Music 171: Computer Music I
Winter quarter 2015, University of California, San Diego, section ID 761179
https://msp.ucsd.edu/syllabi/171.13w/
Textbook: online at msp.ucsd.edu/techniques/latest
Meetings: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:30-4:50
CPMC (Conrad Prebys Musc Center) room 136
Instructor: Professor Miller Puckette, CPMC 251, msp@ucsd.edu, https://msp.ucsd.edu/ .
Office Hours Tuesdays, 5:00-6:00 in the classroom.
TAs:
Kevin Haywood, khaywood (at) ucsd (dot) edu; office hours Tuesdays 2:30-3:30, room 136 (except in 264 Jan. 13).
Tina Tallon, ttallon (at) ucsd (dot) edu; office hours Wednesdays 1-2, room 265

This is an introduction to audio synthesis, both in theory and in practice, using Pd (Pure Data) as a platform. 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 .

There are eight weekly assignments, due Thursdays.

A final presentation is due at the regular final exam time, 3-6PM, Tuesday, March 17. Assignments are with 10 points apiece and the final is 20.

The examples from class are accumulating HERE. The videos from the "same" class some years ago are HERE.

List of topics (about one per week):

1. Making sinusoids and controlling their amplitudes and frequencies. Read chapter 1 of the book, particularly looking at the examples at the back of the chapter. Assignment 1 is due Thursday, Jan. 15.

2. Wavetables (Chapter 2). Assignment 2 is due Thursday, Jan. 22.

3. Control and signal paths (chapter 3). Assignment 3 is due Thursday, Jan. 29.

4. Polyphony and control strategies (chapter 4). Assignment 4 is due Thursday, Feb. 5.

5. waveshaping and FM (chapter 5). Assignment 5 is due Thursday, Feb. 12.

6. Pulse trains and ring modulation (chapter 6). Assignment 6 is due Thursday, Feb. 19.

7. Delays and delay effects: echos, comb filters, flangers, pitch shifters (chapter 7). Assignment 7 is due Thursday, Feb. 26.

8. Filters and filter design (Chapter 8). Assignment 8 is due Thursday, Mar. 5.

9. Fourier analysis and resynthesis (chapter 9)

10. Classical waveforms (chapter 10) and miscellaneous: Gem and 3D graphics; audio analysis tools; networking; spooling sounds to/from disk.