a sonic journey

A long time ago, I found myself playing an electronic keyboard. CASIO PT-22 to be precise. It was my mother’s first electronic keyboard. It must still be lying unattended somewhere in my native town. I vaguely remember having a preference for the “FANTASY” voice preset. I accompanied my mother as she sang her favorite Odia and Hindi songs. I don’t remember how exactly I selected the notes that I did, but I distinctly remember the feeling of dissonance when I played a “wrong” note. I also remember how some notes did not fully resolve on the instrument and one had to make do with the least dissonant note. All this was before I went to school.

Fast forward to third grade. I was in a school in Brahmapur. I received another electronic keyboard namely CASIO SA-21. This I remember with greater resolution as I accompanied many of my classmates as they sang hymns in the choir. I remember dreading those performances as I was required to sing while playing the keyboard. There was nothing more terrifying than having to sing while playing an instrument. In fact the instrument’s voice was what I hid behind on stage. I was my own audience. Submerged in the sound of this mysterious electronic device I could conveniently remove the multitudes of people sitting in front of me from my awareness.

Later in sixth grade, in a different school in Chennai, I noticed that the instruments carried by students were getting significantly larger. Also my instrument was getting significantly smaller. Of course, this is relatively true, considering the growth spurts that occurred at about that time. To prevent further embarrassment I changed my instrument to the acoustic guitar. The guitar was a Givson G-150. It was the cause of much pain and great joy as I stumbled along the weary path of learning guitar. Much later I would discover how much more embarrassing this instrument would turn out to be! (Here is a Quora answer that gives a feel for it). However I still have this guitar at my residence; I play it very rarely.

Much later after I started working I took it upon myself to fill the void of musical instruments that my childhood had thrust upon me. Later I would come to identify this condition as GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome). If you are musician you have been warned. GAS is real. Fast forward to current day. My room has more musical instruments than clothes. That is subject for another post.

My latest pursuits are exploring sound and music through computer language. Sonic Pi and now Processing with the Beads audio library are turning out to be extremely valuable tools to experiment with and synthesize sound while also creating music. Moreover they have been instrumental in reducing GAS to a large extent. They have also given me cause to consider guiding budding musicians to use the Raspberry Pi running Sonic Pi as a vehicle for musical ideas, if not an instrument in its own right. Make no mistake, the audio quality of music that can be created with Sonic Pi is truly professional. (Refer the music tab).

This is why I decided to make a course on Sonic Pi. For anyone starting fresh the barrier is surprisingly low: Raspberry Pi + Display (TV/Monitor) + Keyboard (the QWERTY one). Or a laptop. Looks like everyone has a laptop these days. The digital revolution, which got me the CASIO PT-22 in the first place, seems to now ubiquitously offer a complete music workstation to anyone with a laptop, especially the musically inclined kids of today. Of course I have ideas to build an electronic instrument from scratch using the Arduino but that is subject for a future post.