Headache - Early Adopter version coming shortly

It's been a while since I've posted progress on Headache.

At the last point of contact, I'd created the shell of an editor, however I needed to get the data from C to Python and back again. Python, the language, has a remarkably apt syntax (though some would disagree), however, underneath in the engine room, the code is a nightmare. Creating a usable module for Python in C is a gigantic brainfuck for anything but the simplest of modules.

After a couple of weeks hitting brick walls, I relented and searched for easier options. I found a friend in Pyrex, an intermediate C/Python language that was designed to make modules effortless to write, and it was mature enough for production purposes (though a couple of features were a little undercooked). If you ever need to interface C with Python, Pyrex should be you first port of call.

Now to Headache itself. In a couple of weeks we are releasing an early adopter version of HeadacheTracker (the library will be available for free, always), so musicians can get writing fluid event-based music. In the not too distant future, I'm going to be documenting techniques for writing emotive event-based music. Please note, this is NOT just cross-fading tracks, or muting channels. HeadacheTracker allows the musician to decide how events affect the music they write, but writing an event-based track is different from writing a linear track.

Also note, it is a tracker, not a MIDI sequencer. If there is sufficient demand, we will hack together a MIDI plug-in so musicians can use their expensive rigs to create music. That will require a plug-in structure first, something the early adopter release does not have. The application is bare bones functionality right now - all the goodies will have to wait.

When the library is available, I'll submit a snippet for adding it to Torque. Adding it to any program is dead simple, and we are releasing extensions for our favourite scripting languages as well: Python, Lua, Ruby and Blitz, with Java under consideration.

We are eager to show that you don't need a ten thousand dollar rig to start creating great music. If you're interested in what we're doing, let me know with a comment and e-mail.