! musicjob 611259922 165 2805 100644 5024 ` Date: Thu, 16 Jun 88 17:19:23 EDT From: "Steven R. Newcomb" Subject: job opening To: Music-Research COMPUTER MUSIC RESEARCH POSITION The Florida State University Center for Music Research (CMR) will have a "Unix hacker" vacancy, starting in July 1988. We want to hire before September at the latest, and we would prefer to hire ASAP. The CMR is a pretty nice place to work, as university research centers go, for a number of reasons which I will be glad to describe to interested and qualified applicants. The salary is negotiable, but we don't expect to be able to offer much more than $25K/year. On the other hand, the cost of living in Tallahassee is 10-20% lower than many other areas of the U.S., even before allowing for its below-average real estate prices, low real estate taxes, and nonexistent state income taxes. The position is really open on a competitive basis and there are, at this moment anyway, no inside-track candidates. We fully expect to hire someone who has never been here. We need someone with serious and well-developed skills in the C language, some depth in one or more aspects of music, and some knowledge of Unix (not to mention willingness to learn much more if necessary). Other skills we would find attractive: knowledge of statistics, experimental design, instructional design, artificial intelligence, digital signal processing, computer graphics, etc. A computer science and/or electrical engineering degree from a reputable institution would also be welcome, but neither is necessarily required. The position is classified as an "Administrative and Professional" position, and it therefore enjoys certain faculty privileges, including the possibility of teaching. The CMR is a unit of the FSU School of Music, one of the five largest professional music schools in the U.S. It is one of the most respected for its graduate research programs in music education, perception, and therapy. At least some of its applied and other areas are also clearly world-class. The open position is one of CMR's five full-time staff positions. The facilities of the CMR will soon (1989) comprise a substantial portion of a newly renovated building. The Center for Music Research is among the most distinguished research environments in the world in the field of Music Therapy. When music therapists gather in professional conferences, often a substantial fraction of them have been (or presently are) at Florida State University. Another strong point of the CMR is its emphasis on research in music education. Its laboratory facilities for computer-based music instruction are second to none, and it serves the fifth largest professional music school in the U.S. It is almost unique in its policy of making a substantial continuing investment in technology development and technological research personnel from internal funds, primarily aimed at music education research. Other institutions have made even greater investments in technology and personnel, but those institutions generally do not have large professional schools of music and they typically do not emphasize music education; they generally emphasize music composition, while we (perhaps regrettably) do not emphasize composition at present. We tend to be more interested in how computer technology can be used to provide greater access to musical skill and knowledge to more people. It is tricky to describe the position; it requires a thoroughgoing commitment to the purposes of the Center on the part of its incumbent, and, in return, it comes with an extraordinary degree of sensitivity to professional development needs of the researcher. Some of the work we do maintains our status in the university and in the School of Music. Under this heading come such tasks as providing technical assistance to graduate students whose research requires it. Everybody on the staff, including the Directors, makes some time available to students and faculty who walk in with research problems. Then there are problems we attack as a unit-- mainly maintaining a computer classroom facility for 1,200 music students, and maintaining and improving the electronic music studio (and recording) facilities. Finally, there are projects which are initiated by the staff in consultation with each other. There is usually some connection between projects and the overriding CMR goal of creating a "maximum man machine environment" for technologically assisted music research. "Research" is a word we use to describe all manner of activities, including activities which involve musical creativity, needless to say. The range of academic work we're involved in is fairly large and we're open to new ideas. Please write to: Dr. Jack A. Taylor, Director Center for Music Research Florida State University Tallahassee, FL 32306-2098 USA uucp: uunet.uu.net!gould!uflorida!cmr!taylor ARPA: cmr!taylor@bikini.cis.uflorida.edu music 584297204 165 2805 100644 6036 ` .pl 11.7i .po 1i .ll 6.25i .nh .de HD 'sp 1i .. .de FO 'bp .. .wh 0 HD .wh -1i FO .in 4.5i .nf Martin Guy Computing Laboratory The University Canterbury Kent CT2 7NF England .in 0 Dr. Jack A. Taylor, Director Center for Music Research Florida State University Tallahassee, FL 32306-2098 USA .in 4.5i Sunday, 3rd July 1988 .in 0 Dear Dr. Taylor .fi .ti +3n I would like to apply for the vacancy in the CMR for a C and Unix expert. I'm afraid this will be a bit rushed as we're in the middle of exam marking at the moment, but I thought it would be best to get a shot off to you quickly as the news only arrived here on the 1st of July. \l'6.25i' Personal Details .in 3n .nf Name: Age: Marital status: .sp -3 .in 1.5i+3n Martin Guy 24 Single .fi .in 0 History .in 3n I attended the Trinity School of John Whitgift, Croydon, England from age 11 to 18, which is a school with a strong reputation for music. As a member of its choir, I sang under Leonard Bernstein on record (Stravinsky's mass, DG 2530 880), participated in a Prom (Hans Werner Henze's Raft of the Medusa, strange stuff!) and in the Queen's silver jubilee performance at the Albert Hall in London. We stood in for the choir of Winchester cathedral while they were on holiday, and even sang in Bing Crosby's last TV Christmas show (!). I then took a three-year degree course in Computer Science at the University of Kent at Canterbury from 1982-1985, emerging with an honors degree, class 2-2. The Computing Lab employed me as a Unix programmer over the summer between my second and third years, and again after I had graduated, and then as a Tutorial Fellow in