Pooplog

HELLO PEOPLE! another interview is online... one of the older coder:pooplog. damn he is no more a psycle's coder but....

http://psycle.free.fr/Photos/pooplog.JPG

POOPLOG

1 )Q:hello pooplog introduce yourself please!

A:hey - my name is jeremy evers.i am 30 years old.I live in Guelph, Ontario,Canada,but I generally spend a good portion of my winters in western Canada and USA, travelling and enjoying the rocky mountains.i write software for a living,but i also love music and am fully addicted to snowboarding.I play live music when I can,and dedicate as much of my winters as possible to hucking myself down mountains. In my spare time,if such a thing exists,I like working on music software,such as psycle,or my new vst synthesizer and effects suite,atlantis.

2 )Q:could you talk about your previous experiences with coding music program?

A:sure,i think my first useable music program was a sample based player i developed for the c64.it could play samples,and could also do a flange effect.a few years later,i wrote a music player engine for the turbo grafx/pcengine, hoping that a demoscene would pick up there.Later I wrote a commercial music player engine on the gameboy color,which lead to Fatass,an editor that ran on the gameboy color that was later I wrote a commercial music player engine on the gameboy color, which lead to Fatass, an editor that ran on the gameboy color that was loosely based on fast tracker 2. all of these projects were in various flavours of assembly.I occasionally toy with opensourcing Fatass,but I do not know if the demand is there to make it worthwhile.Later,I discovered buzz,and wrote a bunch of weird low-cpu machines.I hated how unstable Buzz was,and how terribly the code was maintained,so I migrated to psycle and later vst.all of my experiences in audio programming have been good, mostly they have been about writing stable,fast code,and thinking of cool ways to generate or manipulate audio.this is a fun challenge,it keeps me learning and interested.I always have more fun working on the audio engine than the GUI or fileformat or whatever.

3 )Q:you are one of the older psycle’s coder,but now no more involved into the project,could you talk about your experience with psycle coding? (why have you started and why have you abandoned)

A:I started working on psycle, because I gave up on buzz.Psycle seemed like a promising alternative,but it needed a lot of work to become useable.I rolled up my sleeves and started hacking away at it immediately.The psycle community turned out to be a great bunch of people.their enthusiasm for my experiments was very encouraging.I did what i could to improve the gui to a useful state, and wrote a bunch of fast native machines.I put out 2 cds using psycle during this time.I had always wanted to do an album using software that I had written.Once psycle got to a useful state,the things I wanted to add or change were either frivolous,or required too much development to be feasable for a hobby project.I spent countless hours in my hammock designing the engine and interface that I would want in a synthesizer,but it could not be done with the limitations of the psycle plugin architecture,so I embraced vst.The main reason that I have not been working on psycle is time.It's a finite resource.Psycle seems to be moving in a good direction at it's own pace,and I am perfectly happy to use it in it's current state.The only time I do work on psycle is when I notice something that really pisses me off,and that hasn't happened much lately.

4 )Q:do you think to come back to coding for psycledelics project in the future?

A:It depends on the project.I would love to see gui performance increases,waveform tracks, recording,better groove options and mixing interface.I do not think that I will return to psycle in the capacity that I was developing it before, when I was programming freelance I had much more time between projects to dedicate to labours of love like psycle.Now that I have been working full time for a year,it seems like I never have enough time for the projects I want to complete.I will continue to help out with psycle in small bursts of activity,when I get the time to fix something that I feel is important.

5 )Q:have you some suggestion to current devs concerning future improvements?

A:simplicity is the key.think of the best possible way you would want something to work,and then think of how a complete idiot would interface with it.keep it fast,keep it simple.

6 )Q:what are you doing right now?i heard about a vst synth for commercial purpose as you said before...

A:I do have an amazing vst synth and effects project that is in beta testing right now.I would like to do something commercial with it as the amount of energy that went into it is absurd.I would like to make it available to the public soon.Psycledelics legend Jim Redfern has been a great help with his unstoppable flow of ideas and criticisms,and at getting some talented musicians involved in the project.Other than that,I have been playing a lot of jazz ukelele,snowboarding, skateboarding,hanging out with the girlfriend.I don't think I will ever grow up.

7 )Q:which kind of vst synths do you prefer?and which kind do you wish to code in the future?

A:prefer vst plugins that are lightweight,sound good,and are easy to use.To be honest,I prefer my own vst synths.Other than Atlantis,I really only use a freeware ePiano plugin.I am on the lookout for a decent sampler, you always need one of those.In the future I think I will code a few sampler modules.I would like to have a decent drum synth tied into my enginesomething that can combine samples with synthesis in an intelligent way.My own stuff tends to have a million parameters, but I try to make it so that most of the settings can be ignored by the basic user.I suppose flexibility and usefullness are also two things that are very important to me in a vst.

8 )Q:pooplog so you are a musician too?but i was thought I’ve never heard something from you ,could you put a link to some song please?

A:I am a musician.I mostly play bass and lead guitar.I played keyboards in a metal band.I also play drums.Lately though,I have been all about the jazz ukelele.I mostly do odd music, my favorite genre being prog rock.All of my post-amiga electronic music can be found on www.negspect.com. It appears like it may be broken in firefox right now.I also play in live bands- I far prefer music played by humans to sequenced music.www.negspect.com/giganus has an experiment I did combining drums sequenced in psycle with live instruments.there is a heavy shit:hit ratio with all of my music,this pleases me.

9 )Q:talking about music:what do you like to listen to ,have you a favourite genre,group or singer?

A:I love a lot of music.My favorites are hybrids of punk, metal, progressive rock and jazz.There is too much to list, but some of the important stuff: devo, mastodon, us maple, magma, xerobot, ween...It's funny that i spend so much time working on tools for electronic musicians- i really don't care for dance music, most of it bores the crap out of me.There really is some good pop music out there these days that blurs the lines,that is much more interesting to me.

10 )Q:what do you like to find in music?

A:I think about this a lot.I have discovered that I like music that has a good groove to it,but also is exciting in the fact that it is unpredictable.I like music that takes the listener on a journey.I find that I always tap my foot to rhythms that are based in 3.I also love polyrhythms,they can keep life in a simple pattern.I like organic music that is not quantized. I like music that is not afraid to be dissonant,but also not afraid to be nice.I like music that makes me excited and energized.

11 )Q:what do you like to do in your free time?i know you like snowboard..

A:Well,if I cannot be travelling and snowboarding, or skateboarding on our miniramp at home, or playing rock and roll shows, or working on psycle or atlantis,i like to...hmm what the hell do i do?BBQ!if I am not barbequeing,then i am riding down the river in an inner tube or designing robot racing ostriches.i am always doing something.

12 )Q:ok that’s all Jeremy,wanna ad something?

A:sure-I would really like to thank the psycle community.They are a great bunch of people developing a great product for all of the right reasons.Keep on rocking...

-nice...thanks pooplog,have a nice day!!

made by MfM on 25/03/2006