Herbert Harari, a retired professor of psychology, lectured on experimental psychology and statistics at San Diego State University, and consulted in clinical work at a San Diego hospital for many years. A true academic, Herbert has also written and published six books on psychology. When Herbert retired, he and his wife Rut, moved north to be near their children and grandchildren, and Herbert taught part-time at Hayward State and UC Berkeley until he finally retired completely several years ago.
An early convert to computers, Herbert's first had a whopping 2K of memory, which he upgraded to 64K in short order. A long succession of upgrades followed, and at some point Herbert discovered MIDI music. Although he didn't read music at the time, he had a 'good ear' and a passion for traditional jazz, blues, country, ragtime and barrelhouse music.
He started playing with a keyboard, taught himself to read music, and began to compose pieces. As a charter member of America Online, Herb has lots of experience online. He recognized the power of the Web early on as well, and taught himself HTML. He started building his Web page over one year ago. As of November, 1996, he's had over 10,000 visitors to his Web site, some from as far away as Namibia and the Honduras. He was thrilled to get a request from a member of the Polish Academy of Science, and was asked by the ROTC to embed "Up and Away" into their Web site.
Herbert keeps adding to and improving his Web site, and regularly 'jams' with other MIDI enthusiasts around the world. For example, Herbert will email a composition to a friend in Germany, who will add saxophone. That person will then send it to someone else who adds the percussion, as so forth.
Herbert's Web site provides a lot of enjoyment for Herbert as he works on it, and for the many fans of MIDI music online.