[HN Gopher] The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music (2006)
___________________________________________________________________
The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music (2006)
Author : ofalkaed
Score : 285 points
Date : 2024-12-08 22:46 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (msp.ucsd.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (msp.ucsd.edu)
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| The second best book about Pure Data, so I've heard.
|
| [ Yes Miller, that's fighting talk round here too :) ]
|
| Seriously, this is a very very good place to start learning audio
| DSP in general because you hit the ground running, making sounds
| you can compose actual music with right away.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| What is the best book?
|
| Don't think I would call this about PureData, it just uses
| PureData for examples and the knowledge it provides is more
| general.
| nyankosensei wrote:
| I don't know what the best book would be, but I found this
| extract from Andy Farnell's book "Designing Sound" to be a
| very helpful introduction to Pure Data:
|
| http://aspress.co.uk/ds/pdf/pd_intro.pdf
|
| Another useful book is "Loadbang - ProgrammingElectronic
| Music in Pd" by Johannes Kreidler. The 2nd edition is
| evidently out of print, but a free download is available
| here:
|
| https://www.wolke-verlag.de/musikbuecher/johannes-
| kreidler-l...
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Of course Millers is the best book, I'm just joshing.
|
| He created the language.
|
| And I'd argue it's more than just a "language", it's a
| creative paradigm.
|
| What's more TTEM is still available for free download from
| World Scientific Press, whereas MIT allowed me only to make a
| subset of mine free.
|
| Another thing of note; Miller has carefully conserved the
| development of Vanilla Pd such that every example in his book
| (and mine) still work exactly as they did more than 10 years
| ago. How many languages can boast that stability?
| empath75 wrote:
| This is a weird title for the book, because there's very little
| musical content in the book at all. It's about sound synthesis
| and signal processing. It's audio engineering, which is a nice
| skill to have for music making, but it's not music theory.
| jrajav wrote:
| Experimenting with timbre and the nature of sound itself is
| absolutely musical. That's a big reason why people love to
| listen to many different kinds of electronic music in the first
| place (or things like heavily distorted guitars).
|
| Music is not just about combining 12TET pitches in different
| ways. Everything about the experience of music is open game for
| creative expression.
| sbuttgereit wrote:
| During my university studies, I took courses in electro-
| accoustic music composition. Significant amounts of time dealt
| with synthesis and signal processing because those were
| critical elements in these kinds of compositions.
|
| It's absolutely different than composition for traditional
| instruments in this regard because the sounds you are using to
| compose with are being created by the composer and much as are
| the notes, rhythms, and structure of the composition.
|
| So for me, the title makes perfect sense.
| Rochus wrote:
| The first sentence of the foreword brings to the point, what
| the book is about:
|
| " _The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music is a uniquely
| complete source of information for the computer synthesis of
| rich and interesting musical timbres._ "
|
| Whereas tools like Max Mathews' (btw. the author of the
| foreword) MUSIC programs and their successors clearly
| separate music composition and instrument building (i.e.
| sound synthesis), later tools like Max, PD or SuperCollider
| are blurring this difference. Nevertheless the difference is
| still maintained by all institutions where electronic music
| is studied and performed (e.g. IRCAM).
| RossBencina wrote:
| On the matter of institutions: IRCAM is the paradigmatic
| example of composer / technologist role demarcation, but I
| would question whether this extreme position "is still
| maintained by all institutions" -- it certainly was not at
| my alma mater and I doubt at UCSD either. As you say, Max
| (coincidentally a product of Miller Puckette and IRCAM) and
| it's more recent ilk have empowered composers to
| independently build their own instruments and this practice
| has been ongoing within the academy for at least 35 years
| now.
| Rochus wrote:
| Maybe I'm a bit biased because I was there for a study
| visit in the eighties. Of course it depends on the use
| case; if the composition is fully electronic, the
| composer can essentially be the same person as the
| performer, conductor and producer, so there is no big
| need for a score; live coding goes even further and "the
| composition" appears during the performance; specific
| tools have been implemented for these use-cases (e.g.
| Standford has a long tradition for such tools).
| spacechild1 wrote:
| As someone who studied computer music in the mid 2010s I
| can second that! All the composers in my generation who
| use live electronics do it themselves.
