This is a serie of interviews to 3rd Party Rack developers.

(If you are reading this and would like, to be featured, just write me)

In this interview we talk with Jeremy Wentworth, the man behind JW-Modules.

(Binaries – Sources)

Hi, please introduce yourself briefly (your age, where you live, what you do in your “real life”)

I am a 36 year old from Ohio, USA. After long nights working on VCV Rack modules, I wake up at 5am and head to my real job as a developer at software company. We develop applications for the utility companies. Our main application analyzes utility poles and everything on them to make sure they are strong enough to withstand wind and ice loading. On a sort of related note, I made the music for our latest teaser video 🙂 here https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=3MDaMx_LDY4

Do you have any formal training/education in IT/Programming Language or are you self-taught? What level best describe you (junior, senior, advanced) ? Do you do it for living or is it just passion/hobby?

When I was little I wrote a lot of BASIC and C. I wrote lots of little musical things, games, tools, and various experiments. I learned C++ in high school and at college for 2 years. I didn’t finish college. So yes I had some classes but I would consider myself mostly self taught. I have been making a living doing development for about 10 years. I don’t really like classifications of developers but if I have to answer I guess I am a senior developer. This is also a huge hobby of mine. I love creative coding, the p5/processing community, max for live, and reaktor communities. I have always been obsessed with merging music and technology.

What was the reason you started developing modules for VCV Rack? What interested you most?

I have some synths and modular gear and I was looking to get back into C++ to build/modify my own modules and also build my own VSTs, and then VCV Rack came along at just the right time. (I have attempted to make VSTs several times over the years and haven’t had any good results.) The thing that interested me the most about VCV Rack was that it was open source and the code was so easy to follow. It is a really nice platform where I can mostly focus on the things that are fun rather than extra complex layers that other frameworks have.

Do you have any previous experience in developing music apps/plugins? If yes, please tell us about that

Yes, I have built tons of applications over the years: max for live devices, max patches, pure data patches, processing applications, java applications, web audio applications… You can find these things on my website or on github. http://jeremywentworth.com/ https://github.com/jeremywen? tab=repositories One bigger application I made was GrainMainFrame which was featured on Create Digital Music in 2010 Post: http://cdm.link/2010/04/a- free-drag-and-drop-granular- sample-player-mashes-up-sound/ Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=tkIYt9fzqZI





What are you working at the moment?