Busy couple of days back programming (and, yesterday morning, ArtSwarm filming, editing, uploading).
The problem with software upgrades is that sooner or later, things get superseded, and a lot of my programming updates this time are about trying to tidy up old song files. I have about 1000 pieces of music, and some of the older ones use obsolete effects or plugins. This is fine, except that over time, the number of old ones starts to grow, and eventually the software is more complex than it needs to be, filled with plugins and effects that shouldn't be used or needed nowadays. The efficient solution is to tidy them up, seek every old file and replace the old things with new things, but this is a big job, so I've been coding a few functions to help with this.
There are a couple of options. One is an automatic translator, so that upon loading, one effect can be swapped with another. For this I've used a script, so you can sort of program what to swap with what. This has a few other uses, in that you could use it to, for example, swap all of the sine waves in a song for saw waves, or do other things. This operates on a song by song basis, and so it's ideal for mass updates, but is still useful when replacing (or accidentally finding) obsolete things.
I have one plugin "Tuned Flange II" which doesn't even exist any more, either in my code or the software. I thought I rarely used it, and that I never would again, but it turns out I used it quite a lot. It's essentially a 'combed' flange effect, that is lots of delays (7 I think), each slightly different, and all, on average, centered around the frequency of the note being played. When applied to white noise, for example, it creates a breathy tone, a bit like ghostly pan-pipes (you can hear it in a tune of mine called The Train, and the Dance of Spring from The Twelve Seasons). I need to create mock version of this effect so I can replace it with newer, more efficient, versions.
Anyway, my second helper function is to search a pile of files to look for problems. This will list all of the plugins used in there. This could be used as a global 'instant tidy' option, but automatically converting and saving over 15 years worth of music is risky, something might get lost or converted incorrectly, so this merely displays information.
This is all part of cleaning, tidying, organising, sorting. This takes a lot of time, a seemingly endless task. I love tidying and organising (I've surmised often that this is the purpose of life and intelligence itself), but it can harm new, original creative output, which is another vital goal of life. Hopefully I can get these changes done soon, then move back to art.