|
| The devide between composer and programmer has disappered
| for the most part and I think the main reason is that
| both hardware and software has become so affordable and
| accessible. Back in the old days, you needed expensive
| computers, synthesizers and tape machines and people who
| could assist you with operating them. Today, anyone can
| buy a laptop and learn Pd / Max / SuperCollider!
|
| That being said, institutions like IRCAM still have their
| place as they allow composers to work with technology
| that is not easily accessible, e.g. large multi channel
| systems or 360deg projections. They also do a lot of
| research, too.
| RossBencina wrote:
| > Today, anyone can buy a laptop and learn Pd / Max /
| SuperCollider!
|
| And anyone can buy a laptop and contribute to the
| development of Pd, SuperCollider, Chuck, et al.
|
| Not sure how much overlap there is between those two
| groups. Arguing against my earlier point: there still
| seems to be a separation between music systems users and
| music systems developers.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| > there still seems to be a separation between music
| systems users and music systems developers.
|
| That's true, but just like a pianist typically doesn't
| need to build their own piano, computer musicians rarely
| need to build their own DAWs or audio programming
| languages. However, computer musicians do build their own
| systems on top of Pd, SC, etc. and these can evolve into
| libraries or whole applications. So the line between
| computer musicians and audio application developers is
| blurry.
|
| That being said, I can tell for sure that only few
| computer musicians end up contributing code to Pd, SC,
| etc., simply because most of them have no experience in
| other programming languages and are not really interested
| in actual software development. Of course, there are
| other important ways to contribute that are often
| overlooked, like being active on forums, filing bug
| reports, etc.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| > "The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music is a
| uniquely complete source of information for the computer
| synthesis of rich and interesting musical timbres."
|
| It's really a great book, but it is far from "complete" as
| it omits some very important synthesis techniques - most
| notably granular synthesis and physical modeling! To be
| fair, no single book would be able to cover the entire
| spectrum of electronic sound synthesis. The second edition
| of "The Computer Music Tutorial" by Curtis Roads
| (https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262044912/the-computer-music-
| tu...) comes close, but it is a massive book with over 1200
| pages and took literally decades to write. (The second
| edition has been published 27 years after the first
| edition!)
|
| What I find really cool about Miller's book is that all
| examples are written in Pd so anyone can try them out and
| experiment further.
| gnulinux wrote:
| Found the classically trained musician.
|
| Any and all formal, mathematical, informal theory _about_ music
| can be called music theory. Music theory is about modeling
| music. Period. It does not matter if it 's about harmony,
| rhythm, pitch, form, timbre, dynamics, or some other aspect of
| music. Whether it helps with understanding music, composing
| music, improvising music etc is a separate topic. Music theory
| neither has to be about practical music making skills, nor it
| has to be about music of a particular artistic tradition. It
| just needs to present some model that can be a helpful tool in
| some musical context. Maybe what you call "audio engineering"
| is a specialized skill for some musical traditions, but for
| musical traditions where the expressive content primarily comes
| from timbre and synthesizers are common instruments, it _will_
| be an essential music making skill.
| Rochus wrote:
| Nevertheless there is a huge difference between composing or
| improvising a musical piece, and programming a filter or
| oscillator.
|
| Btw. "audio engineering" is what audio engineers are doing
| (see e.g. https://aes2.org/), and yet another completely
| different profession.
| belshikun wrote:
| <deleted>
| xoac wrote:
| Bad analogy since timbre has been part of the
| compositional process for decades now.
| Rochus wrote:
| It's actually a good analogy. It doesn't mention "timbre"
| and doesn't claim that timpre is not part of the
| compositional process. A classical composer can indeed
| specify timbre to a certain degree, and modern composers
| created new kinds of scores which offered more
| specification means for many features related to
| "timbre", but there is still a difference between
| composing music, playing music or building instruments in
| formal musical education.
| gnulinux wrote:
| No you're simply wrong. This is how a "classical Western"
| musician thinks of music, but this is not necessarily
| what music is. Timbre is the main expressive content in
| many cultures.
|
| Check my comment here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=gnulinux#42368137
| Rochus wrote:
| Maybe there is a difference how formally trained
| musicians and computer scientists see it. But actually I
| don't see a contradition of your statement to what I've
| written.
|
| And don't forget that also Miller Puckette comes from the
| Western musical tradition and developed important works
| at IRCAM.
