Prerequisite: Music 170
Textbook: online at msp.ucsd.edu/techniques/latest
Meetings: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:30-4:50 in CPMC 145
Instructor: Professor Miller Puckette, CPMC 251, msp@ucsd.edu, https://msp.ucsd.edu/ .
Office Hours Tuesdays, 5:00-6:00 in the classroom.
TA: Joe Mariglio: jmariglio at ucsd dot edu. Office hours 2:00-3:00, CPMC (location not confirmed yet).

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. You can get it at https://msp.ucsd.edu/software.html .

Here are videos of the classes, thanks to Joe Deken and Theron Trowbridge.

A final presentation is due at the regular final exam time, 3-6PM, Tuesday, March 15.

Preliminary list of topics (about one per week):

1. making sinusoids. Your first assignment is here, due Jan. 13 before class. Between this week and next, read chapter 1 of the book, particularly looking at the examples at the back of the chapter. Objects covered tuesday: osc~, +~, *~, dac~, print~. Here is the patch from class (with aded comments). If it looks like a text file, just save it to disk and Pd should be able to open it.
Here are the patches from Thursday.

2. amplitude and phase control. New objects to learn 1/11: line~, metro, delay, and "message boxes".
Assignment 2 is due Jan. 20.
Here are patches from Tuesday 1/11 and Thursday 1/13.

3. wavetable oscillators and samples. New objects: mtof, ftom, rmstodb, dbtorms (and the signal versions); arrays; tabwrite, tabread4, tabwrite~, tabread4~.
Assignment 3 is due Jan. 27.
Here are patches from Tuesday 1/18 and. Thursday 1/20.

4. Wavetable oscillators and samples (chapter 2 of the textbook), continued.
Assignment 4 is due Feb. 3.
Here are patches from Tuesday 1/25 (no comments yet, oops) and Thursday 1/27.

5. Yet more on sampling - envelopes, looping, phasing, etc., and managing multiple voices using abstractions and "route".
Assignment 5 is due Feb. 10.
Here are patches from Tuesday 2/1 and Thursday 2/3. After developing the one new patch on Thursday we started a tour through the examples in the Pd documentation, but only got to one of them, D07.additive.pd.

6. More on polyphonic instruments, and amplitude and frequency modulation.
Assignment 6 is due Feb. 17.
Here are patches from Tuesday 2/8 and Thursday 2/10.

7. Modulation continued: waveshaping and FM.
Assignment 7 is due Feb. 24.
Here are patches from Tuesday 2/15 and Thursday 2/17.

8. More FM, wave packets, and beginning on delays
Here are patches from Tuesday 2/22 and Thursday 2/24.
Assignment 8 (the last one before the final project!) is due March 3..

9. Delays (continued) and begining on filters.
Here are patches from Tuesday 3/01 and Thursday 3/03.

10. Finishing on filter theory; Gem and 3D graphics; audio analysis tools and spooling sounds to/from disk.
Here are patches from Tuesday 3/08 and Thursday 3/10.

FINAL PROJECTS are due Tuesday, March 15.