In order to bring you more in depth coverage on how the tools behind the blips and bleeps are made, we asked musician Lazerbeat to sit down and chat with some of  the innovators and creators of the scene.  Here is part one of his two part interview with PSPSEQ developer Ethan Bordeaux. PSPSEQ is a “a free homebrew application for composing music on the Sony PSP handheld game system. PSPSeq contains both realtime synthesis and sample playback capability, along with multiple FX modules of widely varying types for modifying instruments in countless ways.”

LB: So, Hello Ethan, thanks very much for doing this.

ECB: You’re welcome. Happy to get the good word out on PSPSeq.

LB: Before we get into the details of PSPSeq, tell us a little about your background with programming.

ECB: Sure no problem… my day job is as an embedded systems programmer. I was hired by a company called Analog Devices where I first started off supporting their DSPs and then later on was transferred to a group where I wrote software algorithms for them, specifically for cell phones. Been doing that for the past 8 years or so. Mostly I work on speech and audio processing algorithms. It’s fun but when you’re doing that kind of work you are only writing a very small piece of the overall system. I wanted to do something where I owned the entire project; audio, UI, documentation, etc etc.

LB: Did you start programing as a hobby or was it something you learned specifically with a view to a career?
Continue reading Interview with PSPSEQ Dev Ethan Bordeaux pt1