Thanks! I have been adding to and tweaking the third chapter as I acquire modules, but the pace of that has slowed down lately (thankfully). I’m probably overdue to revise the entire thing. I also wrote up a workshop that uses VCVRack to explain or make audible some mathematical aspects of sound. That hasn’t been used yet since the person who would run it is on leave.
https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~plragde/flaneries/TSOM/top.html
I think the functional programming metaphor is one that someone interested in that subject will recognize and use to advantage, but it may be counterproductive to someone who doesn’t know about it. Plus it is not perfect; an FP patch would be a tree, not a spaghetti tangle. Anyway it is more an inspiration than a consistent theme.
Here is the story of my journey into Frap Tools. I read widely on Elektronauts, past the particular gear I own or potential purchases. At first I dismissed modular as too expensive, but I had owned a primitive modular as a teenager, and the idea had always appealed to me. I sought advice from @your_lamp, who graciously demoed his Shared System for me and lent me an 0-coast. Our conversations started out focussed on that, but I started reading ModWiggler, and making lists. At some point I noticed that everyone who spoke about Frap Tools Brenso (the complex oscillator) basically raved about it. I listened to some videos and was hooked.
Brenso was supposed to be my first module, and I hadn’t still made up my mind to commit, but this was during COVID and chip shortages, so availability of lots of modules was scarce; many were only available at one vendor convenient to me. While I dithered, I investigated other Frap Tools modules, and was impressed by Falistri. (My mental path went Maths -> Delta-V -> Falistri.) I had that on my list to be purchased at Perfect Circuit, only to learn one day that it had gone out of stock. For a moment I was panicked at the whole dream collapsing. Then I said to myself, “This is probably a sign that you really want to do this,” and poked around to see if I could find it elsewhere. It was in stock at Nightlife Electronics, so I placed the order to secure it, and then, probably within half an hour, I placed the order for Brenso at Detroit Modular.
Perhaps that is not so interesting a story. Slightly more interesting is how I chose Falistri as the basis for the second chapter. In fact, it was the catalyst for the whole project. I had been frustrated by the frequent advice on MW and Reddit to “just work through the Maths Illustrated Supplement”, because that document wasn’t nearly as helpful as I would have liked. Originally I was going to rewrite it to mitigate some of its deficiencies, but when I started doing that, I realized that I would need to have Maths myself to get under the skin of some of the patches. I thought, “I have Falistri at hand, and I could start from scratch and do things the way I think is best,” even though that probably drastically reduced the potential audience. Anyway, I’m so glad you found it interesting.
