Virtual environments such as games and animated and "real" movies require realistic sound effects that can be integrated by computer synthesis. The book emphasizes physical modeling of sound and focuses on real-world interactive sound effects. It is intended for game developers, graphics programmers, developers of virtual reality systems and traini

A practitioner's guide to the basic principles of creating sound effects using easily accessed free software. Designing Sound teaches students and professional sound designers to understand and create sound effects starting from nothing. Its thesis is that any sound can be generated from first principles, guided by analysis and synthesis. The text takes a practitioner's perspective, exploring the basic principles of making ordinary, everyday sounds using an easily accessed free software. Readers use the Pure Data (Pd) language to construct sound objects, which are more flexible and useful than recordings. Sound is considered as a process, rather than as data—an approach sometimes known as “procedural audio.” Procedural sound is a living sound effect that can run as computer code and be changed in real time according to unpredictable events. Applications include video games, film, animation, and media in which sound is part of an interactive process. The book takes a practical, systematic approach to the subject, teaching by example and providing background information that offers a firm theoretical context for its pragmatic stance. [Many of the examples follow a pattern, beginning with a discussion of the nature and physics of a sound, proceeding through the development of models and the implementation of examples, to the final step of producing a Pure Data program for the desired sound. Different synthesis methods are discussed, analyzed, and refined throughout.] After mastering the techniques presented in Designing Sound, students will be able to build their own sound objects for use in interactive applications and other projects

Want to turn your mobile device into a musical instrument? Or equip your game with interactive audio, rather than canned samples? You can do it with Pure Data (Pd), an open source visual programming environment that lets you manipulate digital audio in real time. This concise book shows you how to use Pd—with help from the libpd library—as an easily embeddable and widely portable sound engine. Whether you’re an audio developer looking to create musical apps with sophisticated audio capabilities, or an application developer ready to enhance mobile games with real-time procedural audio, Making Musical Apps introduces you to Pd and libpd, and provides hands-on instructions for creating musical apps for Android and iOS. Get a crash course in Pd, and discover how to generate and control sounds Learn how to create and deploy algorithmic compositions that react to a user’s activity and environment Use Java or Objective-C to integrate Pd and libpd into mobile apps Learn the steps necessary to build libpd-based apps for Android and iOS

Go beyond HTML5's Audio tag and boost the audio capabilities of your web application with the Web Audio API. Packed with lots of code examples, crisp descriptions, and useful illustrations, this concise guide shows you how to use this JavaScript API to make the sounds and music of your games and interactive applications come alive. You need little or no digital audio expertise to get started. Author Boris Smus introduces you to digital audio concepts, then shows you how the Web Audio API solves specific application audio problems. If you're an experienced JavaScript programmer, you'll not only learn how to synthesize and process digital audio, you'll also explore audio analysis and visualization with this API. Learn Web Audio API, including audio graphs and the audio nodes Provide quick feedback to user actions by scheduling sounds with the API's precise timing model Control gain, volume, and loudness, and dive into clipping and crossfading Understand pitch and frequency: use tools to manipulate soundforms directly with JavaScript Generate synthetic sound effects and learn how to spatialize sound in 3D space Use Web Audio API with the Audio tag, getUserMedia, and the Page Visibility API

Refining Sound is a practical roadmap to the complexities of creating sounds on modern synthesizers. As author, veteran synthesizer instructor Brian K. Shepard draws on his years of experience in synthesizer pedagogy in order to peel back the often-mysterious layers of sound synthesis one-by-one. The result is a book which allows readers to familiarize themselves with each individual step in the synthesis process, in turn empowering them in their own creative or experimental work. The book follows the stages of synthesis in chronological progression, starting readers at the raw materials of sound creation and ultimately bringing them to the final "polishing" stage. Each chapter focuses on a particular aspect of the synthesis process, culminating in a last chapter that brings everything together as the reader creates his/her own complex sounds. Throughout the text, the material is supported by copious examples and illustrations as well as by audio files and synthesis demonstrations on a related companion website. Each chapter contains easily digestible guided projects (entitled "Your Turn" sections) that focus on the topics of the corresponding chapter. In addition to this, one complete project will be carried through each chapter of the book cumulatively, allowing the reader to follow - and build - a sound from start to finish. The final chapter includes several sound creation projects in which readers are given types of sound to create as well as some suggestions and tips, with final outcomes is left to readers' own creativity. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of learning to create sounds on a synthesizer is to understand exactly what each synthesizer component does independent of the synthesizer's numerous other components. Not only does this book thoroughly illustrate and explain these individual components, but it also offers numerous practical demonstrations and exercises that allow the reader to experiment with and understand these elements without the distraction of the other controls and modifiers. Refining Sound is essential for all electronic musicians from amateur to professional levels of accomplishment, students, teachers, libraries, and anyone interested in creating sounds on a synthesizer.

