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Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#51

Post by consumer451 »

purplekohav wrote: post #24
yayitswei wrote: post #8

This is one of the few articles where I noticed a bunch of LLM-isms and still read to the end because it was interesting.

Hi! I work at IEEE Spectrum and there's no way an LLM wrote this. We have a pretty strict Generative AI use policy (bottom of this page https://spectrum.ieee.org/about ). I'm guessing this is from writers using actual writing techniques that Gen AI stole from...

I just wanted to relate a story.

I was speaking with my 14 year old nephew via messaging last month. It was about a deep topic, synthetic consciousness. He wrote such an intelligent reply that I asked him: hey, was this from an LLM? He was insulted. I did research with his parents and found out that 90% no, he's just a very smart kid.

Is there a name for this this mode of confusion yet?

Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#52

Post by solomonb »

asdfman123 wrote: post #42
solomonb wrote: post #21

I strongly believe that if you set aside genre preferences the solid body electric guitar coupled to a tube amplifier is objectively the greatest electronic instrument ever created. All other electronic instruments, with the one exception being the Theramin, have a fundamental problem with human expression. There is an unsolvable disconnect between what the performer's actions and their audience. See: https://www.scr…

You could argue that it's one of the most versatile instruments, sure. "Greatest" is completely subjective. But is it one of the most versatile instruments? You can do signal transforms with any kind of audio input, although it's done more with the electric guitar than any other instruments. I would say it in practice , it has the most versatile sonic profile .

A modular synth is more versatile in terms of enumerated signal transformations. Its the ability to be expressive with those signal transformations that makes the guitar+tube amp what it is.

Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#53

Post by 9dev »

Slow_Hand wrote: post #34

Nice article for engineers to understand something that most guitar players will intuitively know. One of the great things about a hi-gain setup like Hendrix's is how the feedback loop will inject an element of controlled chaos into the sound. It allows for emergent fluctuations in timbre that Hendrix can wrangle, but never fully control. It's the squealing, chaotic element in something like his 'Star Spangled Banner…

Star Spangled Banner was incredible. The way you can hear the machine guns, choppers, sirens, screaming in agony… that was a masterpiece.

Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#54

Post by bigiain »

gwbas1c wrote: post #28
solomonb wrote: post #21

I strongly believe that if you set aside genre preferences the solid body electric guitar coupled to a tube amplifier is objectively the greatest electronic instrument ever created. All other electronic instruments, with the one exception being the Theramin, have a fundamental problem with human expression. There is an unsolvable disconnect between what the performer's actions and their audience. See: https://www.scr…

I watched Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips do something similar with some kind of "I don't know what" controller, it was some kind of input in his microphone stand. As he moved it around, the sound and projection changed. I remembered learning about similar MIDI controllers when I was in school.

Imogen Heap created a set of gloves that transform finger flexing and wrist movement into midi signals you can use in whatever way your performance software allows.

https://mimugloves.com/gloves/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq52kT6YY-0

Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#55

Post by EnPissant »

purplekohav wrote: post #24
yayitswei wrote: post #8

This is one of the few articles where I noticed a bunch of LLM-isms and still read to the end because it was interesting.

Hi! I work at IEEE Spectrum and there's no way an LLM wrote this. We have a pretty strict Generative AI use policy (bottom of this page https://spectrum.ieee.org/about ). I'm guessing this is from writers using actual writing techniques that Gen AI stole from...

Schools have a strict Generative AI policy as well, and yet...

Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#56

Post by alephnerd »

jmalicki wrote: post #14
alephnerd wrote: post #11

This is why I feel the recentish (last 10-15 years) shift in decoupling CS curricula from EE and CE fundamentals in the US is doing a massive disservice to newer students entering the industry. DSP, Control Engineering, Circuit Design, understanding pipelining and caching, and other fundamentals are important for people to understand higher levels of the abstraction layers (eg. much of deep learning is built on top o…

I came into a CS and math background without CE or EE, and took two dedicated optimization courses (one happened to be in a EE department, but had no EE prereqs), as well as the optimization introduced in machine learning classes. To be honest a lot of the older school optimization is barely even useful, second-order methods are a bit passe for large scale ML, largely because they don't work , not because people aren…

> Isn't Nagle usually introduced in a networking class typically taken by CS (non-CE/EE) undergrads

Networking, OS, and Distributed Systems is increasingly treated as CompE or even EE nowadays in the US.

> Just because EEs are exposed...

That's the thing - I truly do not believe that EE and CS should be decoupled, and I believe ECE as a stopgap is doing a disservice to the talent pipeline we need for my verticals to remain in the US, especially when comparing target American CS and EECS programs to peer CEE, Indian, and Israeli CS programs [0].

