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I plan to update Tune Smithy to version 4.x some time this year - time permitting as it is a large task which will require several months of work.

What takes the time is to make sure all the new work I've done with Bounce Metronome including tempo dial, Bounce effects, skipped beats etc. work properly throughout Tune Smithy. I also have to make sure that they work with the fractal tunes particularly and that it is backwards consistent with FTS 3.x. That's going to be well worth the work for algo-comp and fractal tune enthusiasts as once it is done, you'll be able to use all the new rhythms and rhythm features of Bounce Metronome with the fractal tunes.

Before then though I also plan to release some more of the Tune Smithy tasks as separate programs in their own right like Tune Smithy - it's a good way to check through the program one task at a time, and upgrade it to 4.x rather than to try to do the whole upgrade in one go. If you allow say a month for each major feature in FTS, then that would be one month each for:


 * Music Keyboard and Composition retuning
 * Lambdoma Music Therapy
 * Fractal Tunes
 * Analyse Recordings and Midi Instruments
 * Audio Pitch Tracer (I think this could be made much easier to use)
 * Find Notes in Recording
 * Chord Player
 * Scales Composer
 * Play from music keyboard

Though the last three would probably not involve so much work because I expect the FTS 3.x coding to work fine and the programs in 3.x are reasonably okay apart from need to improve the User Interface - maybe one month to do all three. Though I could easily spend one month on each to do a more thorough job of it.

If I do it that way then that's a seven month job to update the whole program to 4.x. Plus add say a week gap between each one to tidy up and prepare for next one.

Nowadays I like to work in short "sprints" of a few weeks, say a month, as in some forms of Agile software development. This task based approach would be ideal for that. I'd take one of those tasks, and spend a month say, with the main goal to get it ready for release as version 4.x including testing to make sure everything is working okay.

In that month I do as much as I can, so basic goal is to just get the FTS 3.x task up to date and check it is bug free and to simplify the UI and release as a separate program. If it takes a long time to do it that might be all I do. And if it takes a very long time I might leave out the newer features so basically I just release an updated and fixed version of the 3.x task and leave out many of the new things introduced with Bounce Metronome.

If it goes quickly then can also do things like make a new searchable wiki dedicated to the program, add new features, and so on.

Anyway realistically then it is probably unlikely I'll do the complete upgrade in 2011 unless it goes really quickly. Not if I do everything I want to do.

Another idea is to do a one month sprint to just try to get the whole of FTS up to date at some point. Then the aim would be not to get the whole lot a better user interface etc. like Bounce Metronome. But - just to make sure the whole thing is consistent, integrate the new code into the other tasks. Just make sure it all works.

If I do say the two or three most important tasks as one month sprints - then do an FTS 3 to 4 upgrade as another one month sprint, that seems feasible to do within an easy one year time frame.

In that case my to do list would be perhaps:


 * Music Keyboard and Composition retuning
 * Lambdoma Music Therapy
 * Fractal Tunes
 * Make first consistent upgrade of the whole of FTS 3.x to 4.x

and spend one month on each and one week extra after each project, total of five months work perhaps.