to skip
that right now because that's literally
the work in progress at the moment what
I also have though is essentially a
chromatic keyboard I'm sorry the res the
contrast isn't great but hopefully if I
I think it's small enough room that I
can hold up and show you like
essentially the white keys the blue keys
are The Black Keys because black doesn't
go so well with a RGB LEDs so this is
hopefully something that looks like a
piano keyboard or chromatic keyboard for
those who play or who know their scales
and oh actually what I'm doing it I
might as well show it like this as well
these colored Keys here you can see
they're much more nicely colored than in
the video feed
represent the different instruments that
are available in this sandbox project
file so
if I go back to uh this view that
finally there's also another view here
where it shows all the
modules not just the instruments but all
the effects modules and everything I
hopefully can make maybe move the camera
a bit closer and show you on the LED so
that's the Distortion module there's a
flanger echo guitar
oh no okay it it should be playing back
the audio unfortunately I think I've
wiggled the cable and it's not playing
back at the moment I'll see if I can
wiggle it some more and get it to play
back shortly but basically that gives
you a preview of the sound and
you can also see like oops I will put
this back here
with the shift function what I've also
added is displaying which things are
connected to Watts so you can see these
light up saying that they're connected
which is oops sorry which is for
instance here oh it's not very well
focused but it says Reverb
connected to the Reverb to connected to
the compressor so that's basically kind
of like the the modular part of sunbox
where it lets you connect all these
different modules that do sound or sound
effects and interconnect them together
there's a niche within the niche again
called eurorack which lets people create
all these Hardware modules and to
connect them with wires and essentially
this is the software version of that
um likewise I do have playback simple
playback like in terms of play pause
and stop so I'm just going to try and
play it and I'll wiggle the cable to see
if I can get audio happening but
if not I can direct you to a video demo
I have on my YouTube account with
um
this basically the same thing actually
connected to a working audio cable
but oh it's very Dodge so I might not be
able to get it working so I might just
leave it there and see if I can get it
working in case if there's any time for
questions while I have field questions
and wiggle with it so with that thank
you very much for your time
[Applause]
so sorry
um yeah do we have questions for maxim
all right stencil oh yeah oh there's one
okay
thanks very much for that
um I guess my first sort of thought
there is if you've got a midi cable or a
USB cable pretending to be a midi cable
between the computer and the the
keyboard then
do you need to have like you know
you don't at that point need to have the
Raspberry Pi or whatever's doing your
audio right next to the fire board so it
could actually be separate couldn't it
yes yeah so it's like there's no
restriction to have them all together
they can be like separated by meters and
in fact like that's what a lot of actual
musicians who actually perform in front
of people uh do is that they'll have a
bank of midi controllers connected to
say a laptop that's like off to the side
or somewhere or also done by DJs as well
who these days often have basically
electronic control decks and there can
actually just tied via USB to like a Mac
or something that's like kind of behind
the scenes and they're just doing all
their controls via the midi controllers
even like yeah even DJ kind of
scratching stuff and everything that's
all available as midi controllers these
days so yeah there's no reason why I
have to be together I only put them
together because like I said I wanted
like a standalone portable device just
like I guess the
um
the commercial manufacturers do and so
that was my original idea was to have
something where I can get it all into
this case all into this one case and
it's not very thick so but it should fit
like basically a single board there's
plenty of room inside I've opened it up
um enough enough anyway to fit in like a
small uh singleboard computer and a
smallish like USB battery and just like
a little bit of DIY USB wiring to hook
them all together inside with a tiny uh
hub
yes okay we have another question here
I was just curious what the risk five
board was that you had up earlier it
looked like a cyped or sipped yes oh
okay very very sharp eyes yes it was a
cyped lychee
um RV or
um RV dock which uses like the D1 or
winner D1 risk five
um microcontroller that's become
actually one thing I didn't mention was
the fact that you can't actually get
Raspberry Pi's at the moment unless you
pay scalper prices as in more than Rock
ticket Rock concert prices whereas the D
the risk ships amazingly even though
they're so new are actually available at
least in small quantity like amp
hobbyist quantities whereas buying even
one or two raspberry pies I think I saw
uh 220 Australian dollars for one on um
eBay a little while ago whereas these
things are I think 20 US dollars so like
they're actually available so not only
are they a good fit for my my use case
in terms of Hardware profile but they're
actually obtainable at the moment unlike
Raspberry Pi's
a great session maximum thanks and cool
project I'm just curious if you could
comment as I understand it with the
