Sometimes, looking back at pioneers can be nostalgic. “Back in my day,” goes the story, “electronic composers were real electronic composers.” But then you hear from someone like Curtis Roads, and his mind-blowing ideas are coupled with a belief that we’re only now reaching the Golden Age of electronic sounds. Rory Ahearn writes to share the latest episode of the show Motherboard on VBS TV, which talks to composer Curtis Roads. Roads was ground-breaking in his early granular synthesis work in the 1970s as he continues to be today.

Motherboard: Curtis Roads – Think Granular

Rory writes:

There are two divergent streams in 20th century electronic music: The one most people are familiar with starts out with goofballs like Jean-Jacques Perrey and Vangelis noodling around on synthesizers and eventually devolves into Kaja Googoo. Curtis Roads is part of the other path, the one that follows insane geniuses like Stockhausen and Morton Subotnik and uses whatever-period-it-happens-to-be’s state-of-the-art computer technology to produce compositions that completely defy conventional music logic and sometimes sound more like a freaked-out ATM than tunes you put on and listen to.

Even having heard him say it before, I never get tired of hearing Roads speak about working with music “below the note level,” and even below the surface level, to sounds that are only perceived when you hear the resulting, total composition. He describes going beyond just notes in the interview:

Electronic music extends the domain of composition from a closed, homogenous set of notes … to an open universe of heterogeneous sound objects … All of a sudden, we’re working with any sound possible. And that really changes the game.

There’s also a rather poetic comment on why synthetic sounds can be wonderful – a notion that always bears repeating:

Natural sounds are beautiful … but the virtual sound world is also beautiful, the world of sine waves, of impulses, of electronically-generated tones. That’s a vast space… Voila!

As seen, as well, on Synthtopia.

You may have heard about Pure Data (Pd), the open-source cousin to Max/MSP and a powerful tool for visual programming or “patching” music and multimedia. Pd has even appeared in the iPhone app RjDj and creating generative music for EA’s hit game Spore. But actually learning how to use the thing? Or learning some of the more advanced possible techniques in sound synthesis and processing? That’s another matter.

Johannes Kreidler writes to let us know about his new book for people wanting to learn Pd. It starts at the beginning and teaches you not only the ins and outs of the Pd environment, but all of the advanced music processing techniques, as well. (Given the similarity of Pd and Max/MSP, that should make this just about as useful for Max devotees, too.)

The book is available for reading free online, or in paperback format from Wolke Publishing House. It’s available in both English and German. Johannes writes:

This tutorial is designed for self-study, principally for composers. It begins with explanations of basic programming and acoustic principles then gradually builds up to the most advanced electronic music processing techniques. The book’s teaching approach is focused primarily on hearing, which we consider a faster and more enjoyable way to absorb new concepts than through abstract formulas.

The patches described are available for download.

He notes that because Pd is free and open source rather than commercial software, there isn’t a company behind it that can focus on documentation for new users. That’s been a common complaint about Pd, and this book does a lot to fill it — as well as a lot to fill the need for better documentation of sound techniques, as well, for users of any environment. Some of the juicy topics covered:

• Additive, subtractive synthesis
• Sampling
• Waveshaping, modulation synthesis
• Granular synthesis (something I try to eat a bowl of every day, seriously)
• Fourier analysis
• Sequencers
• Connecting to hardware, network transmission and OSC
• Basics of visuals

It’s a really elegantly-organized set of topics, and absolutely of interest to users of Max/MSP and other environments, as well. With this and a new SuperCollider book coming out this spring, we’re really getting some wonderful resources for learning greater ninja skills. Stay tuned, as I hope to create a forum for folks working on learning this stuff.

Resources

Book site, including downloadable patches and online reading:

http://www.pd-tutorial.com

Direct link to downloading all the patches as one zip (thanks, mic, in comments!):

http://www.kreidler-net.de/pd/patches/patches.zip

More info, including the paperback version:

http://www.wolke-verlag.de/musik_u_t/loadbang.html

http://www.buecher-zur-musik.de/assets/s2dmain.html?http://www.buecher-zur-musik.de/53108697370a2cb3f/5310869bc400a7a02.html

Author’s site:
www.kreidler-net.de

The authorship of the book was aided by a grant by the Music University of Freiburg / Germany.

Previous appearances by the author:

A song made from 70,2000 samples

The stock market declines, as a song

More Pd Books

bang | pure data Free, online

Creator Miller Puckette’s own The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music, free online in various formats and also in print

Nicely done, Matteo Milani! More details from these Kyma sound synthesis experts at Unidentified Sound Object, which also has lots of resources on sound design in general on the main blog.

Ready to do this yourself? Full details on how-to at kyma-tweaky, the Kyma collective, for users of this advanced DSP-powered synthesizer.

This demonstrates the potential power of granular synthesis, so geeking out aside, there is something to be learned here. What’s fascinating is just how much power it takes to reproduce the original sound, which was far simpler (and yet still sounds better). Sound designer Ben Burtt explains:

… we had a projection booth with some very, very old simplex projectors in them. They had an interlock motor which connected them to the system when they just sat there and idled and made a wonderful humming sound. It would slowly change in pitch, and it would beat against another motor, there were two motors, and they would harmonize with each other … it was just a humming sound, what was missing was a buzzy sort of sparkling sound, the scintillating which I was looking for, and I found it one day by accident.

… the microphone passed a television set which was on the floor which was on at the time without the sound turned up, but the microphone passed right behind the picture tube and as it did, this particular produced an unusual hum. It picked up a transmission from the television set and a signal was induced into it’s sound reproducing mechanism, and that was a great buzz, actually. So I took that buzz and recorded it and combined it with the projector motor sound and that fifty-fifty kind of combination of those two sounds became the basic lightsaber tone.

From FilmSound.org, which has more wonderful Burtt stories and lots of other fantastic info on sound design. You could probably learn everything you need to know about sound design just from sound cues from Star Wars.

Still, there’s a lot to be learned from synthesizing sounds, too. Lay people I think don’t appreciate how much harder synthesis is than recording. What the two have in common: listening closely. Ben Burtt had an unusual talent for that, one that makes you want to pick up a microphone and a synthesizer. Well, after you’re done playing lightsaber battle, anyway.

Previously, because I never get tired of talking about this:

Star Wars and Sound Design

This is by far the most exciting free-plug release so far this year. It’s comparable to Reason’s Maelstrom, but allows one to import any .wav files (mono only) into the plug for manipulation.

Audio Demos:
Grain_Demo_1.mp3
Grain_Demo_2.mp3
Grain_Demo_3.mp3
Grain_Demo_4.mp3
Grain_Demo_5.mp3
Grain_Demo_6.mp3
Grain_Demo_7.mp3
Grain_Demo_8.mp3

Direct Downloads of plug + support files:
Grainz_0-1-0.zip
Granular.zip
SKGrains_manual_draft.pdf

Developed by Sknote

Ed: Some really fasinating ideas here: 1 pluck oscillator, physical modeled, plus 2 graintable oscillators, and interaction between the two, plus filters and multi-stage envelopes. Future versions plan an arpeggiator, control matrix, bow model, and other features. The developer has some other interesting plugs, though thanks to Adrian for sorting out the links — site is a bit disorganized. Now go enjoy! -PK