Electronic Music and Sound Design 1

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 try- ing 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 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 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 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 concepts in the book. The book provides the language for expressing the concepts in terms of the underlying theory. Knowing the theory is essential, because presumably you’re reading this book because you want to be more than someone who can turn a volume knob.

That is the authors’ wish for you, and mine as well. I want to wish you good luck on this new adventure, and also thank my two Italian friends for creating such a comprehensive resource for learning about digital music – the one I wish existed when I was a student!
David Zicarelli, publisher of Max