commercial offerings equivalent to this
a lot of what you get is all the
different sample libraries and sounds
could you comment a little on what's
available Libre wise or the ability to
import other sound libraries and sounds
perhaps please yeah there's a huge
college industry in Sample libraries
some are free some are paid there's a
lot of actually YouTubers who kind of
like try and make a name for themselves
by releasing either free or like uh very
cheap like sample libraries like for a
few dollars so um yeah I could uh and of
course there's complete sites like free
sound I think dot org free sound
archive.org where there's like literally
millions of sounds available or samples
available under fairly liberal licenses
but actually what I should say is that
most of these devices do not come with
sample libraries a few do like as kind
of like the manufacturers will bundle
stuff but for the most part it's left to
the owner to buy sample packs themselves
and some people have like literally
gigabytes of samples like I complain
that they're whatever device they get oh
it's only got like you know X number of
gig storage I can't fit my whole sample
library on this one actually takes
um SD cards up to 32 gig and I have seen
people complaining that oh I think
that's going to be a bit too limiting
for me and
and so like yeah that um
that that is actually was one of the
things that surprised me is like I guess
there's a bit of a I wouldn't say Magpie
approach but uh there's definitely
people who have huge Collections and I
have to admit that I have fallen prey to
that like I already have probably a
couple of gig of just yeah
um sample pack libraries that I've just
spotted along the way and I've probably
spent like either 15 or 20 all up and
just for the purchased ones and the rest
were free so
um there's so much
um free or very cheap sample libraries
out there that I think
um if you are into sample based music
it's really I guess a golden age in
terms of making musical samples
I have a question for you Matt oh sure
I'm just wondering
um because I too am not very good at
music and primarily listen to it how
long did it take you to kind of start
playing it as an instrument and and what
was the process so I I'll have to admit
like I said at the start I am an
engineer who got into this from a very
minimal musical background so playing it
musically I if I'm completely honest is
probably a little bit of a stretch like
um so far the best things that I've done
if I'm honest essentially like covers of
pieces that I've seen other people
mainly on YouTube create so
um like I watched like there was a video
similar to Bob's video there's actually
like I should have mentioned a whole
community of people on YouTube who make
videos and they have to be in a
particular uh format and style like
there's certain conventions like
normally you have little trinkets that
are on the table next to the device or
there's specific lighting that's being
applied
um so there's that whole like kind of
sub community of people out there making
that music and so
what I've done as a starting point as a
complete musical Noob is to essentially
do I guess what visual artists do in
terms of starting out by often copying
like great Masters or famous like
paintings I started out by essentially
trying to do like covers of not not
famous pop songs or anything but just of
pieces that other people have done on
similar devices usually I've tried to
find a similar but not the same device
so then I'm not directly just copying
I'm kind of like trying to figure out
what the what technique and what
um
settings or like techniques they've used
on their device and then try and do
something similar on the device I'm
using
so yeah it's it's in some ways
um
like I I'd say it's in some ways a very
appealing approach for someone coming
from an engineering software background
versus a musical background like people
who come from a musical background and
I've who I've talked to about this sort
of thing have often said oh that feels
so mechanical or like I did a talk um at
a Sydney Meetup about a month back uh
similar to this and one guy in the when
was it like time for questions there was
one chap who was sitting in the audience
who shout out me you've killed live
music
and he goes you were the death of proper
live Pub bands and I went well
possibly but
um I think live Pub bands are still
quite Alive and Kicking but I can see
from a muse uh a more traditional
musician's point of view how like this
looks like a much more mechanical or
less artistic approach but honestly when
I've watched
um people on YouTube who are much better
than I am do it like there's so much
like musical theater involved which I
haven't even touched on like I literally
bought musical theory for dummies to try
and learn what things like chords and
scales were because that's how little I
knew when I started
um how much musical theories involved in
what they do and then also a lot of the
manual dexterity like
um I'll try and post maybe like aft on
my Twitter and Macedon just some links
to people's performances just to show
like just kind of at the professional
level how like involved it is and so
really like I don't think the criticism
that it's
not uh and as well the type of music as
more traditional or classical music
genres are is valid so yeah hopefully
that answers your question like my
skills are very much
um early stage so that's why I did not
play any of the compositions I've done
so far
well thank you so much Max and I think
we can all join in in a round of
applause for Max thank you very much