Prerequisite: Music 170
and enough music background to write and produce a two-minute
piece.
Textbook: none
Meetings:
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:20-3:40 in Mandeville B206
Instructor: Professor
Miller Puckette
, Center for Research in Computing and the Arts, 534-4823,
msp@ucsd.edu, https://www.msp.ucsd.edu/
Office Hours are at CRCA, Tuesdays 12:45-1:45 PM or by appointment.
NEWS
As of 1/15, the support files are divided into unix, max, and windows versions and the Csound instruments and orchestras have been ironed out somewhat.
SYLLABUS
This course introduces theoretical and practical aspects of digital music recording, mixing, and editing. Technical topics covered include audio montage, equalization, effects processing, spatialisation, mastering, and diffusion as time permits. In parallel we'll look at some musical issues raised by recording and editing techniques, both in the "art" and pop music traditions.
The course is roughly divided into three sections: first, collecting sounds and critical listening. Second, organization. Third, "finishing school" for sound production projects.
Topics and assignments. (note: This course is taught in a very interactive way, and the following syllabus may change.)
week 1 (Jan 11, 13). Stockhausen's four criteria and how to run Csound. Exercise: make a simple csound montage using the provided soundfiles.
week 2 (Jan 18, 20). Acoustical parameters of sounds. Exercise: download some sounds and compare them to your favorite recording.
week 3 (Jan 25, 27). Recording techniques. Exercise: make close and distant recordings of any sound source, and listen to how the recordings compare to each other.
week 4 (Feb 1, 3). Sound art. FIRST ASSIGNMENT due Feb. 8: choosing source sounds from the courseware or your own recordings, put together a montage exploring how they might be juxtaposed and what the musical possibilities are.
week 5 (Feb 8, 10). Montage: cutting, enveloping, speed change, time reversal, looping, stereo placement. Exercise: make a montage of two sound sources that offsets their different characters in some way.
week 6. (Feb 15, 17) Musical pitch and noise. Exercise: make a 5 to 10-note melody out of "found" sounds that your friends can recognize melodically.
week 7. (Feb 22, 24) Time and rhythm. SECOND ASSIGNMENT due Feb. 29: rough draft of a 2-minute piece of music or "sound art."
week 8 (Feb 29, Mar 2). Filtering. Exercise: make a montage in which a highly filtered, unnatural sound gradually becomes recognizable either as it develops or through repetition.
week 9 (Mar 7, 9). Delay, reverberation, and spatialization.
week 10 (Mar 14, 16). Time stretching and morphing. FINAL (to be presented during final exam week:) your project.
Computers. This class is supported by ACS (Academic Computing Services) in the APM 349 lab (Applied Physics and Mathematics building). You can obtain class accounts and get a door code at the first class meeting. (Note that the lab is unavailable certain hours.) Machines labeled "audio" are set up for this course. The main software tools we'll use are:
Alternatively you can work on your own PC; SoundForge is available over the net for $50 and Csound and Pd are free. If you have a Macintosh computer, you can still run Csound, but Pd isn't available and you will want to find a different sound editor.
Web Resources.
COURSEWARE: Some CSOUND examples, and some soundfiles, can be found by browsing the "courseware" at https://https://msp.ucsd.edu/syllabi/173.00w.
CSOUND: look in https://comp.music.lsu.edu/eams/software/csound.html.
SOUND EDITING: For NT, you can buy SoundForge (url???). On Linux, get "mxv" ("mixviews") from https://www.freebsd.org/ports/audio.html.