Course Notes

Jan 6

• quick tour backwards through music technoloy
• reinventing MIDI: suppose it were the early '80s and you wanted to add the sound of another instrument to your rig but already had too many keyboards to lug around...
• 1920's: vacuum tubes have just been invented, so oscillator signals can be loud and portable, how would you control them to make music...
• or suppose you were an inventor in the 16c. or 17c. or earlier, in ancient Greece and wanted to build a music cockpit that harnessed the sonic power of compressed air...
• orientation quiz: (for Chris to calibrate lecture schedule)
• hardware -- 16MBytes = ? bits, what's the significance of 44.1kHz.?
• operating systems -- what is "time sharing?"
• web servers -- why cache a file locally?
• MIDI -- "noteOn" and channel
• music fundamentals -- define triplet eighth, major triad, overtone series and tempered scale
• web use (who has a home page?)
• email addresses
• homework: lab1a