M. Dyde FAQ?

Martin,

I believe you have produced a wonderful piece of software which does make it possible for the less technically inclined person to enjoy the greatness of the organ.

Is it just my imagination or there is indeed a higher than average number of software developers around here (myself included)?

Well--that kind of cuts both ways. A lot of people interested in creating music using computers are probably software developers; but I've found over the years that a lot of good software developers are musicians.

This is actually one of the original design patterns that Bell Labs identified in the 1960s--you could go round the table in your conference room, asking all the coders what instruments they played, and at what level. I've done that for years--every now and again you find somebody with no music experience, but time and again the killer coders have serious performance experience.

And I'd bet that software developers have an even higher representation among Hauptwerk users, compared with users of Sibelius or Finale. Developers are used to a high degree of abstraction--think of object or ER modeling. There's a high degree of abstraction in music--and especially so with pipe organs (what does that chord sound like with the 4' Octave and the 8' Principal? What might it sound like with the 4' Octave in the Swell division instead? What might it sound like on an American Classic organ instead of the English Romantic sound set I'm using now?).