Once upon a time...

Below is a copy of another post recently made to a discussion on Daniel Levitin's Facebook page.  It's a re-statement of the content in this older post, but I like the clarity of this new restatement.

In brief, my argument is that (a) there's a difference between "musical talent" and "the ability to handle arbitrarily high UI loads," and that (b) reducing the UI load in a given domain in can increase the success-rates that novices enjoy in that domain.

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Darin wrote:

> If someone has innate talent, then as that person
> practices and progresses, he or she will recognize
> the progress, will be recognized by others for the
> progress, and as a result, will develop real passion
> for the pursuit. If somone does not have innate
> talent, such person will practice, not make much
> progress, will see the lack of progress, and be told
> about it by others, and the passion will not take
> hold, but will wither, and the person will move on
> to some other endeavor.

>
> People with real talent are few.

I respectfully disagree. "Talent" has absolutely nothing to do with it. Please let me explain by example.

1. Once upon a time, the Cherokee were illiterate. The English alphabet was a poor fit with the Cherokee language, so efforts to spread literacy among the Cherokee failed. Then one Cherokee invented a writing system that fit Cherokee perfectly, enabling literacy to sweep the Cherokee almost overnight. Did the Cherokee suddenly gain a "talent" for literacy?

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_syllabary)

2. Once upon a time, the Koreans were illiterate. The Chinese ideographic script was a poor fit with the Korean language, so the efforts to spread literacy among the Koreans failed. Then the Koreans invented Hangul, which fit Korean perfectly; now, "a bright child can become literate in a day, and a dull child in ten." Did the Koreans suddenly gain a "talent" for literacy?

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul)

3. Once upon a time, physicists couldn't puzzle out the interactions of quantum mechanics, nor could students learn about them efficiently. Then, Feynman invented "Feynman diagrams," and students could understand such interactions in less than a semester. Did physics students suddenly develop a "talent" for quantum mechanics?

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feynman_diagram)

4. Once upon a time, European mathematicians could not conceive of "x to the power of y," because Roman numerals could not notate the concept, and the Roman abacus could not calculate it. Then Fibonacci explained how to use Arabic (actually Hindu) numerals and algorithms, and the scope of European mathematical thought widened dramatically. Did Europeans suddenly develop a "talent" for mathematics?

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber_Abaci)

5. Once upon a time, the "value" of a church singer dependend as much on "how many songs he had memorized" as on how well he could sing them, because all songs had to be memorized by rote. Then Guido d'Arezzo invented staff notation and solfeggio, enabling novices to become valuable church singers much more rapidly. Did such novices suddenly gain a "talent" for singing?

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guido_of_Arezzo)

6. Once upon a time, all mathematical calculations had to be executed longhand, making them expensive and error-prone. Then logarithms were invented, and many calculations could be accelerated by looking them up in tables of pre-calculated logarithms. Did this suddenly increase people's "talent" for calculation? Did the invention of the slide rule? Of the pocket calculator?
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logarithms#History) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculator#Pocket_calculators)

7. Once upon a time, learning and practicing chemistry was extraordinarily difficult, with the properties of each element having to be learning individually, and its guiding principles (e.g., phlogiston) being fundamentally incorrect. Hence, few gained mastery over chemistry. Then Lavoisier discovered the combustion principle, Mendeleev invented the Periodic Table of the Elements, and Bohr deduced the planetary model of the atom, all of which reduced the investment of time necessary to master chemistry, thereby dramatically increasing the percentage of the human population that could afford to master chemistry. Did students suddenly gain a "talent" for chemistry?
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_periodic_table)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston#History)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohr_model)

YESTERDAY, learning and practicing music-making was extraordinarily difficult, with the patterns of each key, clef, scale, mode, tuning, instrument, timbre, etc., having to be learning individually, and its guiding principles (e.g., 12-tone equal temperament) being fundamentally incorrect. Hence, few gained mastery over music-making. Then [insert here a list of scientific discoveries and technological inventions that, arguably, have not yet been made], all of which reduced the investment of time necessary to master music-making, thereby dramatically increasing the percentage of the human population that could afford to master music-making. Did students suddenly gain a "talent" for music-making?

Of course not.

In all of the above examples, the problem was a lack of technology, not of "talent." The traditional technology of music-making—staff notation, instruments, and theory—is the problem. As with all of the above examples, fixing the technology will fix the problem.

