Computational Music Synthesis

[SeanLuke]

Wow, didn't expect to see my free book on HN. I'm the author.

[mkesper]

I'd suggest getting rid of the boxes for hyperlinks by configuring hyperref accordingly: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/823/remove-ugly-bord...

[Darkphibre]

This is great! I've always wanted to get into computational music.

I spent five years working with audio/video codecs and APIs on the Xbox 360. Had to support various DSPs and help games improve their performance (curse you, denormals!). But I never got a chance to go full synthesis.

Thanks for publishing this!!

[archagon]

Thank you for this! Look forward to digging into it when I have more time.

Just curious: on your list of publications[1], music shows up only once. How does this course relate to your other work, if at all? Or is this more of a side interest for you?

[1]: https://cs.gmu.edu/~sean/papers/

[FreeFull]

Thank you for writing this book! I'm currently working on a music creation program based on modular synthesis, and I expect the filters chapter of your book will really come in handy.

[spacechild1]

Hi, I'm a computer musician. I just had a quick look at the book, but this looks like a really nice resource! I'll put this on my reading list for summer.

[haywirez]

Thank you, the chapter on resampling is very helpful for me right now as I’m implementing some of these approaches.

[radiowave]

How did I not know about Edisyn? The Microwave XT will be getting an outing this evening, I think. Thanks.

[cjhveal]

Thank you for making your work available for free. I appreciate the historical context you have added.

[pierrec]

This seems nice, introductory and very up-to-date. If I may offer some superficial criticism, I found the covered material was at odds with the title. The title evokes themes of algorithmic composition and experimental whole-music generation, while the book is actually about digital synthesizers and effects on a digital signal processing level. Of course I'm having a hard time coming up with anything better, but maybe in the lines of "Audio Programming for Music", "Music DSP for Programmers", "Digital Synthesizers and Effects"...

[rorykoehler]

My first thought was the same. Swapping "music" for "audio" would probably work. On a side note is generative music even music? (I think it can be but) According to my undergrad music prof the answer would be no, it would be classified as "not music", same as bird song. I've since seen research that refutes her birdsong claim (she wrote extensively on it) but I'm curious what the general consensus is?

[jointpdf]

On that note, what some favorite (ideally freely available) lectures/notes/books on the subjects of algorithmic composition and generative music? Ready, go:

[codemonkey-zeta]

This format is amazing. I love watching these types of videos on YouTube, but the random video-hopping the algorithm gives me via "recommendations" never feel productive. Now when I procrastinate by watching internet videos I can point to this book and say, "See, this isn't procrastination, I'm actually working towards something". Many thanks to the author.

[waprin]

Thanks for submitting, I'm currently working through Stanford Audio Processing for Music Applications but this books looks like a nice companion (and I tend to prefer written content to videos).

I studies some signal processing stuff in college but didn't really connect it to music unfortunately so struggled. Since then I've gotten very interested in electronic music production so it's a 2020 goal to learn more about the underlying software and math techniques, so I really appreciate this resource.

[SeanLuke]

> Stanford Audio Processing for Music Applications

In no universe could my little offering compete with Julius Smith. He is the man.

[leifg]

In case you don't want to submit your email address, this is the direct download link: https://cs.gmu.edu/~sean/book/synthesis/Synthesis.pdf

[yesenadam]

I downloaded it first "without honor", puzzled why he wanted my email. Then I tried entering my details sans email, and was rewarded with compliments to my character – it seems email is not required.

It would be better for the author's information collection, and friendlier to readers, to indicate that email is not a required field – otherwise people will assume giving email is necessary, as in a zillion similar forms online. And/or explain why email is wanted.

[lukevp]

The direct link is on the page under the form too, If you are “without honor” :)

[lukevp]

Thanks for submitting this! Sounds really great and I’m excited to read through this. The theory of FFTs, equalizers, etc is sometimes really unapproachable because of the dense mathematics, it’s much easier for me to comprehend algorithms and concepts as code.

[nitrogen]

I wonder, has anyone written a formula-to-pseudocode translator? Seems like it should be possible if you have access to the formula markup language.

[cageface]

Building a synthesizer from scratch was the most fun I've had as a programmer:

http://www.plastaq.com/scythe_vst/

I'd strongly advise against trying to write music software for a living though. The market is just too competitive now and DAWs are increasingly bundling everything a user might need to make music.

[schanq]

Why discourage people from entering music tech R&D? I’ve worked in this space for 7 years and we’re constantly on the lookout for talent! DAW programming is just one option for people wanting to develop musical applications, e.g. game industry (procedural audio, adaptive synthesis, etc), generative/adaptive music services (generative composition/arrangement for media or context dependent listening), mobile app development (on device synthesis, voice processing, etc). Furthermore, thanks to online learning resources (e.g. this author, JUCE ADC, etc) and online communities (e.g. KVR), it’s never been easier to learn how to build music DSP applications. However, we’re increasingly looking for people who have a strong background in both musical DSP and ML, so if you want to pursue a career in this space I suggest brushing up on traditional DSP and modern DSP/ML combined approaches (e.g. DDSP https://magenta.tensorflow.org/ddsp, QMUL research topics http://c4dm.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/audioengineering.html)

[cmehdy]

I hope the current giants in DAWs are doing much experimentation with VR tools, with the addition of multi-modal interfaces (like the mimu gloves and others), which could open up some marvelous ways of re-thinking music creation as a whole-body experience. The tech for VR might still be a bit limited but the potential for the intersection of it and multi-modal interfaces is, in my opinion, very interesting.

[zerr]

Neat, what resources/tutorials did you follow?

[gavinray]

A lot of care and work seems to have went into this book, really commend the author.

However, I do have to make one slight joke:

> "The topics are short and light on theory."

This did not prepare me for full-page greek-letter and symbol walls haha.

https://i.imgur.com/2K7w1vL.png

[e79]

It is technically light on theory. DSP is just a lot of applied math and it’s hard to hand wave it away if you really want to write software.

A book on music production or an introduction to audio engineering would probably offer a higher level overview.