Stories/YoshitakaNakajima
Yoshitaka Nakajima, Kyushu Institute of Design, Japan
I am teaching auditory psychology at the Kyushu Institute of Design, and I am always making auditory demonstrations for my classes. Several years ago, I noticed that some of my demonstrations might be interesting to my colleagues in the same field. Takayuki Sasaki, Gert ten Hoopen, and I, together with our students, tried to make a systematic series of demonstrations to deliver to our colleagues. But we realized that we needed an easier and faster system to generate waveforms.
Then I got my first machine for Windows 95. I looked for a suitable system for our purpose. I had been an enthusiastic user of APL for a long time, and I knew that a new language called 'J' existed. I came across a book about J, and I bought it. A floppy disk with a freeware version of J was attached to this book, and I installed the software in my new computer. I was totally absorbed, and decided to purchase the professional version. Within half a year, I learned to think in J, although I am not a good programmer. I managed to find ways to generate binary files or wave files. It was like a dream. I could generate and hear a lot of new sounds, and I am sure that I was as happy as Galileo with a new telescope. Some results are now on our web site. I even managed to synthesize Japanese speech or violin tones, and I am expecting new students to do research on some of these new sound materials. They will need just a couple of weeks to learn how to generate such complicated sounds.
nakajima@kyushu-id.ac.jp