Winter 2003

220b: Synthesis Techniques, Compositional Algorithms, Psychoacoustics and Spatial Processing

Instructor:
- Fernando Lopez-Lezcano
TA:
- Rodrigo Segnini office hours Friday 5~8p and Wednesday after 8p (by appointment only)
Web resources: "http://www-ccrma.stanford.edu/courses/220b/"

Course Description

This is the second course in the 220 series. It covers some basic sound synthesis techniques not covered last quarter (see 220a), algorithmic composition techniques, spatialization and some psychoacoustics. The course uses the CLM-2 (Common Lisp Music) environment to create all sound examples and the Common Lisp programming language (in which clm-2 itself is implemented) for all programming examples.

Common Lisp Music (CLM) is a public domain sound design language written on top of Common Lisp, currently running in Macintosh PowerPCs, Windows and several UNIX environments including SGI, Sun, NeXT and Linux.

Evaluation consists of 4 assignments and a final project. Each assignment builds on the knowledge of the previous one, and the final outcome is a final project which is usually a computer music composition. Alternatively, there is an option of bringing back those skills learned during 220a (STK, C++) and in combination with the algorithmic composition prowess achieved so far, and a set of new skills (QT interface building, packet transmission) develop a distributed audio application over the internet. This project is going to be presented during the finals week.

Assignment submission track sheet

Lectures

	Week	Tue		Thu		Topic goal	Assignment
JAN	1	7	Lisp,xemacs,clm,...	9	synthesis, modulation	Introduction	I (10%) sound check, synthesis - submission 1week later
	2	14	Granulation I	16	state machines, markov	src, AlgComp I	II (15%) small study (grani) - submission 2 weeks later
	3	21	...	23	Cellular automata	...
	4	28	vbap, htrf	30	ambisonics	Spatialization	III (15%) small study (spat) - submission 2 weeks later
FEB	5	04	...	06	...	...
	6	11	Physical Modelling	13	cellular automata, chaos, fractals	PhysMod, AlgComp II	IV (20%) medium piece (physMod, random proc.) - submission 2 weeks later
	7	18	...	20	...	ATS, Digital Filters
	8	25	...algorithmic composition (nando)	27	network music project (chris)	Final Project phase (bifurcation)	Final Project (40%) - presentation 3 weeks later
MAR	9	04	...	06	...	...
	10	11	nando's wrap-up	13	chris' wrap-up	Wrap-up
	11	18	final's	20	week	Presentation

Supplementary information and links (Winter 2001), by Chris Burns.

Suplementary texts

Elements of Computer Music: F. Richard Moore, Prentice Hall, 1990
The Computer Music Tutorial: Curtis Road, MIT press, 1996
Musical Sound: John Pierce, Scientific American Books, 1990
Computer Music: Synthesis, Composition and Performance: Charles Dodge and Thomas Jerse, Schirmer Books, New York, 1985

Administrative Information

Music 220b meets Tuesdays and Thursdays 10:15am to 11:45am. Winter quarter only, in the Ballroom at CCRMA.