Welcoming December

December is always a welcome time of year for me: a time to see old friends, to see my family, to pause a moment and to simply observe all that has happened in the past year. A time for quiet thoughts and observations, the peaceful sense of time has always been rich and full with experiences…

I feel that the many tasks which I have felt myself committed to are finally coming to point where they are not so pressing, and I will welcome when they are finally finished. Over the past two months I have recognized that there were too many tasks that–while all worthy endeavors in their own way–have taken too much of my time away from the deeper musical work that I have long desired to submerge myself within. I am looking forward to when the last of the current tasks are complete and I can disappear for a while to focus all my energy into the pieces which have been laying dormant and are now beginning to awake…

It is December now… a time to reflect, a time to look ahead…

4 comments

  1. Stephen,

    I must thank you for making your scanned synthesis Csound instruments
    available to the public for the sake of education and the promotion
    of creativity. I find your instruments to be extremely rich and
    complex, in a way that equal in aesthetic sound quality to the
    venerable physical instruments of the orchestra.

    Stan Templelaars, a faculty member of the Institute for Sonology was
    quoted to say: “We need an intelligent sound generator, intelligent
    in the sense hat it simulates truly complex physical systems like
    musical instruments so that we can produce new sounds with the same
    degree of complexity as the sounds of traditional instruments – we
    can learn a lot from traditional instruments.”

    Thanks to you, Bill Verplank, Max Mathews, Rob Shaw and of course,
    Dr. Boulanger (who was my teacher), we now arguably have such an instrument. At least, something
    that comes very close!

    anyhow, I discovered your instrument, and after having started
    creating with it, felt compelled to show my gratitude.

    David Horowitz

  2. Hi David,

    Thank you very much for your kind words; I feel though that my part in all of this was very little though, simply a person who found Scanned Synthesis very interesting and felt compelled to share what I found. Really, those others are the ones who are really creating the possibilities for us to take up and explore.

    However, I’m really glad that you found something in the instruments I published and will be looking forward to hearing what you’ll do with it and where you’ll explore in your own work.

    All the best!
    steven

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