Computer Science from October 1985, a post which I still hold. .in 0 Relevant computing experience .in 3n I have been doing Unix systems programming in C for four years now. Among the things I have worked on are device drivers for the troff typesetting program and on-screen previewers of the formatted output. I have given informal courses on C and Unix programming within the Lab. I have also been a Unix consultant for various firms. Last summer I was granted a ``leave of absence'' from the university to work as a Unix systems programmer for Instrumental Colour Systems, writing a layer of software to implement their software, which was based on communicating processes, on Unix. My third year project as an undergraduate was a remote procedure call mechanism to transparently implement remote execution and remote file system access for existing programs. It works by emulating Unix system calls, and is currently in use at the laboratory to provide a central text formatting service to all Unix machines. (Licensing restrictions make it desirable to run the package, troff, on one processor only) .br A copy of the project report is in the post. I have done various work on computer graphics, including defining a simple file format for raster images and writing a dozen or so drivers for various raster graphic devices, and programs for manipulating images (rotating, resizing, halftoning etc). These all use a C library which I wrote to help with packing and unpacking the raster format files. I have also worked on mandelbrot fractal programs, implemented a hidden line removal algorithm for vector graphics, and played with a ray tracing program. I have some knowledge of neural networks. .in 0 Current employment .in 3n I am shared between the Academic and Service divisions of the Laboratory. As an academic, I take seminars and terminal sessions in support of other people's lecture courses in 68000 assembly language, Occam, and structured programming using Pascal. I am also the system administrator for the four main Unix systems used for undergraduate teaching. For the first time last year, I jointly gave the Unix lecture course for first year undergraduates and gave a course on C. On the service side, I am part of the Unix Support Group. There are about half a dozen people in the group, providing support for Berkeley Unix versions 4.2 and 4.3 on 16 machines of three different architectures. I find teaching most rewarding, and have been told I am a natural for it (by no lower authority than the students!). .in 0 Musical experience .in 3n The University of Kent has no music department, so since I left secondary school my musical activities have had to be pursued as a hobby. My main technical musical experience is in FM sound synthesis and digital processing of sound. I built a microprocessor-based harmonizer in my spare time, and have plans to do a better one which works by doing Fourier transforms on the sound, instead of the cyclic buffer technique used in the other. I have recently been playing with Formula, a programming language for computer music, by Anderson and Kuivila, which looks interesting. I have been trying to get a musically-oriented project off the ground here, to do audio digital signal processing with a transputer engine. The idea was to use little remote boxes on the fast local area network to collect data and to output it, and to do the processing on the central machine. It's not lost yet, but getting funding is very hard and there is little support. I am a reasonably competent pianist. Bach is good. So is Stravinsky. .in 0 Reference .nf .in 3n Peter Collinson Computing Laboratory The University Canterbury Kent CT2 7NF England .in 0 \l'6.25i' .fi I'll have to wind up now as darkness is falling and the pile of exam scripts beckons. I am sure I have all the C and Unix expertise you could want. I find it rather difficult to assess my own musical qualifications as they are all rather at a tangent to the beaten track. The earliest I can be sure to terminate my contract here is late December 1988, but I think it is likely that the University would not hold me to those terms strictly. I'll let you know when I get a reply from them. All the best Martin .nf Email: .in 3n mg@ukc.ac.uk \&.\^.\^.!mcvax!ukc!mg .in 0 Phone: .in 3n +44 227 764000 extension 3810 (work) or 3453 (home) music2 584297256 165 2805 100644 891 ` .pl 11.7i .po 1i .ll 6.25i .nh .de HD 'sp 1i .. .de FO 'bp .. .wh 0 HD .wh -1i FO .in 4.5i .nf Martin Guy Computing Laboratory The University Canterbury Kent CT2 7NF England .in 0 Dr. Jack A. Taylor, Director Center for Music Research Florida State University Tallahassee, FL 32306-2098 USA .in 4.5i Thursday, 7th July 1988 .in 0 Dear Dr. Taylor .fi .ti +3n With reference to my application for the post in the CMR, here is a copy of the report for my 3rd year undergraduate project. If my electronic mail hasn't got through yet, this won't be making much sense, so I also enclose a printed copy of the mail. I have heard that I will indeed be able to terminate my contract here by September if I am what you are looking for. Regards Martin .nf Email: .in 3n mg@ukc.ac.uk \&.\^.\^.!mcvax!ukc!mg .in 0 Phone: .in 3n +44 227 764000 extension 3810 (work) or 3453 (home) music3 611259914 165 2805 100644 1315 ` Did you get my letters, sent on the 3rd by email and on the 7th by royal post, about my wish to apply for the post you advertised in the CMR for a undiscovered computer music researcher with immense expertise in Unix and C, and various other interesting things. As I have received no reply, I am wondering if, perhaps, onr of my letters might have got lost in one of the postal mechanisms and your reply swallowed by the other. Ok, here goes: Computer-generated music is getting to the point where its techniques are almost as good as those of its other rival in the computing field: automatic generation by computer of English prose. Apart from being grammatically correct, they have continuity of meaning and can contain random elements such as occasional gramattical slit-ups or double meanings. Yes, computer music sounds fine, ***but it's not poetry***. * pause * The way to, as it were, ``leverage'' computer music technology is to use them as a *tool* for musicians to play through. If you want to know more about the ultimate musician's intrument, of which all other current and future electrophonic instruments are restricted subsets, please write to: Martin Guy Computing Laboratory The University Canterbury Kent CT2 7NF England or phone +44 227 764000 and ask for Computing Reception.