Winter 2006

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

Instructor:
- Fernando Lopez-Lezcano
TAs:
- Per Bloland office hours TBA and by appointment
- Alex Sigman office hours TBA and by appointment
Web resources (this page): http://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 in detail last quarter (see 220a), algorithmic composition techniques, spatialization and some psychoacoustics. The course uses the Common Music algorithmic composition environment (written on Common Lisp and Scheme) as the high level computer language for expressing algorithms. Sound output will be taken care of by CLM-3 (Common Lisp Music), a sound synthesis and processing language written in Common Lisp, and by sending MIDI commands to external sound synthesis programs either in realtime or by rendering to MIDI files.

How to submit a homework
Assignment submission track sheet

Lectures

	Week	Tue		Thu		Topic goal	Assignment
JAN	1	10	Course overview	12	Lisp, Emacs, SLIME, clm.		Tutorial on using the 220b programming environment. Assignment 0 sound check, due Thursday Jan 13 before class.
	2	17	Intro to Lisp, Portmidi and Common Music	19
	3	24	CM and serial music, CM's real time scheduler	26	Patterns		Assignment 1 due Tue Jan 31
	4	31	Granular Synthesis	2	Modulation Synthesis
FEB	5	7	Cellular Automata	9	Chaos and Fractals		Understanding fabric...
	6	14	More on fractals and patterns, Markov Chains (and the Foster analysis example), the Sierpinski fractal	16	Digital Filters
	7	21	Physical Modeling/td>	23	Some musings on tuning		Assignment 2 due Tue Feb 28
	8	28	Spatialization	2	Yet more Spatialization: HRTF
MAR	9	7	more on spatialization (Ambisonics)	9	Resynthesis
	16	14		16	Last regular class	Wrap-up
	x	Final projects will be presented during the official "final exam" time: Thursday, March 23rd, 7:00 to 10:00pm

Main topics that will be covered...

Real-time MIDI processing
Introduction
Modulation Synthesis
Cellular automata
Granular Synthesis
sampling rate conversion
Common Music Patterns
Spatialization (panning, VBAP, HRTF, doppler shift...)
Chaos, Fractals (applied to algorithmic composition)
Digital Filters and Substractive Synthesis
Physical Modelling
ATS, resynthesis, additive synthesis
Reverberation models. Random processes, State machines,.

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

Documentation:

Common Lisp Music ("CLM") (index)
Common Music ("CM"), ( CM "Dictionary")
Common Music Notation ("CMN")
Common Lisp (comprehensive reference with index, cookbook, intro/tutorial )
SLIME (PDF user manual)
Emacs (Cheat Sheet, User's Guide, Wiki)

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 11:30am. Winter quarter only, in Wilbur B7 at CCRMA. The course can only be taken for 4 (four) units.