About

My name is John Cooper.

I’m an obsessively inquisitive lifelong learner and tinkerer.   Every couple years, I fall deeply under the spell of a new subject, and study it intensely.   Some subjects have captured my interest for longer than others: Guitar, woodworking, piano and keyboards, songwriting, electronics, audio/video production, Chinese, astronomy, hypnagogia, …

Officially, I’m a software engineer at Korg Research & Development.  Since 2001, I’ve been working on Korg’s flagship KRONOS and OASYS synthesizer workstations.   Prior to Korg, I worked at a number of now defunct companies, including  Thomas Dolby‘s company Beatnik where I developed the Beatnik Editor; and Opcode Systems, where I co-developed the fusion:Effects series of audio processing plugins; and even a brief stint at the Gibson Guitar electronic instruments R&D group.

Since 1999, I have hosted the Planet Z Scope Forums, dedicated to the Sonic Core Scope audio-dsp platform (formerly known as Creamware Pulsar).    I developed some plugins for the Scope platform with a couple of friends, under the name Orbitone.  I’m no longer running Scope myself, but continue to host the community forums here.

I live in California with my wife Chunling and our two daughters Sophie (born in 2003) and Emily (born in 2005).  My extended family all mostly live in Australia and China.

In this blog, I’ll share some of my current obsessions.  I look forward to hearing from you, so please get in touch!

I do try to answer all questions- but I get many emails and youtube comments everyday, so I sometimes get a bit behind- please be patient.  And I really appreciate all the kind great job‘s and thank you’s!  I don’t have time to individually respond to all well wishes, but please know that I really appreciate the kind feedback!   Thank you!