| gnulinux wrote:
| The difference is in the model. The same way you can
| model mechanics with Newtonian mechanics, or statistical
| mechanics, or quantum mechanics and each of them can be
| useful in different scenarios, and irrelevant in others.
|
| If you're making Western classical music in classicist,
| romanticist or modernist style, the model of music you
| have will carry a lot of information about harmony and
| the application of harmonic techniques throughout the
| piece. Given a core musical idea you can then apply
| peripheral techniques (such as orchestration) to build a
| full piece. E.g. when people study counterpoint, the
| model of music originates from vertical harmony of notes
| and when they can be used with respect to each other. The
| assumption is that orchestration is something that'll be
| separately developed "skinning" the composition. E.g. a
| common technique in this tradition is composing a piece
| for piano four hands and then orchestrating it (e.g.
| Holst's "The Planets" symphony was composed this way).
|
| However, this stops being a useful model once you step
| into other musical traditions. In some cultures harmony
| would be like how Western music treats orchestration,
| peripheral to composition (like how extreme speed is
| irrelevant to Newtonian mechanics because it was never
| designed for near lightspeed motion). So you'd first
| design timbres, and have an idea about how timbres
| interact, timbres change, transform to each. You may have
| a theory of counterpoint of timbres. Once you have this,
| you can apply any standard "harmony skin" on the
| composition and you have a piece. This is not even
| restricted to non-Western music. If you look at the
| postmodernism in Western music you'll find instances of
| it. Easy example: a lot of people say that Philip Glass
| "makes the same music" again and again, what is being
| missed is the point he's trying to convey is that even if
| you pick the exact same 4 chords you can still create
| variation in music via other means. It just won't be
| different from the traditional harmony-centric Western
| musical model.
|
| By the way, I studied CS and my full-time job is a
| Software Engineer. So I doubt our disagreement comes from
| my background in computer science.
| Rochus wrote:
| You seem to be hell-bent on a disagreement. Let's invest
| our time better, for example, making music. Do you have
| any musical works that can be listened to?
| archagon wrote:
| Which musical traditions use harmony as a "skin" in the
| sense of designing a timbral skeleton before anything
| else?
| netdevphoenix wrote:
| Isn't spectralism a thing in the modern classical world
| since the 20th century?
| sourcepluck wrote:
| > So you'd first design timbres, and have an idea about
| how timbres interact, timbres change, transform to each.
| You may have a theory of counterpoint of timbres. Once
| you have this, you can apply any standard "harmony skin"
| on the composition and you have a piece
|
| I asked the same question above, because I'm not sure if
| you're alluding to the same thing here or something
| different. May I have some examples of traditions which
| do this, with something to go listen to?
| netdevphoenix wrote:
| How are you so knowledgeable about music theory and
| classical music given that you didn't study music? Just
| curious
| gnulinux wrote:
| This is exactly what I'm talking about. In Western music
| timbre is akin to fonts. You have a composition for
| piano, you play it, record it in MIDI, and reskin it with
| some other timbre in studio. This is an extremely Western
| way of looking at music. There are countless cultures
| where timbre is the "main" part of the music where the
| harmony and/or rhythm would be like fonts/reskins and
| timbre is the main juice composers and improvisers try to
| squeeze out. This type of distorted view on music is
| rooted in 18th/19th century beliefs of non-Western art
| being "primitive" art even though every single culture
| that's known to humanity have a unique musical tradition.
| This is an extremely anti-humanistic look at music.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| The traditional concept of _notes_ (and accessory ones like
| scales and traditional notation) marks the boundary between
| "traditional" music theory, that treats notes as the final
| result (when you have notes written down, it's only a matter
| of concretely playing them with a given instrument) and
| theory of electronic synthesis, which treats notes as an
| input, both optional and taken for granted, and audio signals
| as the product.
| Rochus wrote:
| Also notation systems were further developed. Many famous
| composers came up with their own scores for their
| electronic or electro-acoustic compositions (see e.g.
| Xenakis or Stockhausen).
| bluGill wrote:
| Traditional music didn't even have the concept of notes in
| the way modern music does. Of course as modern music was
| developing for hundreds of years, perhaps thousands, and as
| they did that they started taking common themes in
| traditional music and calling them notes, but real
| traditional musicians can't think of notes in the same was
| as modern music does.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Huh? There's a huge amount of theory and writing about
| electronic music that isn't just technical. See Mark Fell's
| PhD thesis, for example.
