Greetings from Vienna!

First of all thanks to the moderator of this group, Jody Kravitz, 
and Robbie Rhodes, answering my request in cyberspace
and guarding me safely to this place.

So, where to start ... ah there is a posting of Robbie and give
me the chance to correct some things (thanks to the financial ministry of
Austria oppressing me now to do my tax declaration, therefore I do not have
enough time to do what I want, e.g. to answer to a lot of E-mailings).

Robbie wrote:

> Claus is a member of the "School of Viennese Songs" [I think that's the
> name of a club] which meets regularly at the restaurant, "Zum Werkelmann",
> operated by Wolfgang Geissler.  

... I am a part time member there, the school is operated by the "Club
Monte Laa" and his secretary Wilhelm Heidenhofer. Everybody, who likes
to sing and learn Viennese Songs can come there on every Monday, accompanied
by old and young musicians, like Pepi Matauschek on accordion (a very
famous player)  and/or Rudi Koschelu on "Kontragitarre" (I think a typical
Viennese instrument like an ordinary guitar combined with a bass guitar,
that means it has two necks in one body). 

> "Werkelmann" means  "workman", so the restaurant is "At the Workman's".  

... "Werkel" has the meaning of a machine

> I think in Austrian it also connotes the man who turns the crank of the
> barrel-organ, so "Werkelmaenner" means the "Hurdy-Gurdy Men".

... it is the only importance!

> Wolfgang Geissler has organized the 13th annual convention at the "Bohemian
> Park" in Vienna, which is a BIG amusement park much like Tivoli, with
> [they say] the largest Ferris Wheel in the world.  "Stachelwalze" means
> "spiked cylinder", another name for barrel-organ or -piano or music box.

... note the difference between the largest Ferris Wheel in the world
("Riesenrad") - it is in the very big Vienna "Wurstelprater" near river
Danube  and the highest suited (!) Giant Wheel in Vienna on the "Monte Laa".

I come from the south of Austria - the federal state Carinthia ("Kaernten"
with its capital "Klagenfurt") is about 300 km away from Vienna ("Wien"),
where I live for over 20 years now. When I finished my studies of
"Elektronik und Regelungstechnik" on the Technical University of
Vienna
        - guess, how old I am - 

I started with jobs like controlling waffle and ice-cone machines. So,
because of this Austrian company (no ad.s here!) is number one worldwide,
maybe you did not look at your even baken cone, but maybe the know-how
comes from  the solution of 4th dimensional Fourier-heat-transport-equation
applied to that machines. Another thing was the control of the very first
infrared-heated tunnel oven; imagine a length of about 70 meters with a
speed of about 25 waffles per minute (size about 20" diagonal). Here I
wrote my first program (I have learned Cobol and Pascal programming language -
but there were only a Basic-programmable computer) to calculate electric
elements for heating.

Two years was enough and I joined a company producing 35mm professional
movie cameras (do not think about MOVIECAM and also do not think of me
as a blowhard, but really it is the most silent self-plimped camera in
the world (<18 dBA); of course it had to be named "Super America" - nobody
believe it, but then some years before this wonderful machine won the only
technical Academy Award an Austrian product ever got. Regretfully it was
one year after I left this small company and after half a year of thinking
what to do, I did some things in data-base-applications as a free-lancer.

Then I decided to be the owner of my one free enterprise, called it
"Computer Spezial Anwendungen", and till seven years now doing various
things like consulting, installing computers and networks, programming
in 80x86-assembler, C, Clipper, training in AutoCAD especially for
architects, and so on.

Some highlights in my work are construction of info-games for the Austrian
Railways (demonstrating the new models for locomotives, wagons and
integrated clock-keeping time table), simulation of a telescope (official
contribution to the world exhibition in Sevilla/Spain 1992), mainframe-PC
connection of a weight machine, foreign traffic bookkeeping program for
the city of Kitzbuehel/Tyrol, data exchange and conversion programs between
different CAD-systems and platforms.

My interests in computer-music has roots in my lacking of reading standard
music notation.  So, after a short experiment with a frequency-modulated
synthesizer (Soundblaster) I acquired a better wave-table synthie (Roland
SCC-1), which sounds quite well - and I always can be sure, if I put the
right note on the score with the mouse (now I have a master keyboard but
no knowledge to play), the computer will play "right" - and so I am able
to hear and learn to sing unknown music quasi from plain paper.

The sequencer and notation programs I use on a wimpDOS-platform are:

   Voyetra, Midisoft Session, Cubase, Power Tracks Pro, Aleatoric Composer,
   Encore  and  MIDI-Karaoke.

My interests in Automatic Music are very new and inspired by my occupation
with old and new Viennese music as well as the festival of MEMUSI 95 (I will
inform this group in a few days about that meeting) and the thing I want
to transform some music from MIDI-format to that wonderful machines,
especially EPROM-controlled barrel-organs (made in Germany by
Hofbauer/Goettingen).

Servus!

Claus

• - - -

legend:         

Basic           Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code

CAD             Computer Aided Design

Club Monte Laa  Monte = mountain   Laa = Laaer Berg (mountain),
                small hill in the south of Vienna

Cobol           Co-mmon b-usiness o-riented l-anguage

dBA             Dezibel A = measure unit for acoustic loudness, value at
                human impression

EPROM           Electrically Programmable Read Only Memory

MEMUSI          in German "MEchanische MUSIk" - mechanical music
                with a 2nd meaning in Viennese

dialect: "Musi" = music

Pascal          programming language named by French mathematician

wimpDOS         user of other platforms sometimes call that name for Bill
                Gates genius(?) creation