There is no reason that a CS major should not be required to take a summary circuits, DSP, computer architecture, and OS fundamentals course when this is the norm in most CS programs abroad. Additionally, I do not see any reason for EEs and ECEs to not take Algorithms, Data Structures, and Compilers as well.

> Just because EEs are exposed to some mathematical concepts during their training doesn't mean that non-EEs are not exposed through a different path

Mind you, I'm primarily in Cybersecurity, AI/ML infra, DefenseTech, and DeepTech adjacent spaces - basically, anything aligned with the "American Dynamism" or Cyberstarts thesis.

From what I've seen, the most successful founders are those who are able to adeptly reason and problem solve, but are also able to communicate to technical buyers because you are selling a technical product where those people make the decision.

Just because an approach isn't useful today doesn't necessarily imply it isn't in the future and being exposed to those kinds of knowledge and foundational principles makes it easier for one to evaluate and reason through problem spaces that are similar but not necessarily the same - for example, going to the Nagle's example - this was a bog standard networking concept that has now become critical in foundation model training because interconnect performance is a critical problem which can impact margins.

A lot of foundational knowledge is useful no matter what, and is why we fund founders and hire talent at competitive salaries.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45413516

Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#57

Post by gnarlouse »

solomonb wrote: post #21

I strongly believe that if you set aside genre preferences the solid body electric guitar coupled to a tube amplifier is objectively the greatest electronic instrument ever created. All other electronic instruments, with the one exception being the Theramin, have a fundamental problem with human expression. There is an unsolvable disconnect between what the performer's actions and their audience. See: https://www.scr…

I feel like the synthesizer--CMI Fairlight, Moog anything, Synclavier, PPG Wave, and just the general concept of modular synthesis--are pretty staunch competitors. Yours is certainly a fun and fair take, and arguably the electric guitar+tube amps birthed so many genres (blues, soul, funk, rock, punk, metal, etc) where as synthesizers remained pretty niche with their contribution to experimental music and pop music, mixing in with rock funk and disco, and the titan of EDM that grew out of that.

Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#58

Post by DrewADesign »

purplekohav wrote: post #24
yayitswei wrote: post #8

This is one of the few articles where I noticed a bunch of LLM-isms and still read to the end because it was interesting.

Hi! I work at IEEE Spectrum and there's no way an LLM wrote this. We have a pretty strict Generative AI use policy (bottom of this page https://spectrum.ieee.org/about ). I'm guessing this is from writers using actual writing techniques that Gen AI stole from...

I took my introductory college writing classes at a college I can’t name-drop without sounding like a jerk, which also did a bunch of LLM research over the years. We used a TON of em dashes in our writing. It’s no mystery, to me, where that stylistically prevalent quirk comes from. I’ve definitely been accused of being an LLM bot.

Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#59

Post by jrm4 »

solomonb wrote: post #21

I strongly believe that if you set aside genre preferences the solid body electric guitar coupled to a tube amplifier is objectively the greatest electronic instrument ever created. All other electronic instruments, with the one exception being the Theramin, have a fundamental problem with human expression. There is an unsolvable disconnect between what the performer's actions and their audience. See: https://www.scr…

Great argument -- but I'd also counter that "the turntable" (i.e. in the hands of experts like Q-Bert, Craze, Rob Swift, Jazzy Jeff and others) fits this quite well -- especially re your "have the audience understand what he is doing argument"

Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#60

Post by bigiain »

anthk wrote: post #40
solomonb wrote: post #21

I strongly believe that if you set aside genre preferences the solid body electric guitar coupled to a tube amplifier is objectively the greatest electronic instrument ever created. All other electronic instruments, with the one exception being the Theramin, have a fundamental problem with human expression. There is an unsolvable disconnect between what the performer's actions and their audience. See: https://www.scr…

Ahem, just two words. Yamaha DX-7. Synth music elevated electric bound tones to anything ever heard. I remidn you that most of the rock and roll and rock music was about speed and mimicking the sound of a rumbling car engine, as it was a symbol of the freedom in America, being able to run away from your toxic communities to find yourself better anywhere else. That was the message for the young with rock and roll: a s…

The amusing thing (to me at least) is that while the DX7 gave users almost infinite options as to how they could create and shape sounds, if you know what to listen for you'll hear the E PIANO 1 and BASS 1 presets an about half of all mid 80s hits. Turns out when they gave musicians a tool with immense flexibility, many of them still chose to use two of the (admittedly great) preset sounds.
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