“How can anyone view the trashing of our founding tradition as evidence of patriotism? Because some have adopted a very different political philosophy than the Founders held. This approach to government promises the recovery of a mythical past. It feeds a sense of White victimhood. It emphasizes emotion over reason. It denigrates experts and expertise. It slanders outsiders and blames them for social and economic ills. It warns of global plots by Jews and shadowy elites. It accepts the lies of a leader as a deeper form of political truth. It revels in anger and dehumanization. It praises law and order while reserving the right to disobey the law and overturn the political order through violence.

...[Trump] and a significant portion of his supporters have embraced American fascism.”

— Michael Gerson in The Washington Post

Syntheogen

Sequencer & synthesizer — Android — C++, Android NDK

Syntheogen™ is a step sequencer and synthesizer I developed for Android phones and tablets:

Syntheogen screen shots
LOOP STEPS dialog TRACK EFFECTS dialog TRIM CLIP dialog SONG dialog

I started this project because I thought it would be really fun. Looking back, though, it was just a pain in the ass. Android is a frustrating platform, and some of my design choices made the project harder than it needed to be. The app turned out well — it's really fast, the sound quality is good, and there are some interesting UI features — but I have no desire to work on it again. Maybe I will open-source it some day.

Anyway, Syntheogen was mostly written with C++ and the Android NDK. Production builds targeted Android, but the app also runs on Windows, which I used for development and testing. It was extra work to make everything cross-platform, but it ultimately saved a lot of time.

The interface was built on a custom GUI framework. The sequencing and synthesis engines are also custom designs, and the sequencer offers features not found in other music apps: measures can be sized and divided almost arbitrarily, patterns of different length can be mixed in the same loop, and notes can be tied to produce legato phrases of any length.

To learn more, visit the Syntheogen site or watch the Quick Start video.