Lecture 00

Next Lecture

Lecture 00, Mon 03/28

Introduction to the course

Notes for Monday 03/26:

Video of Allosphere Ted Talk

What will you learn in this course, Why take this course?

• Learn about allolib, because you want to get involved in the Allosphere research group
• Learn about how to synthesize different kinds of sounds
• Compose electronic music
• Explore the math/science/programming of digital audio

Then:

• Demo of Allosphere_Playground
• Video by Vi Hart: What is up with Noises? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_0DXxNeaQ0

Basics:

• Sound (our sense experience of vibrations), music (organized sound)
• Periodic signals: frequency, period, wavelength
• Time Domain / Frequency Domain, Fourier transform
• The basic sine wave (Audacity)
• Making a square wave from sine waves: y = sin(t) + sin(3t)/3 + sin(5t)/5 + sin(7t)/7 + sin(9t)/9;

Overview of some basic synthesis techniques:

• Additive (add up some sine waves)
• Subtractive (filter “white/pink/brown” noise down to pull out just particular frequencies)
• Frequency Modulation (start by modulating a sine wave to produce vibrato, then crank up the frequency)
• Physical Modeling (try to model the physics of a plucked string, closed pipe, etc.)