|
| Your comment seems to suggest the other person is ignorant
| but really it just shows your ignorance of theory and writing
| about experimental and electronic music. Not all music theory
| is western classical.
|
| I mean, how do you even consider Stockhausen and Xenakis from
| your perspective?
| gnulinux wrote:
| You're misunderstanding what I'm saying. Music theory from
| other cultures are of course music theory as well. Each
| composer can (and almost always _will_ ) have their own
| idiosyncratic music theory as well. There is nothing
| contradictory here.
|
| Also I'm a composer with extensive knowledge of how to
| make, orchestra, and mix acoustic or electronic music. This
| thread has an extreme Western bias, just because something
| is studied in a particular way from Western music theory
| perspective, it doesn't mean it has to be that way.
|
| Check my comment here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=gnulinux#42368137
| bowsamic wrote:
| That comment just seems like an overly disparaging and
| ignorant take on this so called "western music", which
| you claim is somehow anti human. Why would I care what
| you think about electronic music when you think western
| music is anti human?
| gnulinux wrote:
| I didn't say Western music is anti-human. Treating it as
| the only possible form of music is.
| sourcepluck wrote:
| > musical traditions where the expressive content primarily
| comes from timbre and synthesizers are common instruments
|
| What traditions are you alluding to?
| spacechild1 wrote:
| I think there is just a certain a kind of ambiguity with the
| word "Theory". Miller is really focused on the theory of
| sound synthesis and does not really deal with composition or
| aesthetic theory. People who are more interested in the
| latter might enjoy "Composing Electronic Music: A New
| Aesthetic " by Curtis Roads (https://global.oup.com/us/compan
| ion.websites/9780195373240/b...).
| empath75 wrote:
| I think in order to have a book about music theory, there
| should be some explanation as to how to make music for some
| particular expressive purpose and not just the technical
| details of how to make sounds. A guide to constructing a
| piano is not music theory. I don't care if it's classical
| music or techno or gamelan, or if the theory is formal or
| traditional, if there's not some discussion of how and why to
| express musical ideas, it's a technical manual and has very
| little to do with music.
| mcnamaratw wrote:
| The book is from basically the "experimental music" school of
| electronic music. The idea was/is that music will be completely
| transmuted by electronics and computers, leaving traditional
| music behind. Here "traditional music" means almost everything
| people actually listen to, from orchestras to GarageBand
| electronica to pop.
|
| The claim may be a bit aspirational right now, but in theory
| "electronic music" subsumes all music. Or enlarges music so
| much that traditional musical ideas are special cases, not
| necessarily relevant.
|
| I'm trying to pitch this properly as a very cool concept. But I
| no longer believe it will happen in my lifetime.
| kat_rebelo wrote:
| this assumes the position that the pre-eminence of the even-
| tempered music based on european art music traditions and the
| associated staff notation. this is extremely limiting when
| considering the breadth of music that exists in the real world.
|
| this is a theory of music, and while most pedagogy will
| reinforce the special position of this system, it is not THE
| theory of music. there are alternative systems of notation.
| there are harmonic systems that incorporate tones that do not
| exist in even tempered western scales. there are drumming
| traditions that are taught and passed down by idiomatic
| onomatopoeia.
|
| this is especially apparent in electronic music where things
| like step sequencers obviate the need to know any western music
| notation to get an instrument to produce sound.
|
| the western classical tradition is a pedagogically imposed
| straight jacket. its important to keep a more open mind about
| what music actually is.
| piltdownman wrote:
| Finally, I get to reference one of the few kickstarters that were
| worth it.
|
| "Since it's first edition in 1972, Electronic Music: Systems,
| Techniques and Controls has been acknowledged as the definitive
| text on modular synthesis"
|
| For those who missed either of the kickstarter runs, there's a
| reprint due via Schneider's Berlin.
|
| https://schneidersladen.de/en/allen-strange-electronic-music...
| chaosprint wrote:
| One of the classics and must-reads in music technology.
|
| I read it over and over again when I was building:
| https://glicol.org/
|
| One of the motivations for building Glicol is to quickly let more
| people understand sound synthesis and music programming in the
| browser.
|
| also recommand:
|
| Designing Audio Effect Plugins in C++ by Will Pirkle
|
| Audio Effects Theory, Implementation and Application By Joshua
| Reiss, Andrew McPherson
|
| And all the books by JULIUS O. SMITH III
| https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/filters/Book_Series_Overview...
