Prerequisite: Music 160a 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 , 119 Mandeville Hall, 534-4823,
msp@ucsd.edu, https://msp.ucsd.edu/syllabi/
Office Hours are Tuesdays and Thursdays 12:45-1:45 PM or by appointment.

NEWS. There are new tools you can use in the NT lab (soon also available on the Pd release for Pd users.) See under SOUNDFILE TOOLS below.

Revised course description. The course now covers theoretical and practical aspects of digital music recording, mixing, and editing. Technical topics covered may 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.

Syllabus. The course is divided into three parts. The first concerns itself with sound: qualities of different sounds; how to vary them; how to juxtapose them. The first assignment due Jan. 28, is to put together a montage (20" or so will do fine) showing what sonic elements you want your piece to have and how they might fit together.

The next portion of the course is concerned with rhythm, which determines how a piece of music is laid out in time. Over short spans of time this is described in beats and measures; over the longer term rhythm affects the overall shape of the piece. The second assignment, due Feb. 25, is to "rough" the piece, creating a full-length version showing the overall structure.

Third, we'll consider sound engineering matters such as balance, equalization, panning, and reverberation. The goal is to put together a finished version of the piece, making changes in the choice of materiels, their treatment, the rhythmic and other musical elements, and applying post-production techniques as needed. The final version is due at the "final exam period" for the course.

Computers. This class is supported by ACS (Academic Computing Services) in room APM B349, in the basement of the 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, probably Tuesdays 9:30-2:35, Wednesdays 9:00-3:15, and Thursdays 11:00-4:10. The main software tool we'll use is SoundForge XP, which is installed on machines numbered 16-19 inclusive (the "audio" machines.)

Alternatively you can work on your own PC; SoundForge is available over the net for $50. You'll want a high-bandwidth network connection to get files on and off the ACS machines; the ACS lab has no removable media except CDROM and floppy drives, and your final project will take 20 MB or so.

HOW TO LOG INTO THE ACS MACHINES

NT doesn't support remote logon; you have to go physically to APM B349 to use the machines there. If you have an "OCE" account you can log onto that, but you won't see class materiels unless you log on to your class account. There's a "logon" program in the ACS tools window (icon somewhere on the left of the screen.) You'll be asked whether to open a class or OCE account (choose "class"), where the server is (choose "man104nfs") and finally which class and which account. If you do all this successfully you will see new dorectories appear in the "My Computer" window (icon appears at top left of the screen.) You'll see your own home directory, and also something called "public" which is where I'm putting the common materiels. See the "README" file there for an up-to-date list of contents...

HOW TO TRANSFER AUDIO CDs

Michael Munson has got part way to being able to get audio from CDs into SoundForge. The machines are happy to play CDs for you (just plug it in and click around), and the "audio panel" which comes up when you right-click the little picture of a speaker at the bottom right of the screen, allows you to select CD as the active audio input. Be sure the "line" and "mic" inputs are turned off or you'll pick up some ugly hiss. At this point in theory you can just record right into SoundForge; it doesn't seem to work right off but I bet it just takes a bit of fiddling.

HOW TO USE FTP TO TRANSFER FILES TO AND FROM ACS

You can FTP to man104-8.ucsd.edu (or 9, 10, or 13) and log on using your class account. Your home directory will be the same as you see on the NT machines.

SOUNDFILE TOOLS. The "public" directory on the NT machines now has Pd with three batch files for doing ring modulation, bandpass filtering, and phase-vocoder time stretching and transposition. You should just be able to click on any of the three "batch files" on the "tools" directory in the public area. Pd takes about 15 seconds to start up on these machines, just be patient. To switch between the tools you can try just closing one patch and opening another.

How to find Sound Forge. You can always go and buy your own copy of SoundForge; see https://www.sonicfoundry.com/.

Getting and using Csound. I've tried out Csound for Pc and Mac platforms. For the Pc, you can just copy the files from public\csound (visible from the class accounts on the NT machines or on the Unix machines such as man104-10.ucsd.edu.) Follow the instructions in README.txt. If you use FTP, copy the files in binary mode, not ASCII mode.

You can also get Csound for PC with two simple examples of orchestras and scores HERE. The files needed to generate the example from the 3/2/99 class can be found HERE.

For the MacIntosh, FTP the "hqx" file in public (8 megabytes) and flail away.