Mon May 16, 2011 6:26 am
Hello JCA,
Thanks for the kind words and interest!
Sorry - I don't really have much time at the moment (it's still very hectic here after the release of Hauptwerk v4) but briefly:
- I used to have lessons on the organ at school and have always loved organ music (of all types and genres).
- I worked as an Oracle and C++ senior programmer and technical consultant in a medium-sized software development company in Birmingham for a number of years prior to Hauptwerk.
- I started work on Hauptwerk v1 and St. Anne's in 2001, in my own spare time, mainly for my own benefit since I wanted to take up practising the organ again.
- I released it publicly in 2002 and was pleasantly surprised to find so much interest in it.
- In 2003 I started work on Hauptwerk v2, which was redesigned from scratch, concentrating on making it as realistic and powerful as possible on then-current computer hardware, still in my spare time.
- In 2004 I left my previous job to concentrate on getting Hauptwerk v2 finished (which was a risk since v1 didn't make enough money to live on).
- Hauptwerk v2 was finished and released at the start of 2006, as a product of Crumhorn Labs Ltd, which I formed in 2005 for the purpose.
- That was fortunately well-received and did well (although with hindsight its MIDI settings were overly-technical, which many people found awkward).
- V3 was released late 2007.
- Late 2008 I sold Crumhorn Labs and Hauptwerk to Milan Digital Audio, for whom I now develop the software, so that I could try to concentrate more on programming, rather than so much on day-to-day support and running a business.
- V4 was released about a month ago, and I'm very pleased with it indeed - in general I think we've really managed to get the balance right now in terms of realism, functionality, flexibility and ease of use.
- Despite originally developing Hauptwerk v1 so as to be able to practice with it, the past 10 years have been very, very hard work (long hours, almost 365 days/years, although I did manage to get a week off last year for the first time in many years, which was lovely!), but that's just the nature of making and supporting a product to a high standard and making it succeed. Hence I never really did get any time to practice on Hauptwerk after all (apart from briefly when testing features or trying to help with customer issues, etc.), but the satisfaction in having produced v4, and in having hopefully brought a lot of pleasure to people, and in having hopefully made a real and positive contribution to the organ world, more than makes up for that.
- Hauptwerk's written in C++/C using the Qt multi-platform (GUI) libraries.
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.