| pomian wrote:
| Your "on phone" or desktop synthesizer is amazing. Thanks for
| that. I shared with my more musical synth type friends. Your
| program reminds us, of how amazing music can be, with such a
| simple backbone. (Just as in the case of a harmonica or
| whistle, where a few notes, can invoke a range of emotions.) So
| easy to see the results of ones own experimentation.
| Rochus wrote:
| Thanks for pointing to Glicol; this is amazing; looks like some
| kind of marriage of Chuck and Faust; or to which other language
| would you compare it? Just looked around a bit on the sites,
| but didn't see a language specification. Can you provide a
| hint, please.
|
| Is this some kind of master or PhD work, or just a hobby
| project?
| chaosprint wrote:
| it's one of my phd works. there was a conference paper but it
| seems that the database of the whole conf was gone...
|
| still you can find some philosophy here:
|
| https://github.com/chaosprint/glicol
|
| the glicol-cli is also a relatively special work:
|
| https://github.com/glicol/glicol-cli
| Rochus wrote:
| Is there a link or copy of the conference paper or the PhD
| thesis?
| chaosprint wrote:
| here:
|
| https://webaudioconf.com/posts/2021_8/
|
| the video is still there
| Rochus wrote:
| Thanks. I was able to download the paper from
| https://webaudioconf.com/_data/papers/pdf/2021/2021_8.pdf
| (the original link didn't work). Is the PhD thesis also
| available somewhere?
|
| What are your experiences with Rust? Was it worth it, or
| would you rather consider another language for similar
| projects?
| chaosprint wrote:
| Rust is in my opinion probably the best language so far
| for audio/music infrastructure. So for me personally, I
| would not consider another language for this type of
| work. But I am definitely not saying that Rust is
| suitable for any job.
| Rochus wrote:
| Interesting, thanks.
| unsatchmo wrote:
| Glicol looking super cool! Reminds me of ChucK
| https://chuck.cs.princeton.edu
| RossBencina wrote:
| A few additional/alternative reading recommendations:
|
| Proceedings of the International Conference on Digital Audio
| Effects (DAFx). All open access at https://dafx.de/
|
| Jon Dattorro's Effect Design papers:
|
| https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~dattorro/EffectDesignPart1.pdf
|
| https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~dattorro/EffectDesignPart2.pdf
|
| https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~dattorro/EffectDesignPart3.pdf
|
| Vadim Zavalishin - The Art Of VA Filter Design
| https://www.native-instruments.com/fileadmin/ni_media/downlo...
|
| Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference
| (open access) https://quod.lib.umich.edu/i/icmc/
|
| Andy Farnell, "Designing Sound"
|
| A standard introductory DSP textbook such as Ifeachor and
| Jervis, Orfanidis, Oppenheim and Schafer.
|
| "The Computer Music Tutorial" and "Microsound" by Curtis Roads
|
| Audio Anecdotes book series
|
| "Music, Cognition and Computerised Sound", edited by Perry Cook
|
| what am I missing?
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Boulanger and Lazzarini "The Audio Programming Book" - great
| if you want to start working straight away in C
|
| Boulanger - "The Csound Book" (another classic language I
| still use today)
|
| Greenbaum and Barzel - "Audio Anecdotes". A fascinating
| series of 3 volumes with all sorts of wisdom on FX design,
| studio systems and composition
|
| Wilson, Cottle and Collins - "The Supercollider Book". In the
| style of The Csound Book, but with SC.
|
| Loy - "Musicmathics". A rare and much under-rated two volume
| set on the equations behind audio DSP
|
| Bilbao - "Numerical Sound Synthesis". A hard but rewarding
| journey to understanding audio physics as linear diff systems
| and implementing them efficiently in C, Goes well with Perry
| Cook's stuff.
|
| Benson - "Music a mathematical offering" Very unusual book
| that analyses many subjects in music physics. Equations but
| no code.
|
| Miranda "Computer Sound Design". More about music synthesis
| than "sound design" imho, but has some interesting fringe
| methods like cellular autonoma and genetic algorithms.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| >Boulanger - "The Csound Book"
|
| Probably the gold standard for such books, wish all the
| audio DSLs had a book of such quality. Between it and The
| Computer Music Tutorial Csound is ahead of the rest when it
| comes to books.
