> Would you mind telling us something about the History of MSG? How did
> you start programming, did you learn it by yourself? Wich language did
> you use? What was the motivation, how did the first versions look like
> and how did it evolve and so...

hmmmm... i do not remember the beginnings very well. i started programming
in basic around 1983 on my c64, then assembler in 1986, too.
1987 i switched to atari, and a year later came gfa-basic and the time of
msg.

the make module is the oldest, but without the tables behind it. i had that one
even before the articles about algorithmic composition in the german 
keyboards magazine in 1989. as one article of the series covered the 
programming of 'drumming' i hacked that too. one could call that version 1.

i remember that i pieced some things together, probably the'make' part with the
'graphic' part i programmed because kandinsky was too expensive. version 2 was
born.

later, i started having fits because the program was all but user friendly. as
it began to become a small monster, i rewrote and threw out a lot of 
redundant code. i separated the modules cleanly. now i had a quite 
logical program - version 3. i still have v3.3, v3.5, v3.7, and v3.8 here...

fall 1997 brought the next leap to version 4 and the layer (now track) concept,
the select event module and the general principle that only selected events
could be modified. i finished the manual and put the whole thing on ice until 
last weekend when i added the 'musinum' module and fixed a major bug tim 
found in the midi file save routine.

so, msg is written in gfa basic. my motivations? it was sport and fun until
i found out i wanted to do things no other program i had or could afford
could do - eg create a sequence with random pitches where the base
pitch and the octaves come up more often than the others.
today my motivation is more to provide interesting things the lead to
musical phrases one had never come up with otherwise.

hope that it was not too long, hellmuth