Until we fix the technology of music-making, it hardly seems fair to blame the victims—music students—for their "lack of talent." (Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
(http://www.godrules.net/para/luk/parallelluk6-41.htm)

To argue otherwise is to argue that either

1. all of the above examples are wrong, or that
2. "music is different."

I would welcome the opportunity to dismember either argument. ;-)

Respectfully,

Jim Plamondon
Unaffiliated Musical Heretic

What Killed Thumtronics?

I killed Thumtronics, as its CEO, through my own inexperience.

Two major errors — both mine — killed Thumtronics, thus preventing the Thummer from reaching the market.

These errors were:
1) Starting Thumtronics is the wrong location.
2) Failing to observe the KISS Principle ("Keep It Simple, Stupid").

Location
I started Thumtronics in a tiny hick town (Busselton, Western Australia). Great place to semi-retire, but a lousy place to start a high-tech company. I believed that the world had become flat. However, if you're trying to get a start-up off the ground, geography still matters. Your first step must be to relocate to an appropriate start-up hub.

For Thumtronics, not relocating was fatal. Most of my other mistakes, large and small, could have been avoided simply by starting up in (for example) Austin, and taking advantage of its excellent start-up infrastructure.

KISS
I was initialy attracted to the Thummer, as an investment of my own time and money, because it was "old wine in new bottles," in which the bottle provided all of the added value. All I needed to do was wrap off-the-shelf parts in a new instrument-shape, and voila! — I'd have an inexpensive, expressive new instrument that was easy to learn, fully compatible with all existing (USB-)MIDI-based hardware and software, and patentable. Everything in the Thummer would be off-the-shelf except for its user interface, which was the only remaining source of value in the musical instrument industry's value chain (everything else having been commoditized).

Even better, every performance of the Thummer — whether live or in a video — would implicitly "endorse" the Thummer's unique abilities. Further, because the Thummer would look so unmistakably different from everything else, every performance would also be an "advertisement" for the Thummer. Our marketing expenses could be very low, because our customers would advertise the Thummer for us, simply by using it. (This approach doesn't work for guitar makers because all guitars look alike to non-guitarists. The Thummer, however, looks totally unique, even to non-musicians.)

Indeed, the Thummer was a "purple cow" — a product so different that it would attract attention effortlessly (which was later borne out by the Thummer's ability to attract press from such non-musical publications as the Wall Street Journal).

With this in mind, I should have focused exclusively on "getting version 1.0 to market ASAP, while spending as little on R&D as possible," in order to (a) keep its price low and (b) jump-start the use/endorse/advertise cycle ASAP.

Why did I not maintain this obviously-correct focus?

Because I was also aware that the Internet dramatically increased the effect of word-of-mouth communications (hence "word of mouse"). If Thummer v1 sucked, then its use/endorse/advertise cycle would never start — or, worse, an anti-use/endorse/advertise cycle would begin, "poisoning the well" for version 1 and all future versions, too.

I came to belive that, in order to ensure positive word of mouse, the Thummer v1 had to be "the most expressive instrument on the planet." It had to exceed its customers' expectations by such a wide margin that it would attract evangelically-enthusiastic word of mouse. This led me to elevate expressive potential over KISS, and therefore to invest time and money in two features that required R&D: (a) motion sensing and (b) key velocity/aftertouch.

Motion Sensing
Today, motion sensing (using accelerometers and gyroscopes) is as cheap as dirt, because it's implemented in off-the-shelf chips. Such chips are in every modern console game controller, such as Nintendo's Wii Remote and Sony's SixAxis/DualShock 3 controller.

But back then, in 2003-2005 when we were developing the Thummer, there were no cheap off-the-shelf motion-sensing solutions. Because of this, we should have written off motion-sensing as "a great feature for a later version, once motion-sensing chips became available off-the-shelf." Pretty obvious, right?

The problem was that people LOVED the motion-sensing prototype Thummers. Even skeptics became enthusiasts after seeing them demonstrated. Motion sensing made musician's expressive actions visible to the audience, which was something a tiny thumb-operated joystick could never do. Motion sensing was clearly the Thummer's killer feature.

If we could just implement motion sensing in Thummer v1 (we thought), then we'd have a hit, Hit, HIT!

