A groundbreaking study of the trailblazing music of Chicago’s AACM, a leader in the world of jazz and experimental music. Founded on Chicago’s South Side in 1965 and still thriving today, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) is the most influential collective organization in jazz and experimental music. In Sound Experiments, Paul Steinbeck offers an in-depth historical and musical investigation of the collective, analyzing individual performances and formal innovations in captivating detail. He pays particular attention to compositions by Muhal Richard Abrams and Roscoe Mitchell, the Association’s leading figures, as well as Anthony Braxton, George Lewis (and his famous computer-music experiment, Voyager), Wadada Leo Smith, and Henry Threadgill, along with younger AACM members such as Mike Reed, Tomeka Reid, and Nicole Mitchell. Sound Experiments represents a sonic history, spanning six decades, that affords insight not only into the individuals who created this music but also into an astonishing collective aesthetic. This aesthetic was uniquely grounded in nurturing communal ties across generations, as well as a commitment to experimentalism. The AACM’s compositions broke down the barriers between jazz and experimental music and made essential contributions to African American expression more broadly. Steinbeck shows how the creators of these extraordinary pieces pioneered novel approaches to instrumentation, notation, conducting, musical form, and technology, creating new soundscapes in contemporary music.

A comprehensive, kid-friendly examination of how sound works. How does sound happen? How do we hear it? What makes some sounds loud and some soft? Some high pitched and some low pitched? How do humans and animals use sound to communicate? Which sounds happen naturally, and which are created for a specific purpose? This charming picture book explores all of these questions in easy-to-understand and child-friendly language, offering a gentle introduction to how sound works. Kids are experts at making noise. Now they’ll want to stop and listen, too!

Read and find out about people and animals use different kinds of sounds to communicate in this colorfully illustrated nonfiction picture book. Sounds are all around us. Clap your hands, snap your fingers: You’re making sounds. With colorful illustrations from Anna Chernyshova and engaging text from Wendy Pfeffer, Sounds All Around is a fascinating look into how sound works. This is a clear and appealing science book for early elementary age kids, both at home and in the classroom. It includes a find out more section with additional and updated experiments, such as finding out how sound travels through water. Both the text and the artwork were vetted by Dr. Agnieszka Roginska, Professor of Music Technology at NYU. This is a Level 1 Let's-Read-and-Find-Out, which means the book explores introductory concepts perfect for children in the primary grades. The 100+ titles in this leading nonfiction series are: hands-on and visual acclaimed and trusted great for classrooms Top 10 reasons to love LRFOs: Entertain and educate at the same time Have appealing, child-centered topics Developmentally appropriate for emerging readers Focused; answering questions instead of using survey approach Employ engaging picture book quality illustrations Use simple charts and graphics to improve visual literacy skills Feature hands-on activities to engage young scientists Meet national science education standards Written/illustrated by award-winning authors/illustrators & vetted by an expert in the field Over 130 titles in print, meeting a wide range of kids' scientific interests Books in this series support the Common Core Learning Standards, Next Generation Science Standards, and the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) standards. Let's-Read-and-Find-Out is the winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science/Subaru Science Books & Films Prize for Outstanding Science Series.

"A lucid and passionate case for a more mindful way of listening to and engaging with musical, natural, and manmade sounds." —New York Times In this tour of the world’s most unexpected sounds, Trevor Cox—the “David Attenborough of the acoustic realm” (Observer)—discovers the world’s longest echo in a hidden oil cavern in Scotland, unlocks the secret of singing sand dunes in California, and alerts us to the aural gems that exist everywhere in between. Using the world’s most amazing acoustic phenomena to reveal how sound works in everyday life, The Sound Book inspires us to become better listeners in a world dominated by the visual and to open our ears to the glorious cacophony all around us.

Based on the true story of Chinese dancer Lihua Tai, The Visible Sounds tells the uplifting tale of a young child dealing with the frustration and solitude of hearing loss. Alone in silence, the child's life is changed forever when a chance touch unlocks a vibrant new world, now blazing with rainbows of visible sounds.The Visible Sounds brings a message of hope and joy to children living with a disability and is an inspirational reminder that dreams can become reality.

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