Introduction to Computer Music

Week Two Materials

 

After a break for Halloween, we will be continuing the course tomorrow, Monday, November 7 @ 6:30 PM. As always, the course is taught at Black Lodge Research in Redmond.

Here's what we'll be covering:

• Listening: Stria by John Chowning
• Review: Rhythmic Dictation
• Sight Reading/Ear Training: Recognizing and Singing Intervals
• Synthesis: Additive and Vector Synthesis; Timbre and harmonic series; Beginning Envelopes
• Instruments: Basic MIDI control ; Additive Synthesis; Vector Synthesis

Since the shared Powerpoint slides were less than optimal cross-platform during the first class, the slides have been prepared directly for the web. Click here for week two's slides.

Week One's slides have been similarly prepared and are available here. Here are this week's audio exercises and instruments (for Max/MSP):

A Live Meeting link for this class is available through the discussion list -- click here to join.

Course Structure

There will be six weeks of instruction spread across twelve weeks. New materials will be introduced every other week with the interceding weeks set up as office hours. Music takes practice, so moving too quickly without time to absorb lessons will quickly break down.

Recommended Materials

Other than having some sort of sound synthesis software you can use, none of this is actually required. You can get around using cheap iPod headphones, for example, but you’ll struggle to hear nuances in your sounds. Likewise, you can write music on any paper, but having pre-printed staves makes it much easier.

• Reasonably recent  laptop (we’ll be doing real-time synthesis).
• Max/MSP ($400; Win/Mac; http://bit.ly/7F8cVd) OR Pd (free; Win/Mac/Linux; http://puredata.info/  ). 
•  Studio Headphones such as Sony MDR-7506 ($86), Sony MDR-V6 ($66), Beyerdynamic DT-235 ($55), Behringer HPS3000 ($21). 
•  Music Manuscript Paper ($6; http://amzn.to/pjMX04).
•  Pencil.

I wouldn’t recommend going out and buying the expensive software or headphones right off the bat. You can get decent studio headphones for way more and less than $86, for example, but the MDR-7506 has been a staple in professional studios since the 90’s. Likewise, Max/MSP will provide absolutely no value-add over Pd for the purposes of this course. In both cases, I’ve been using the products for nearly twenty years, so they’re a strong personal preference.

Learning Objectives

The course is split into two sets of objectives.

Basic Musicianship skills are foundational skills that are useful no matter what your aesthetic goals may be. At the end of the course, you will be able to:

• Read and perform basic rhythms.
•  Hear basic rhythms and write them down using traditional notation.
•  Read and sing basic melodies.
•  Hear basic melodies and write them down using traditional notation.
•  Auralize and sing harmonic intervals.
•  Differentiate between Major and Minor chords by ear, even in inversion.

The second portion of the course is about sound synthesis. While learning to use software synthesizers is the most expedient skill to making music, we’re not following that path. Instead, the goal is to make our own software synthesizers, ideally so that you can make any sound you can imagine. The specific skill takeaways are:

• Understanding of digital audio basics:
  • Sampling rates
  • Control rates
  • Nyquist frequency
  • Interpolation
• Understanding of basic synthesis techniques:
  • Attacks, decays, and envelopes
  • Additive Synthesis
  • Frequency Modulation
  • Ring Modulation
  • Subtractive Synthesis
• You will have implemented a handful of software instruments utilizing a variety of synthesis techniques.