Prerequisite: Music 170
Textbook: online at msp.ucsd.edu/techniques/latest
Meetings: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:30-1:50 in Mandeville B152
Instructor: Professor Miller Puckette , CRCA (temporary building 969), 858-534-4823, msp@ucsd.edu, https://msp.ucsd.edu/ .
Office Hours (all in Mandeville B206) Tuesdays, 11:00-12:00
TAs: Cristyn Magnus: cmagnus(at)ucsd(dot)edu. Office hours Tuesdays, 2:00-3:00
Derek Keller: dkeller(at)ucsd(dot)edu. Office hours Tuesdays, 3:30-4:30
Course email policy

This is an introduction to audio synthesis, both in theory and in practice, using the Pd program. Pd is free and you can run it on Windows, Linux, or Mac OSX. Get it at https://www.msp.ucsd.edu/software.html .

There are eight weekly assignments, due Thursdays, the first one for Jan. 15. (Here are Instructions for submitting assignments .) A final presentation is due at the regular final exam time, Friday, March 19, 11:30-2:30.

This course is supported by ACS; you should all get class accounts and door codes. Here are Instructions for running Pd on the ACS machines.

Here is the WEBCT page for the course -- check your grades here (really!!!) To do this first log in (using your course account and password) and click through "music 171" and then "grades".

Preliminary list of topics (about one per week):

1. making sinusoids. Your first assignment is here . Between this week and next, read chapter 1 of the book, particularly looking at the examples at the back of the chapter. Objects covered this week: osc~, phasor~, cos~, +~, *~, dac~.

2. amplitude and phase control. New objects to learn this week: line~, metro, snapshot, delay (not seen in class yet as of 1/15), and "message boxes". Here is Homework 2, and here are the ugly patch examples from class: horrible1 and horrible2 .

3. wavetable oscillators and samples. New objects: mtof, ftom, rmstodb, dbtorms (and the signal versions); arrays; tabwrite, tabread4, tabwrite~, tabread4~. Here are the patches from Tuesday class . And here is Homework 3.

(INTERLUDE) Special guests: Trevor Wishart Jan. 27 and Pamela Z Jan. 29.

4. (Feb. 3-5) wavetable oscillators and samples, continued (corresponding to the rest of chapter 2 of the textbook.) Here is Homework 4, due at class time, Feb. 12.

Here are EXAMPLES from Feb.10. Homework 5 is due Feb. 19.

5. voice management and polyphony. Here are the EXAMPLES from Feb. 17. Homework 6 is due Feb. 26.

6. amplitude and frequency modulation Homework 7 is due March 4. Here are examples from class Thursday Feb. 26. ... and examples from Tuesday, March 10.

7. designer spectra

8. graphics programming with GEM

FINAL PROJECTS are due Friday, March 19.