I found the Les Paul Doodle at 2am when I was supposed to by studying for a final. It's the kind of thing that gives me hope. As a programmer, there's a demand for all kinds of work that's not audio, and not shared, and for the most part I'm just doing what comes my way these days. But once in a while I get a chance to make some music or play with some sound and I really remember why I came to digital in the first place. It makes music so easy and so spontaneous. Who didn't play that doodle guitar? It was irresistible. When we look at the future of music, the future of folk music especially, we ought to remember my mother's definition: folks play it, don't they? Audio has long been the ugly stepchild of the web: there's not much capability for looping and layering without a plugin like Flash, and browsers may or may not support Javascript without latency. HTML5 has a new standard for audio, but when can we use it for complex projects? Even though Apple supported it with Safari, they only supported their own MP3 format, not even open-source OGG. BOOOO Mr Jobs! Anyway, the Google guitar is programmed exquisitely: the sound is dynamite, there's no latency on my machine, and you can play chords. Plus they released the code. I love you Google. There will be a marimba on my home page soon.
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