Sound Design and Interactive Music – 2012

Description

This is an introduction course for the students to get familiar with the uses of computers in designing and processing sounds for interactive music performances/installations/compositions. Course gives opportunity to students to learn how to process and organize sounds in digital environment with alternative sonic experimentation strategies. Course focuses on very practical and everyday branch of physics and acoustics where students incorporate their everyday observations into the process of learning how physics and sound works. It also introduces digitizing and fundamentals of digital audio.

Within the digital sound synthesis concept, the course explores several related topics; computer music basics (sampling and additive synthesis, multiple wave table, granular synthesis, FFT abstractions), mapping strategies, the spatial sound and music, digital instrument design as well as defining a method for basic and abstract analysis of input data.

Final Project

Sound Design and Interactive Music course is a project-based course. At the end of the course, students will submit and present their projects.

Grading

  • 20% class participation
  • 10% assignments
  • 70% final project

Schedule:

Week 1

  • 14.02.2012 9:00 – 12:00 – Introduction
    • Course Overview
    • Basic Principles of Sound
    • Fundamentals of Digital Audio
    • hands on exercises – scratch, sampling

  • 15.02.2012 9:00 – 12:00 – Synthesis
    • hands on exercises – oscillator, detune-chorus, simple_additive, sample-looping, fm, ample-fm-two, ringmod, delay

  • 16.02.2012 9:00 – 12:00 – FFT Abstractions
    • hands on exercises – FFT, ringmodanalysis

  • 17.02.2012 9:00 – 12:00 – One and Multiple Voices
    • hands on exercises – onenote, poly, voices, timbre, xvoices
    • Assignment #1 -Project descriptions

Week 2

  • 21.02.2012 9:00 – 12:00 – Grains and Particles
    • hands on exercises – granular ( play – repitch – correlations)
    • Project Work and Tutoring

  • 22.02.2012 9:00 – 12:00 – Spatial Sound
    • hands on exercises
    • Project Work and Tutoring

  • 23.02.2012 9:00 – 12:00 – Mapping Strategies
    • Audio Feature extractions
    • Mapping Strategies
    • hands on exercises
    • Project Work and Tutoring

  • 24.02.2012 9:00 – 12:00 – Project Work and Tutoring

Week 3

  • 28.02.2012 9:00 – 13:00 – Project Work and Tutoring
  • 29.02.2012 9:00 – 13:00 – Project Work and Tutoring
  • 01.03.2012 9:00 – 13:00 – Project Work and Tutoring
  • 02.03.2012 9:00 – 13:00 – Final project presentations

Recommended Course Books

  • The Theory and Techniques of Electronic Music by Miller Puckette
  • Designing Sound by Andy Farnell
  • The Computer Music Tutorial by Curtis Roads
  • Machine Musicianship by Robert Rowe
  • Handmade Electronic Music: The art of Hardware Hacking
    by Nicolas Collins

List of Students:

  • Koivula Janne Tapio
  • Mäkeläinen Mikko Antero
  • Wallenius Ville Eemil
  • Ihalainen Kirsi Laura Ilona
  • Overstall Simon Lysander
  • Päivärinne Aki Petteri
  • Koskinen Tommi Mikael
  • Duarte Regino Juan Carlos
  • Nikulin Aleksander Evgenievich
  • Wikström Don Janne Valtteri
  • Dash Shakti
  • Best-Dunkley Andrew Lorimer