However, with the crude and expensive motion-sensing chips available back then, there was no way we were going to make a motion-sensing Thummer. It took us months, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, to realize just how hard it was going to be to pull together a "complete solution" from those crude chips. Had Thumtronics been in Austin, I would have had access to people who knew that "complete solution" chips were just a couple of years away. Integrating the new chips into a Thummer would have required one-tenth the R&D effort by Thumtronics. Making the decision to wait would have been much, much easier, had I known that such chips were coming soon. (Chip advances are sporadic, so it's not easy to predict what the next year or two will bring, even if you know that "chips are getting better all the time.")

In any case, I should have stuck to my initial vision of "old wine in new bottles," and ignored motion sensing until it became "old wine," in the form of off-the-shelf chips. Deciding to spend R&D resources on motion-sensing was a mistake.

Key velocity/aftertouch
The harder you strike a piano key, the harder its strings are struck. This one extra expressive variable — "key velocity" — was enough to cause the piano to out-compete the harpsichord, pipe organ, and all other previous keyboard instruments.

"Aftertouch" goes a step further, by allowing an instrument to sense the pressure with which you continue to press a key after the initial strike.

Although there was ample off-the-shelf technology available to measure key-velocity in an electronic instrument that used a piano-like keys, there was none available for concertina-like button-field instruments (and there still is none today). The movement of a button is quite different than that of a piano-like key, so we couldn't use piano-based technology.

We figured that, if the Thummer v1 didn't implement key velocity, then it would suck, and ruin our word of mouse. Therefore, we decided to reverse-engineer the pressure-sensitive buttons of the Sony PlayStation video game controllers, which would give us both key-velocity and aftertouch. However, reverse-engineering this button-system turned out to be beyond the capabilities of our back-of-beyond, hick town company. It soaked up much more of our resources than we could afford. By the time we realized that the end of this R&D task was not in sight, the end of our capital was.

Attempting to implement key velocity/aftertouch was a mistake for three reasons. First, it required R&D, and the "old wine in new bottles" game plan was specifically designed to minimize R&D. Second, it simply wasn't necessary. An alternative feature, called "channel pressure," would have been (a) good enough, and (b) brain-dead simple/cheap/fast to implement. We were focused on key velocity/aftertouch because we listened too hard to our piano-playing beta-testers, who said it was a "must have." Third, even if the Thummer needed more expressive power to succeed, the "killer" way to get that expressive power was through motion sensing, not key velocity/aftertouch.

Bad Decisions => Lack of Cash => Death
These bad decisions cost Thumtronics time, and time is money. If I had not made these bad decisions, Thumtronics would have been able to bring v1 of the Thummer to market by Christmas 2005, at which time it still had enough capital to live cheap and market hard while sales ramped up.

Having made these errors, however, I had to attempt to raise more money. This fund-raising effort failed. Presumably, potential investors decided that if I hadn't brough the Thummer to market after a $1.5 million dollar investment — which should have been ample — then perhaps it was simply a bad idea, or I was simply a bad entrepreneur. They were probably right, on the latter point, at least (although I'd say "inexperienced" rather than "bad").

Bad Location => Bad Decsions
Had I started the company in the right location, and thus been able to assemble a board of directors (and suppliers, partners, employees, etc.) with the right experience, then they are very likely to have been able to help me (a) resist the temptation to elevate "excellence" over KISS, and (b) stick to my "old wine in new bottles" game plan, thereby getting Thummer v1 onto the market by Christmas 2005.

Purple cows don't need to be excellent, in their first version. They just need to be very, very purple...and commercially available. The Thummer would have been very bright purple indeed, even without motion sensing or key velocity/aftertouch. All it needed was to get to market, so that it could find its niche. Each subsequent version could have"sucked less," growing the niche, and climbing the Long Tail into the mainstream.

I never should have elevated "expressive potential" over KISS. Darn it.

Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda...
Let's imagine for a moment that I had not made either of these two major errors. How would the Thummer have worked out? No one can know for sure, however, but here's one possible scenario.

Thummer version 1 would have been available for sale in time for Christmas 2005, without motion sensing or key velocity/aftertouch. Although sales would not have been explosive by any means, v1 would have sold enough over the next 12 months to make Thumtronics cash-flow positive by the end of the year, with a clear growth curve. (This is especially true because we would never have employed the staff that we hired to implement motion-sensing and key velocity/aftertouch, thereby keeping our costs lower.) Sales of the open-source Monome, and of Yamaha's Tenori-On, show that demand existed for alternative instruments such as the Thummer. A history of real, proveable, black-and-white sales growth would have allowed us to attract growth capital. Growth capital is much easier to get than start-up capital, and there was no shortage of growth capital in the USA back then.