|
| Edit: Was thinking The Computer Music Tutorial was filled
| with Csound examples but on second thought I don't think it
| actually is. Been awhile since I last browsed it.
| shadowerm wrote:
| No, The Computer Music Tutorial doesn't have any code as
| far as I remember. I know there is a second edition but
| not sure what is new in there.
|
| The Csound book is so great though. It would be nice if
| the orc/sco on the CD that came with it were available. I
| have the book still but the CD is long gone and so is
| owning a CD rom drive.
|
| I just came back to csound recently and I think it has
| taken me about 25 years to actually like the sco. If one
| is use to a piano roll/DAW, the sco seems utterly
| ridiculous.
|
| The csound manual now though actually has good working
| examples too. If I remember, that was not the case when
| the csound book came out and part of what made it so
| great too.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| >I have the book still but the CD is long gone and so is
| owning a CD rom drive.
|
| https://github.com/SamKomesarook/The-Csound-Book
| shadowerm wrote:
| Awesome. The book is such a bargain used then on Amazon
| with this.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| > "The Computer Music Tutorial" and "Microsound" by Curtis
| Roads
|
| It's worth noting that the second edition has been just
| released last year - 27 years after the first edition! It's a
| _massive_ book: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262044912/the-
| computer-music-tu...
| ofalkaed wrote:
| Do you think it is worth upgrading from the first edition?
| Does it update much of the old information? The new
| chapters alone are not really enough to sell me on buying,
| at least not until my first edition falls apart.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| > Does it update much of the old information?
|
| There is lots of information and even whole chapters that
| couldn't have been possibly written in 1996, but I
| haven't read the first edition so I can't really compare
| in detail.
| wormius wrote:
| FM Theory and Applications By Dr John Chowning and David
| Bristow https://www.burnkit2600.com/manuals/fm_theory_and_app
| licatio...
|
| Mostly focused on FM as applied by the DX7 IIRC. But really
| good overview of how FM works since it's the guy who invented
| it.
| changexd wrote:
| glicol is super super cool, thanks for sharing!
| _spduchamp wrote:
| There are so many resources around timbrel construction and
| manipulation, but never enough about the rhythmic domain. This
| book being another example.
|
| I've read Godfried Toussaint's book, and looking for more
| recommendations in this area.
|
| I've been tinkering with a cybernetic folk drumming project, and
| trying to create rhythms using oscillators, with beats triggered
| at zero-crossings, so I can build and manipulated patterns in
| real-time. (demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVlgPoTpL94)
| Results have been interesting, but perhaps not "good" in
| Toussaint's sense. I'm hoping to find a model that works better.
| Advice and pointers appreciated.
| qmmmur wrote:
| Sounds like you might be interested in Mark Fell?
| _spduchamp wrote:
| Yup.
| chaosprint wrote:
| McLean, Alex, Giovanni Fanfani, and Ellen Harlizius-Kluck.
| "Cyclic patterns of movement across weaving, epiploke and live
| coding." Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture
| 10.1 (2018).
|
| McLean, Alex. "Algorithmic Pattern." NIME. 2020.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| Creating Rhythms by Hollos and Hollos. I am not much of a fan
| of it but my expectations were high, the person who recommended
| it to me made it out to be exactly what I was looking for and
| it was not at all what I was looking for. It primarily focuses
| on things of Euclidean Rhythms ilk, simple to execute but can
| be quite effective. Despite not being what I was after I think
| I got my $10 worth.
| _spduchamp wrote:
| I too bought this book and was somewhat disappointed. Some of
| the algorithms seems too contrived and specific. (All the
| code is here:
| https://abrazol.com/books/rhythm1/software.html)
|
| I guess my wish would be a companion to Geometry of Musical
| Rhythm with lots implementations of code to demonstrate
| concepts. Euclidean Rhythm implementations seem to be
| everywhere, but there is SO MUCH MORE to cover.
|
| Still, I'm kind of stuck on this idea that there may be a way
| to map the discrete mathematics of this rhythm stuff into a
| continuous mathematics for more natural and fluid rhythmic
| expression. It's just a theory and a few experiments so far.
