Re: [Bluemusic-users] Re: Contemplating Video Tutorials

[steven yi <ste...@cs...>]

Hi Andres,

This is very interesting indeed.  I think perhaps for some people, 
graphical interfaces like PD work well as people can follow the lines to 
see where things are going, i.e. signal goes here, then there, etc. and 
for some people, that type of information is quick and easy to parse 
visually and that's what is important for them to understand.  On the 
other hand, text interfaces are very explicit, so you have descriptive 
variable names that express where signals are going to and coming from, 
and for some people it's more important to understand what it is that's 
going between places rather than the pathway itself.  For me, I think 
having words represent the connections makes it easier to remember the 
meaning of the signals than it is to understand visually by having to 
view the connection between two boxes, see what the boxes mean, then 
interpret what the line could mean (that's assuming no text labeling). 

I remember back when I was taking a course in electronic music, some 
people had a hard time understanding the ARP 2500 and 2600 we were using 
due to keeping track of what each cable cord was connecting what 
(visually hard to parse) as well as having no inherent labeling of the 
semantic value of that cord.  That was tough for them on both accounts.  =o

steven

Andres Cabrera wrote:

>I had a very strange experience this semester. I'm
>giving  a "Synthesis" lecture for the first time, and
>started with pure data, which students in this class
>seemed to have a lot of trouble with. Then I showed
>them a little csound for the analysis-resynthesis
>section (since I find csound is more versatile in this
>area), but expecting very little understanding- I did
>it for demonstration only not expecting the students
>to understand very well what I was doing.
>Surprisingly they understood everything very well and
>asked why we didn't do csound from the beginning...
>I was surprised... I haven't done much more csound
>since, since we would have deviated too much from the
>programmed course, but I'm curious to know if anyone
>has had similar or different experiences...
>
>Cheers,
>Andres
>
>  
>