[PD-dev] Prelude and Introduction

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

You win the most in depth bio prize, it's nice to have an sense of  
the people behind the emails, thanks for that.  I don't think anyone  
will object, but we need to wait the mandatory waiting period.  After  
a couple of days, feel free to nag me to add you if I forget.

.hc

On Dec 12, 2007, at 4:36 PM, Mike McGonagle wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I just wanted to give a quick introduction of myself. My name is  
> Michael McGonagle, and my childhood nickname is "Mogo", a name that  
> has stuck with me as there are just too many damned Mike's in the  
> world.
>
> My mother was a nurse and played the piano, her favorite thing to  
> play was "Clair de Lune" by Debussy. It was from here that I got my  
> love for music. We got a piano when I was about 12 and I would get  
> home every day after school and just play, teaching myself how to  
> both play the piano and composing simple tunes. I think I pissed  
> off my father for not just the amount of time that I played  
> (sometimes as much as 6 hours in the evenings), but also for the  
> fact that I liked to dismantle the piano, removing the covers so  
> that I could get access to the insides of the piano.
>
> My first love in music was Beethoven. Next came Bach. It was a long  
> time before I was able to appreciate 20th century composition, but  
> since that time, I have learned what things I like and what I  
> don't... My list of favorite composers range from Stravinski,  
> Subotnick, Stockhausen, Webern, and many others. A professor that I  
> had in school got me interested in electronic/computer music. He  
> had built his own computer that did brain wave analysis (for a  
> doctor friend of his), and he also used it to create some very  
> rudimentary music.
>
> I started programming back when the Comodore 64 was in its hey day.  
> Working in assembler was probably my favorite thing (the Assembler  
> program, while I don't remember the name of it, it was one of the  
> best programming packages I have ever used). I started to teach  
> myself C in about 1990, and found an interest in writing other  
> languages in C. I started off with a Forth interpreter, and used it  
> to create a very rudimentary composition package for myself. (That  
> was about 1992). I moved on to learn Java, and I tried to learn C++  
> (but there was just something about it that seemed perverse in  
> comparison with C, I will admit I LIKE POINTERS!). I think one of  
> the things that attracted me to Pure Data was the fact that it is  
> written in C, instead of C++.
>
> As I work in Graphic Arts, I got interested in writing a PostScript  
> interpreter in Java. I would say that I still am working on it, but  
> it has been a couple of years since I have done anything with it.  
> It is a fully functional programming language, it just doesn't have  
> any of the graphics primitives that would make it PostScript.
>
> I have been using Pure Data for about 5 years now, on and off. I  
> also have an interest in fractals, and specifically 'strange  
> attractor' types of equations. I had written some object classes to  
> deal with these sorts of functions, and when I found that Ben  
> Bogart had began a library called Chaos in Pure Data, I worked to  
> expand that library to not only include more attractor equations,  
> but also added the ability to search for other parameter sets that  
> would result in a chaotic stream (it wasn't perfect, but it worked  
> for some of the attractors).
>
> I don't really compose much anymore for "real" instruments. My goal  
> is to set up some things in Pure Data that deal with granular  
> synthesis using Sine Wave generators (ala Stockhausen's Studie No  
> 2), drive them using various fractal equations, genetic programming  
> techniques, or some other form of stochastic controls.
>
> Currently, my most immediate goal in Pure Data is to create an SQL  
> front end that allows the storage of arbitrary data in a database.  
> Once that is "complete", I want to revamp all of my previous  
> projects to take advantage of using an SQL database to store  
> "compositions", etc. I have created a front-end for working with  
> Chaos, but as it doesn't have an easy way to store and recall  
> various parameters, I got frustrated in trying to release the code.  
> This is one thing I want to rework, as I think it will be useful to  
> others who are also interested in fractal generators.
>
> Wow, sounds like a lot, and I guess it is for my 45 years on this  
> planet. I will say that it has been wonderful having access to not  
> just Pure Data, but the community that has built up around the  
> program.
>
> Michael "Mogo" McGonagle
>
> -- 
> Peace may sound simple—one beautiful word— but it requires  
> everything we have, every quality, every strength, every dream,  
> every high ideal.
> —Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999), musician
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> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-dev



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As we enjoy great advantages from inventions of others, we should be  
glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and  
this we should do freely and generously.         - Benjamin Franklin


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