Captain's Log: Stardate 79553.2

NAMM was amazing, but also super exhausting! It took a while for me to feel rested, but finally the idea of writing about NAMM sounds appealing. I'll probably write a few smaller posts with stories.

Today's story concerns a votive candle.

I've been working on Anukari for almost 3 years now. Ever since the very early days, I've been referencing Dr. Julius O. Smith III's CCRMA home page, which is a gold mine for audio processing knowledge. For almost any topic in the DSP/modeling/audio math world, Julius has written something about it. When I browse around his home page, my mind is completely boggled at the breadth and depth of his work. It is truly amazing what Julius has contributed to the audio processing world.

Pretty early in those 3 years, I started referring to Julius as one of the Patron Saints of Anukari. Anukari now has several patron saints, but as far as I remember, Julius was the first. Evidently I enjoyed joking about this enough that Julius O. Smith III became a household name, at least in my household, which is to say that my wife Meg was aware of his name.

For my birthday last year, Meg had a votive candle custom-made for me with Julius' face on it:

I found this gift completely hilarious, and it's been on my desk ever since. It occurred to me to email Julius, but I wasn't sure whether he'd find it funny or extremely weird, so I didn't contact him.

Fast forward to NAMM. The Anukari booth had a ton of traffic, and we enjoyed talking to lots of people and giving zillions of demos. Interspersed with general foot traffic, Clifton Cameron would occasionally bring someone by to take a look at Anukari.

Clifton is a fascinating person. He contacted me over email early after the Anukari beta was released, and has been super encouraging. He's been involved with synths and the synth community forever, and seemingly knows everything and everyone. He's obviously super passionate about synths, music, education, and particularly about the community. It was a pleasure to get to meet him in person.

Clifton is such a nice guy, and he really knows what people are into and what they might find interesting. So when Clifton says, "hey, you should come check out this booth," or, "you should meet so and so," people listen.

So as I said, Clifton brought over a number of very special guests to say hi. Included among them was the illustrious Nicholas Porcaro, of moForte and CCRMA, and more. Nick was super curious about Anukari, and we had a really fun conversation about audio software.

From left to right: David Landin, Clifton Cameron, me, Nicholas Porcaro

From left to right: me, Nicholas Porcaro

At some point Nick said something about a "Julius." My ears perked up. I clarified... was it the Julius? Yes! It turned out that Nick and Julius work together and know each other super well.

So of course I had to show Nick the candle. I dug around on my phone for what seemed like an awkward eternity, "just wait, you have to see this, I swear it's amazing..." Finally I found a photo of the votive candle and Nick cracked up. Immediately he had to send it to Julius, and later he sent their colleague Pat Scandalis by to see the photo (and Anukari).

It turns out that I had been referencing work by all three of them for years, but only Julius' name had stuck in my head. Maybe Julius, Nick, and Pat are the Patron Saints of Physical Modeling, and not just Anukari.

Given that Nick and Pat found the candle funny, I finally worked up the nerve to email Julius himself, to show him the photo and also thank him for all his contributions to the field. He also laughed, and commented on the photo as "alternate-universe Julius" due to the uncharacteristic mustache. (Meg chose this picture because it was the highest-resolution one she could find!)

All in all it was an absolute honor to meet these friendly titans of the physical modeling world, and to have such a silly interaction centered around the votive candle.

The world really is a funny place. I never would have guessed that my offhand joke about Julius as a patron saint would ultimately blossom into a hilarious conversation at NAMM with a friend of Julius!