With that growth capital, we could have accelerated sales in 2006. Also, motion sensing chips became widely available in 2007, so we could have added motion-sensing to version 2 for Christmas 2007.

Thummer v2 would have been a truly excellent product, not only due to motion sensing but also due to lots of little refinements that users would have suggested after using version 1. As you can see from Ken Rushton and others, the very idea of the Thummer creates "evangelically enthusiastic" supporters. Think how much stronger this enthusiasm would be, and how much more broadly-based, if Thummers actually existed, so that one's enthusiasm could be based on experience (which Ken's now is, more or less, using his excellent DIY jammer) rather than expectation.

With motion-sensing driving the sales of Thummer v2 in 2008, we would have had the cash-flow to add channel pressure to Thummer v3, probably in time for Christmas 2008.

At least as importantly, with Thummers actually being available, the development of open-source software synths that exploited Thummer-only effects (such as dynamic tonality) would have proceeded much faster than they have in today's real time-line. By mid-2009, it is quite possible that dynamic tonality would have started showing up in pop music. (Consider this use of a Monome, or this use of a Reactable. Creative artists LOVE new gadgets.)

The more the Thummer was used by pop musicians, the more rapidly it would have ascended the Long Tail into the mainstream. That's when we would have started seeing Thummer-players being invited to join mainstream bands, or bursting into the commercial music business with Thummer-based bands. That's also when Yamaha, Fender, Roland, etc. would start considering offering their own Thummers, which Thumtronics would probably have encouraged through a patent & trademark license and reference design package.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Sigh.

It was all there, in the palm of my hand, but I screwed it up. By starting Thumtronics in the back of beyond, and by placing "expressive power" above KISS, I wasted my own and my investors' capital, and quite literally the opportunity of a lifetime.

A skeptic might say that Thumtronics' experience proves that "new musical instruments always fail," no matter how much "better" the new instrument might be. This is absolutely the wrong interpretation of the facts, however. The Thummer has never had the chance to succeed or fail in the marketplace. Commercially speaking, it is completely untested.

What's really frustrating is that today, motion sensing could be incorporated into the Thummer for next to nothing. Version 1 of such a Thummer, with motion sensing and channel pressure (but not key velocity/aftertouch) could be a hit product from Day 1. I've still got the key patents. It's still doable. But now I'm broke, angel investors are broke, VCs are broke, and it's just not going to happen. Argh.

Ah, well. Thumtronics is dead. Long live iGetIt Music! :-)

Taubes & the Semmelweis Reflex

Here's a current example of the Semmelweis Reflex: today's ongoing diet wars.

Gary Taubes is an award-winning science journalist whose New York Times Magazine article, What if it's all been a big fat lie?, sparked a firestorm of controversy. In his article, and in his subsequent book Good Calories, Bad Calories, Taubes argues that
(a) the USA's dietary science community (henceforth, the "dietary Establishment") has accepted a single hypothesis as its guiding paradigm despite a lack of credible supporting evidence; and that
(b) an alternative hypothesis fits the observed facts much better, and is supported by evidence that is more scientifically credible.

This two-hour video of Taubes presenting his ideas (at UC Berkeley) is a good overview of his 600-page book.

One might reasonably expect that a community of scientists, when presented with evidence supporting an alternative hypothesis, would be all too eager to design and perform experiments aimed at testing the validity of this alternative, in order to determine the objective truth. After all, a "scientist" is, by definition, someone who practices the scientific method, which is all about the formulation and testing of hypotheses.

But that would be naïve. Instead, the response of the dietary Establishment was, and continues to be, a classic example of the Semmelweis Reflex in action. When Taubes' article and book were published, the dietary Establishment's immune system went into overdrive, engaging in every possible defense against the invading hypothesis and anyone who might sympathize with it. These immune responses weren't coldy rational, but were instead hotly personal.