An encyclopedic handbook on audio programming for students and professionals, with many cross-platform open source examples and a DVD covering advanced topics. This comprehensive handbook of mathematical and programming techniques for audio signal processing will be an essential reference for all computer musicians, computer scientists, engineers, and anyone interested in audio. Designed to be used by readers with varying levels of programming expertise, it not only provides the foundations for music and audio development but also tackles issues that sometimes remain mysterious even to experienced software designers. Exercises and copious examples (all cross-platform and based on free or open source software) make the book ideal for classroom use. Fifteen chapters and eight appendixes cover such topics as programming basics for C and C++ (with music-oriented examples), audio programming basics and more advanced topics, spectral audio programming; programming Csound opcodes, and algorithmic synthesis and music programming. Appendixes cover topics in compiling, audio and MIDI, computing, and math. An accompanying DVD provides an additional 40 chapters, covering musical and audio programs with micro-controllers, alternate MIDI controllers, video controllers, developing Apple Audio Unit plug-ins from Csound opcodes, and audio programming for the iPhone. The sections and chapters of the book are arranged progressively and topics can be followed from chapter to chapter and from section to section. At the same time, each section can stand alone as a self-contained unit. Readers will find The Audio Programming Book a trustworthy companion on their journey through making music and programming audio on modern computers.

Summary Programming for Musicians and Digital Artists: Creating Music with ChucK offers a complete introduction to programming in the open source music language ChucK. In it, you'll learn the basics of digital sound creation and manipulation while you discover the ChucK language. As you move example-by-example through this easy-to-follow book, you'll create meaningful and rewarding digital compositions and "instruments" that make sound and music in direct response to program logic, scores, gestures, and other systems connected via MIDI or the network. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About this Book A digital musician must manipulate sound precisely. ChucK is an audio-centric programming language that provides precise control over time, audio computation, and user interface elements like track pads and joysticks. Because it uses the vocabulary of sound, ChucK is easy to learn even for artists with little or no exposure to computer programming. Programming for Musicians and Digital Artists offers a complete introduction to music programming. In it, you'll learn the basics of digital sound manipulation while you learn to program using ChucK. Example-by-example, you'll create meaningful digital compositions and "instruments" that respond to program logic, scores, gestures, and other systems connected via MIDI or the network. You'll also experience how ChucK enables the on-the-fly musical improvisation practiced by communities of "live music coders" around the world. Written for readers familiar with the vocabulary of sound and music. No experience with computer programming is required. What's Inside Learn ChucK and digital music creation side-by-side Invent new sounds, instruments, and modes of performance Written by the creators of the ChucK language About the Authors Perry Cook, Ajay Kapur, Spencer Salazar, and Ge Wang are pioneers in the area of teaching and programming digital music. Ge is the creator and chief architect of the ChucK language. Table of Contents Introduction: ChucK programming for artistsPART 1 INTRODUCTION TO PROGRAMMING IN CHUCK Basics: sound, waves, and ChucK programming Libraries: ChucK's built-in tools Arrays: arranging and accessing your compositional data Sound files and sound manipulation Functions: making your own tools PART 2 NOW IT GETS REALLY INTERESTING! Unit generators: ChucK objects for sound synthesis and processing Synthesis ToolKit instruments Multithreading and concurrency: running many programs at once Objects and classes: making your own ChucK power tools Events: signaling between shreds and syncing to the outside world Integrating with other systems via MIDI, OSC, serial, and more