COURSE URL: https://msp.ucsd.edu/syllabi/173.01w/homepage.htm
Prerequisite: Music 170
and enough music background to write and produce a two-minute
piece.
Textbook: none
Meetings:
Mandeville (0326) room B202, Wednesdays and Fridays 10:10 AM.
This
is in the Mandeville basement, two floors down from the main floor;
stairs and
elevator are in a passageway through the center of the building.
Instructor: Professor
Miller Puckette
, Center for Research in Computing and the Arts, 534-4823,
msp@ucsd.edu,
https://msp.ucsd.edu/
Office Hours are at CRCA, Wednesday 11:45-12:45 or by appointment.
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 10, 12). Stockhausen's four criteria and how to run Csound.
week 2 (Jan 17, 19)). Acoustical parameters of sounds.
week 3 (Jan 24, 26). Recording techniques.
week 4 (Jan. 31, Feb. 2). Sound art. FIRST ASSIGNMENT due Feb. 7: 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 7, 9). 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 14, 16) Musical pitch and noise.
week 7. (Feb 21, 23) Time and rhythm. SECOND ASSIGNMENT due March 1: rough draft of a 2-minute piece of music or "sound art."
week 8 (Feb 28, Mar 2). Filtering.
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/173.01w.
CSOUND: look in https://mitpress.mit.edu/e-books/csound/frontpage.html.
SOUND EDITING: For NT, you can buy SoundForge XP for about $50. On Linux, try "sweep" from, e.g., rpmfind.org.