For me, chapter 4 was one I could relate to with a bit more ease than some of the others. I'd like to touch first on the idea of synthesis. I remember during a physics class in high school, we did an experiment with a spring. We had to send multiple waves across the spring. We learned that waves don't disrupt each other, but rather create new waves due to their additive properties. I found this concept really helpful during the reading because I applied the same analogy to sound waves. The comb filter also made a lot of conceptual sense. Adding in 'digital echoes' at a specific frequency/delay should strengthen the instances of that particular frequency.

Next, I'd like to address Principle 4.5, which tells us to 'Design things with a computer that would not be possible without.' I think this is a topic that also addresses some of the problems from the last reading. In my last blog post, I mentioned how technology threatens some traditions of music, which is why some are averse to computer music. There are very few musical technologies that completely perserve all the characteristics of their acoustic counterparts. Going off of that point, I think that if you try to emulate a sound/instrument that already exists, people wouldn't be as drawn to it at first. I can safely say that I don't like to play on any electric piano, no matter how good the technology is. However, if something completely new were created, then there wouldn't be any specific type of music that's being 'ruined'. For example, consider laptop orchestras. Laptop orchestras don't necessarily threaten to replace traditional orchestras because the repertoire is different. However, laptop orchestras take advantage of the preciseness and connectability of computers to produce a completely different type of music. 

Also from 4.5, we should use 'New technological mediums...to discover what the medium is innately good at'. It seems like in this instance, we define 'good' as what the medium can do that other mediums cannot, rather than what listeners prefer to hear. I think this is an important distinction to make when designing within the realm of computer music. We shouldn't necessarily use a computer to replicate sound that we think of as 'good'. Being a classical musician, I can definetly see myself trying to program something that evokes the same emotions as an orchestral work. Most likely, this would result in me programming sounds that sound like a violin. It's not like I'm trying to write a classical piece on a computer; as a musician, I've developed a solid framework that perhaps has left me resistant to other frameworks of thinking about music. For a lot of musicians, I think it's a challenge to break their current mindset and explore the mediums that computer music has to offer, especially if this class is their first music technology class. Learning more about the capabilities of musical technology is essential in acheiving this goal.