| tpm wrote:
| One thing that could be great for experiments is Eurorack
| modules. There are I feel about thousand modules for drum
| patterns - Euclidean (like https://modulargrid.net/e/vpme-de-
| euclidean-circles-v2- ), but also plenty others, starting from
| Mutable Instrument Grids (https://modulargrid.net/e/mutable-
| instruments-grids). I think it's a much faster way to hands-on
| experiment than writing code. Also with Eurorack the only
| interface between modules is analog voltage which means clock,
| triggers, pulses, low frequency and audio frequency can be
| freely mixed (a common way to abuse this is to generate lower
| frequency audio using clock dividers, /2 from 800Hz audio gives
| you 400Hz square wave etc).
|
| Ah and most of that can be also explored without a physical
| rack using VCVRack.
| vunderba wrote:
| If anyone's interested in a more hands-on approach towards
| learning how to build patches from basic oscillators, etc., I can
| highly recommend Syntorial.
|
| https://www.syntorial.com
| brudgers wrote:
| I recommend a Behringer 2600. The Arp 2600 was designed to
| facilitate learning synthesis.
|
| And hardware is a useful abstraction.
| chaosprint wrote:
| I would choose Korg instead. Support originality.
| brudgers wrote:
| Korg is not Arp. It paid a license fee for fifty year old
| brand named after a dead man.
|
| If the Korg is right for you, that's cool with me. My B2600
| sits on my desk. I don't need a rolling case and I already
| have monitors for when I am not using headphones.
|
| In my opinion, Behringer designed a new more capable
| instrument and Korg made the 2600 Mini a less capable one
| by intent (missing everything that was on Arp's keyboards)
| to avoid cannibalizing sales of the premium full size
| version.
|
| And, the Korg has a copy of the Moog ladder filter. [1]
| Lots of guitars are shaped like Stratocasters and
| Telecasters. Synthesizers.com sells knockoffs of Moog
| modules. Your DAW probably has a Rhodes VST or two.
|
| [1] When Alan R Perlman built the first 2600's for Tonus
| (before changing the name of his company to "Arp"), he
| copied Bob Moog's ladder filter. Moog sued for patent
| infringement. Perlman had to change the filter and that's
| what most original 2600's have.
| aanet wrote:
| What a fantastic thread! Thanks for all the comments + resources.
| <3 <3
| aanet wrote:
| Apart from the Books quoted below (thanks!!) - are there video
| resources / tutorials / online courses that knowledgeable folks
| would recommend?
|
| Particularly on thery + praxis of state of the art?
|
| Many Thanks!!
| RossBencina wrote:
| Re Theory and Praxis, Thor Magnusson's recent books come to
| mind:
|
| https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/sonic-writing-9781501313868/
|
| https://livecodingbook.toplap.org/
| aanet wrote:
| Thank you THANK YOU!! This is fantastic, esp. the Live
| Coding. I was looking for something like this. Immediately
| downloaded it. Gonna check Thor Magnusson book as well.
|
| <3
| smoyer wrote:
| I have this book and used the ideas from it to create a synth
| using 12 GI AY-3-8910 chips for a total of 36 voices. Might have
| been 25-30 years ago.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Instrument_AY-3-8910
| aa-jv wrote:
| This was a classic, must-read book back in the day .. but these
| days, I think that Loopops Incomplete Guide of Electronic Music
| Ideas, Tips and Tricks is a better investment of ones time. Its
| just more broadly applicable and far more dense in terms of
| tooling and methodology.
|
| https://www.docdroid.net/3K4UL8i/loopop-toc-pdf
|
| In general, screeds documenting the theory and technique of
| electronic music would be better served if their authors didn't
| orient the works around a particular tool or method - such as
| Puredata, in this case. Even those PD is indeed an extremely
| powerful tool, its not really all-encompassing when it comes to
| making Electronic Music - its a digital tool, and electronic
| music covers the gamut from analog to digital and beyond...
| kazinator wrote:
| > _Finally, a realizable filter, whose frequency response is
| always a continuous function of frequency, must have a frequency
| band over which the gain drops from the passband gain to the
| stopband gain; this is called the transition band. The thinner
| this band can be made, the more nearly ideal the filter._
|
| Perhaps ideal from some mathematical view, but musically, a brick
| wall filter could sound like shit where a lower order filter
| would be fine, because in that situation, you need a more nuanced
| blend of the range of frequencies than taking everything at 100%
| amplitude below the wall, and 0% above.
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