The Computer Music Tutorial

Roads, Curtis

1996

Menlo Park: MIT Press.

Language: English

This comprehensive book presents a broad and detailed overview of the theory and practice of computer music; including: digital audio concepts, music systems programming, sound synthesis, digital signal processing, sound analysis, musician interfaces, system schematics and psychoacoustics. Although some sections do open technical “black boxes” revealing the inner workings of hardware and software, the content is accessible to both technical and non-technical readers/musicians and includes some discussion concerning the musical applications of certain techniques.

Table of contents:

  1. Digital Audio Concepts
  2. Music Systems Programming
  3. Introduction to Digital Sound Synthesis
  4. Sampling with Additive Synthesis
  5. Multiple Wavetable, Wave Terrain, Granular, and Subtractive Synthesis
  6. Modulation Synthesis
  7. Physical Modeling and Formant Synthesis
  8. Waveform Segment, Graphic, and Stochastic Synthesis
  9. Sound Mixing
  10. Basic Concepts of Signal Processing
  11. Sound Spatialization and Reverberation
  12. Pitch and Rhythm Recognition
  13. Spectrum Analysis
  14. Musical Input Devices
  15. Performance Software
  16. Music Editors
  17. Music Languages
  18. Algorithmic Composition Software
  19. Representations of Strategies for Algorithmic Composition
  20. Internals of Digital Signal Processors
  21. MIDI
  22. System Interconnections
  23. Psychoacoustics in Computer Music Appendix. Fourier Analysis