Active Essays on Computer Music

[Mark Guzdial]

Thanks for the advice, Mike.  I'll add the Rossing book to my swiki 
(or feel free to add it yourself -- it's a swiki :-)

For me, the issue hasn't been a comprehensive text, but finding one 
that's accessible.  I'm not a musician, an electrical engineer, a 
physicist, nor a mathematician, and most books assume background in 
one or more of these areas.  I'm looking to understand this stuff 
from a computer science perspective.  The Dodge and Jerse book is the 
best I've found, but even there, with no actual implementations, I'm 
not sure if I grokked it right.  For example, it's important for an 
oscillator unit generator to accept negative amplitudes and 
frequencies, but they don't quite understand what you're supposed to 
do with them.  I'm not sure that I implemented that right.

On a less technical level, the active essay format works for computer 
music, in my opinion.  There's so much that just doesn't work for me 
at the text-only level.  For me, some of the critical moments in my 
understanding worked as active essay kinds of activities, not 
text-based ones:
- When I played with changing the size of the oscillator's wave 
table, I could really hear the concept of "signal-to-noise ratio."
- It was so wonderful to use the Squeak WaveEditor to play with the 
waveforms I produced, and really see the different shapes and see 
that the FFTs showed what I thought I was synthesizing.
- A really neat moment was when I had built my own FM synthesizer 
(the technique of sound synthesis that Squeak uses) and then looked 
at what John Maloney had written and finally started to understand it.

Mark

>>X-Sender: mjr104 at mail.uk2.net
>>Date: Fri, 03 Aug 2001 00:12:19 +0100
>>To: squeakland at squeakland.org
>>From: Mike Roberts <mike at mjr104.co.uk>
>>Subject: Re: Active Essays on Computer Music
>>Sender: owner-squeakland at squeakland.org
>>Reply-To: squeakland at squeakland.org
>>
>> >From: Mark Guzdial <guzdial at cc.gatech.edu>
>> >I now have six active essays on computer music up at:
>> >
>> >http://swiki.cc.gatech.edu:8080/compMusic/ActiveEssays
>>
>>Hi,
>>
>>I've haven't had time to try out these computer music active essays yet, or
>>sadly much squeak for that matter, but I thought I would peer out from the
>>shadows of these lists :-)  These active essays look quite exciting.
>>
>>I noticed the 'others to recommend?' comment in your 'books' page on the
>>swiki.  Dodge&Jerse and Csound (to some extent) were necessary reading for
>>my UK degree course and I'd like to offer another book which I found
>>invaluable:
>>
>>The Science of Sound, Thomas D. Rossing.  ISBN 0-201-15727-6 (Mine's a 2nd
>>Edition)
>>
>>It's quite comprehensive (~600 pages) but is very nicely structured.  As
>>the title might indicate, it details many aspects of sound, including: wave
>>theory, acoustics, psychoacoustics, musical instruments, the voice and the
>>use of electronics.
>>
>>Looking through your syllabus I thought it would make a nice reference text
>>or at least a good diversion if you find yourself in a large library.
>>
>>regards
>>
>>Mike
>>:-)

--------------------------
Mark Guzdial : Georgia Tech : College of Computing : Atlanta, GA 30332-0280
Associate Professor - Learning Sciences & Technologies.
Collaborative Software Lab - http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/csl/
(404) 894-5618 : Fax (404) 894-0673 : guzdial at cc.gatech.edu
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Faculty/Mark.Guzdial.html