For example, the dietary Establishment excoriated Taubes for getting a $700,000 advance for his book Good Calories, Bad Calories. They chose to view this as "selling out" rather than being, in effect, a research grant. The dietary Establishment did the same thing to Dr. Robert Atkins, who similarly challenged the validity of its prevailing hypothesis for 30 years starting in the 1970's. The dietary Establishment doled out generous servings of federal research funds to supporters of its chosen hypothesis, but not to anyone who might seriously challenge that hypothesis, such as Dr. Atkins. Instead, they said that he could fund his own experiments from the sales of his diet book. Of course, had he done so, then the Establishment would have discounted those studies' results as "advocacy," due to their not having been funded by an "unbiased" source. It was a classic Catch-22.

Maybe the Establishment's prevailing hypothesis is right; maybe Taubes' alternative hypothesis is right. We don't know, because so far, the dietary Establishment has refused to fund the kinds of experiments that might reveal the objective truth. Why should it? It already knows the objective truth, after all, as the defenders of any discipline's dominant paradigm inevitably claim to do.

When I was getting a BS in Geology back in the late 1970's, many of my professors were adamantly opposed to the newfangled plate tectonics hypothesis. They were invicibly ignorant, clinging to the previously-dominant geosyncline hypothesis despite mounting evidence against it.

On the one hand, this was an exciting introduction to paradigm shifts; on the other, I ended up with a weird education, half-geosyncline and half-tectonics.

I suspect that this experience has led me to be unusually open to criticisms of any domain's dominant paradigm, whether in geology, diet, music, or anything else.

Go, Taubes! As the Romans would have said, Fiat scientia, ruat coelum! That is, "Let science be done, though the heavens fall." :-)

[Interestingly, Google returns zero hits for the above-quoted English phrase. It is hard to imagine that I am the first to think of applying the well-known judicial phrase "Let justice be done, though the heavens fall" to a scientific context, as this result implies.]

[Also -- lest my Latin teacher spin in her grave -- let me point out that the Latin word scientia translates more to "knowledge" than to the modern concept of "science." Gimme just a little poetic license, OK?]

Thummer as Purple Cow

I recently had the founder of a music technology company tell me that he wanted to hire me to evangelize his company's music technology products, because I “must be an incredible evangelist to have gotten such amazing national press for the Thummer” (e.g., the Wall Street Journal story and a forthcoming story by CBS News Sunday Morning).

He missed the point completely. The Thummer is getting remarkable press because the Thummer is remarkable – literally “worthy of remark.” The Thummer is, in Seth Godin’s memorable phrase, a Purple Cow.

Here’s the essence of Godin’s Purple Cow Theory, drawn from the above-linked article:
When was the last time you noticed a cow? Saw a cow on the side of the road, pulled over and gawked… Not likely. Cows, after you've seen them for a while, are boring. They may be well-bred cows, Six Sigma cows, cows lit by a beautiful light, but they are still boring.

A purple cow, though: Now, that would really stand out. The essence of the Purple Cow — the reason it would shine among a crowd of perfectly competent, even undeniably excellent cows — is that it would be remarkable. Something remarkable is worth talking about, worth paying attention to.

Boring stuff quickly becomes invisible. The world is full of boring stuff — brown cows — which is why so few people pay attention. Remarkable marketing is the art of building things worth noticing right into your product or service. Not just slapping on the marketing function as a last-minute add-on, but also understanding from the outset that if your offering itself isn't remarkable, then it's invisible — no matter how much you spend on well-crafted advertising.
Overhauling the product with dramatic improvements in things that the right customers care about can have an enormous payoff.

If being a Purple Cow is such an effective way to break through the clutter, why doesn't everyone do it? Because people are so afraid. "Playing it safe" and "following the rules" seem like the best ways to avoid failure. Alas, that pattern is awfully dangerous. In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is failing; not standing out is the same as being invisible. The more intransigent your market, the more crowded the marketplace, the busier your customers, the more you need a Purple Cow. Today, the one sure way to fail is to be boring. Your one chance for success is to be remarkable.

The Thummer is not just remarkable, it’s remarkable in four different ways – (1) its unparalleled expressive power, (2) its unprecedented ease of learning, (3) its revolutionary Dynamic Tonality, and (4) its shockingly low price (compared to other button-field controllers like the Tenori-On and Monome, which don’t even come close to the Thummer on any of the first three points).

These are exactly the benefits needed to disrupt the music products industry.

As Bill Gates once famously said, “to create a new standard, it takes something that's not just a little bit different. It takes something that's really new and really captures peoples' imagination.”

It takes a Purple Cow – a purple cow like the Thummer.