I took the following courses at NYU:
- MPATE-UE 1017 Electronic Product Design w/ Steve Litt
- MPATE-GE 2047 Adv. Computer Music w/ Mason Mann
- CSCI-UA 202 Operating Systems with Michael Walfish
- CSCI-UA 310 Basic Algorithms with Oded Regev
- MPATC-UE 1344 Aural Skills: Pop Transcription w/ Ethan Hein
In addition, I was a 8th Floor Studio Technician and a Media Commons Comptuer Tech.
The coursework was a lot. It was hard to find time and balance the project based work that Product Design offered alongside the creative programming sketches of Mason’s class. On top of that, there were frequent looming deadlines for the Computer Science classes that kept me busy and awake for extended periods of time. That being said, if I had to do it all over again I wouldn’t change anything. However, I would spend my time a bit more wisely.
There is a certain anxiety I get stepping into Steven Litt’s classes. I know I am well qualified enough to produce a unique prototype by the end of class (see prototype) but I can’t help but notice that I could have accomplished far more, if I set out to resolve my composite USB issue earlier or been far more invested in the development of the product earlier. I know this is the exact environment I need to be in to improve as a person though, as well as it not being a fair comparison. As my friend Keith put it, everybody in that room is an overachiever and it’s hard not to think everybody’s one-upping each other.
But I must pay amends to what Steve has provided me. I entered NYU wanting to produce electronic music and hopefully strike gold as a sound designer. But his electronics classes has led me down a rabbithole that fundamentally changed the way I see education and STEM as a whole. For one, it is possible to teach difficult subject areas to an audience that isn’t familiar with science; I mean, teaching musicians how to build guitar pedals and embedded audio systems is already a feat in itself. But on another realm, the appreciation of the technology that drives our musical imagination has ignited a thirst for knowledge that has led me down the road of engineering and technology. An interest for the language of computers, circuits, and algorithms that lead to the weird goofy stuff that everybody puts on their hard drives or internet every day. Without this anxiety, I probably would have been able to appreciate this; but through this anxiety I have realized that I badly want this. A future where I can learn and make weird things whilst also telling people how I made these weird little things.
Wouldn’t want it any different though. Made a lot of graduate student friends, built some cool weird things (see EEG Brain Wave MIDI Controllerand Gaming Handheld MIDI Controller), presented a research paper at a reading group, and learned more about computers while doing so.
This winter break and the coming future I will try to spend my time on the following:
- The Gaming Handheld mentioned before, specifically developing a proper backend for the program
- By extension, the EEG MindFlex controller so it can be fleshed out into a proper interactive music system.
- The Signals and Systems class by Alan Oppenheim at MIT OpenCourseWare
- Modding Minecraft Java Edition (for interactive music, of course)