Winter 2005

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

Instructor:
- Fernando Lopez-Lezcano
TAs:
- Matt Wright office hours TBA and by appointment
- Jose Rio-Pareja B18, Fridays 10 to 12 or 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 last quarter (see 220a), algorithmic composition techniques, spatialization and some psychoacoustics. The course uses the CLM-3 (Common Lisp Music) environment to create all sound examples and the Common Lisp programming language (in which clm-3 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. This project is going to be presented during the finals week.

Assignment submission track sheet

Lectures

	Week	Tue		Thu		Topic goal	Assignment
JAN	1	4	Course overview	6	Lisp, Emacs, SLIME, clm, intro to frequency modulation.		Tutorial on using the 220b programming environment. Assignment 0 sound check, due Thursday Jan 13 before class.
	2	11	Modulation Synthesis	13	CM/CLM Topics, CM/CLM on OSX
	3	18	CM patterns	20	More on patterns, sampling rate conversion		Assignment 1 due Fri Jan 28
	4	25	Granular Synthesis	27	Random Processes, Cellular Automata		Understanding fabric...
FEB	5	1	Digital Filters	3	Chaos and Fractals
	6	8	Physical Modeling	10	Lisp stuff and Matt's examples samba sheila and cellular automata		Assignment 2 due Tue Feb 15
	7	15	Spatialization	17	Spatialization from the ground up with Nando's moveit example.
	8	22	Assignment 2 review, more spatialization	24	Yet more Spatialization: reverb, HRTF		Assignment 3 due Tuesday March 1.
MAR	9	1	Quoting and evaluation in Lisp, Resynthesis	3	Waveshaping, Resynthesis		Assignment 4 due Tuesday, March 8
	10	8	Matt's random topics	10	Last regular class	Wrap-up
	11	Final projects will be presented during the official "final exam" time: Thursday, March 17, 3:30 to 6:30 pm

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.