The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music
by Miller Puckette · first published 2007
67% recommend22% neutral11% critical
Why HN recommends it
Accessible, conceptually coherent introduction to electronic and digital synthesis, with examples that run in Pure Data. Suited to beginners and to readers who want to go deeper into digital synthesis.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"This is the first book to develop both the theory and the practice of synthesizing musical sounds using computers. Each chapter starts with a theoretical description of one technique or problem area and ends with a series of working examples (over 100 in all), covering a wide range of applications. Although the theory is presented quantitatively, the mathematics used goes no further than trigonometry and complex numbers. The examples and supported software - along with a machine-readable version of the text - are available on the web and maintained by a large community." "The Theory and Techn
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…authors: http://www.music.utah.edu/faculty/faculty_a-z/david_michael_... He used to send a pdf of the draft version if you asked him, but since the printed book is due soon (by MIT press) I don't know if this is still true. There's also 'The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music' by Miller Puckette (the author of Pure Data): http://crca.ucsd.edu/~msp/techniques.htm The examples are, obviously, in Pure Data. But it is an excellent book and all the concepts can be applied to…
on “Recreating the THX Deep Note - EarSlap” ↗There are some good books... Delton T Horn's Music Synthesizers a manual of design and construction. http://lucmorton.com/lucstuf/pdf/Music%20Synthesizers%20-%20... Miller Puckette's theory and technique of electronic music http://msp.ucsd.edu/techniques.htm Dave Bensons music a mathematical offering: https://homepages.abdn.ac.uk/d.j.benson/pages/html/maths-mus... Here is a list of other good reference books: https://sdiy.info/wiki/Synth_DIY_books Also,…
on “Ask HN: Tired of Arduino, how can I get started to build hardware synth?” ↗Just slimmed some chapters, but this looks like a great resource! If someone wants to dive more deeply into digital synthesis, I can recommend "The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music" by Miller Puckette (creator of Max and Pure Data): https://msp.ucsd.edu/techniques/latest/book.pdf. All examples are actually Pure Data patches that you can try out and experiment with.
on “Introduction to Computer Music” ↗…Csound, PD, SC etc (understandably), and that’s always a bit off-putting to me and appears as another obstacle / headache, so the projects get shelfed more quickly. I’ve begun reading Miller Puckett’s book Theory and Technique of Electronic Music and quite like that, though, despite strongly disliking the PD interface.
Highly recommended: "The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music", which is both an accessible and conceptually coherent introduction to the topic.
on “Pure Data: an open source visual language for multimedia” ↗You can find many [abstractions] doing the job you request. The key is to learn how to build them from scratch. You can read Miller's book: The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music It's free online. Also these two tutorials are very helpful: https://archive.flossmanuals.net/pure-data/ http://www.pd-tutorial.com/
on “Pure Data as a plugin, with a new GUI” ↗My most recommended method for beginners has always been PD (https://puredata.info/) combined with The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music: (https://msp.ucsd.edu/techniques/latest/book.pdf) and this book (https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262014410/designing-sound/). Eli's tutorials on SuperCollider are also very helpful: https://www.youtube.com/@elifieldsteel…
on “Python notebooks for fundamentals of music processing” ↗> "The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music is a uniquely complete source of information for the computer synthesis of rich and interesting musical timbres." It's really a great book, but it is far from "complete" as it omits some very important…
on “The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music (2006)” ↗There is a book called "The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music" written by Miller Puckette (creator of Max / Pure Data visual programming languages). That is quite heavy on the mathematical side though - really is more like the title suggests the theory underlying…
on “The Real Book” ↗The first sentence of the foreword brings to the point, what the book is about: "The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music is a uniquely complete source of information for the computer synthesis of rich and interesting musical timbres." Whereas tools like Max Mathews' (btw. the author of the foreword) MUSIC programs and…
on “The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music (2006)” ↗…investment of ones time. Its just more broadly applicable and far more dense in terms of tooling and methodology. https://www.docdroid.net/3K4UL8i/loopop-toc-pdf In general, screeds documenting the theory and technique of electronic music would be better served if their authors didn't orient the works around a particular tool or method - such as Puredata, in this case. Even those PD is indeed an extremely powerful tool, its not really…
on “The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music (2006)” ↗