- Electronic Music and Sound Design: Theory and Practice with Max/MSP, Vol. 1
Alessandro Cipriani, together with Riccardo Bianchini, authored Virtual Sound (ConTempoNet, 2000), a book on computer music, essentially outlining a course for learning about digital sound using Csound as the programming environment. One of the main aims, of course, was to introduce the student reader to Csound, a program for working with audio, but with enough information on computer music concepts that other, supplementary texts would not be necessary. Cipriani, with colleague Maurizio Giri, has taken on an ambitious new project: a three-volume publication that can also make up a comprehensive course in computer music, this [End Page 96] time using Max as the programming language (volume 2 is announced as appearing sometime in 2012).
Electronic Music and Sound Design, Vol. 1 (EMSD1) is dedicated to digital synthesis and sound design. Volume 2 will cover additional topics such as dynamics processing, delay lines, reverberation and spatialization, digital audio and sampled sounds, MIDI, OSC, and real-time synthesis. Volume 3 will cover nonlinear techniques (AM and FM synthesis), granular synthesis, analysis and resynthesis, convolution, physical modeling, micromontage, and computer-aided composition. The first volume is logically organized with chapters on theory alternating with practice-based chapters, enabling concepts introduced in one chapter to be applied in the next. One presumes the succeeding volumes will follow suit. The authors have given much thought to pedagogy, and have even provided guidelines for the amount of time they estimate will be required to master the material, both within a class and on one's own (180 hours as a class, 300 as self-study).
Max has become the primary programming environment for computer music (and much else). Most universities offering computer music courses teach Max. However, since Todd Winkler's book Composing Interactive Music (1998) came out, at a time when MSP had not yet been added to the Max programming environment, there has not been another text that could be used in such a course setting (Miller Puckette's Theory and Techniques of Electronic Music uses PureData as its programming environment). One reason for this may be that Max comes with an excellent set of tutorials, and the built-in Help utility is extremely useful. The tutorials and other Max documentation include sections on "theory," so one can learn a great deal from these resources alone, but the assumption is that the user will access other sources to fill in any required knowledge. EMSD1 has been designed to cover both the theoretical and programming aspects of computer music, the "knowing" and "doing."
The first pair of chapters (1T - Theory, and 1P - Practice) concentrates on basic sound synthesis. Although there is not space here to discuss the contents of the book in detail, I think it is worthwhile to make note of the Learning Agenda section that begins each chapter, as these sections are very helpful for the instructor and for students, to both know what's coming and to evaluate whether the content and one's engagement with it meet the stated goals. These sections are organized into the following headings, with point-form listings under each: Prerequisites for the Chapter; Learning Objectives (sub-headings include Knowledge and Skills for the theory chapters, and Skills and Competence for the programming chapters); Contents; Activities; Testing; Supporting Materials (for theory chapters this could include Fundamental Concepts, Glossary, and Discography; for programming chapters this could include List of Principal Max/MSP Commands, List of Max/MSP Objects, Commands, Attributes and Parameters, and Glossary).
The Learning Objectives for Chapter 1T are as follows:
-
1. To learn about the signal paths one uses in sound synthesis and signal processing
-
2. To learn about the principal parameters of sound and...