[fluid-dev] Introductions and interest in FluidSynth

[Josh Green]

Hello FluidSynth list,

As I mentioned in a previous email, it seems like a good idea to
introduce ourselves a little and describe our interests in FluidSynth.
The project has been pretty dormant for some time now until recently, so
many of the recent personalities on the list are new.  It would be nice
to add some more personality to the names and get a better idea of how
we can work as a team.  Its somewhat of a new concept to me, so I hope
you all will bear with me on it ;)

I'll start things off.  No need to follow my example particularly, just
describe as much or little as you feel comfortable with.

A little about who I am..
I currently live in a small town called Nevada City in California (less
than 20,000 or so inhabitants).  I'll be turning 31 in a few days.  I'm
an embedded systems programmer consultant and primarily work with Linux,
which is great.  I'm living with some family and friends on a 60 acre
ranch.  I'm rather heavily into the Gothic scene and various types of
electronic music, like to go to Gothic clubs and DJ sometimes for a
local community radio station (http://resonance.org/electrolysis).  I
lived in Germany for a year and travel there when I can for music
festivals or the Linux Audio Conference.  I've been working for a number
of years on various free software projects (Swami, libInstPatch,
PatchesDB, FluidSynth, Refdbg) and hope to be able to put them to good
use as well as see what uses other people make of them.

My history with FluidSynth..
I was contacted by Peter Hanappe early on in the development of his IIWU
Synth (If I Were U).  He borrowed some SoundFont loading code from my
project Smurf SoundFont Editor (precursor to Swami).  Some
communications began about switching from using hardware SoundBlaster
synthesis to using his software synthesizer.  I met him in Paris and we
spoke a little about creating some interface for use in Smurf.  At one
point it became evident that IIWUSynth was not a very good name and so
we had a brainstorm of names.  He ended up choosing FluidSynth which was
one of a group of ideas I threw his way.  Most of the development of
FluidSynth was done by Peter Hanappe and Markus Nentwig (whom I also met
in person, in Germany).  I contributed from time to time, but minimally.
These past years I have been the official maintainer of FluidSynth, but
have had far too little time for the project.  It seems I've been able
to keep it barely alive though.

My current interest in FluidSynth..
..is in regards to Swami.  Swami aims to be THE SoundFont editor for
Linux, Windows and Mac.  Unfortunately development has also been slow
going, so it has not yet achieved its original goal.  The future of
Swami depends on FluidSynth though and so I am interested in seeing new
features, such as 24 bit sample support (Swami/libInstPatch supports
editing 24 bit SoundFont files already), sample streaming, better MIDI
to audio rendering and perhaps a new custom instrument format at some
point.

I would like to step away from some of the tasks of being the FluidSynth
maintainer and am open to the idea of passing on the official
"maintainer" title to someone more appropriate for the task.  I would
like to focus more on adding some of the features I mentioned and
working on Swami.  If I can get libInstPatch in order (a library for
manipulating instrument formats, such as SoundFont and DLS files) it
would be nice to look into using it as the basis of FluidSynth's
instrument loading and voice rendering and potentially support for other
instrument formats too.

I'm really looking forward to working with others on FluidSynth.  A one
man team, just isn't a team ;)

Cheers.
        Josh

My project links:
Swami: http://swami.resonance.org
Resonance Instrument Database: http://sounds.resonance.org