programming with max/msp - Virtual Sound

Electronic Music and Sound Design - Foreword
FOREWORD
by David Zicarelli
It might seem odd to you, but many years ago, I spent a lot of time learning
about making sound with a computer by reading books and articles while trying
to imagine what the synthesis techniques being described would actually
sound like. While I suppose my imagination might have been stimulated by this
practice, I am happy that real-time synthesis has progressed to the point where
you no longer have to be deprived of the perceptual experience that is such an
important part of learning the techniques of digital synthesis.
Alessandro Cipriani and Maurizio Giri’s book is one of the first courses on
electronic sound that explicitly integrates perception, theory, and practice using
examples of real-time sound synthesis you can manipulate and experience
for yourself. In my view, the manipulation aspect of learning about sound is
critically important. It helps lead you to what Joel Chadabe terms “predictive
knowledge” -- the ability to intuit what will happen to a sound before you take
an action to change it. We all have some level of predictive knowledge. For
example, most of us know that by turning a volume knob clockwise, the sound
coming from our amplifier will get louder. Once we enter the realm of digital
sound synthesis, things quickly get more complicated than a volume knob, and
we need the first-hand experience of manipulation and perception in order to
deepen our predictive knowledge.
However, to educate ourselves fully about digitally produced sound, we need
more than predictive knowledge. We need to know why our manipulations
make the perceptual changes we experience. This theoretical knowledge
reinforces our intuitive experiential knowledge, and at the same time, our
experience gives perceptual meaning to theoretical explanations.
In my opinion, Cipriani and Giri have done a masterful job of allowing
experiential and theoretical knowledge to reinforce each other. This book will
work either as a textbook or as a vehicle for the independent learner. As a
bonus, the book includes a thorough introduction to digital signal processing
with Max/MSP and serves as a wonderful introduction to the programming
concepts in that software.
As you will see, the theoretical chapters are the “T” chapters, while practical
and experiential knowledge is imparted by the “P” chapters. These chapters
alternate, in the form of a ladder, refining the concepts at ever higher levels of
sophistication.
I hope you will take advantage of the excellent Max/MSP examples the authors
have created. They are simultaneously fun and enlightening, and they sound
good enough to use on stage. They are also worth examining as models for
your own Max/MSP patches, or for extending in new ways. But a few minutes
of messing around with the examples is not the same thing as studying the
from “Electronic Music and Sound Design” Vol. 1 by Alessandro Cipriani and Maurizio Giri
© ConTempoNet 2010 - All rights reserved
VII