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Computational Music Synthesis
21–30 of 42 posts
Re: Computational Music Synthesis
#22Wow, didn't expect to see my free book on HN. I'm the author.
Thank you, the chapter on resampling is very helpful for me right now as I’m implementing some of these approaches.
Re: Computational Music Synthesis
#23This seems nice, introductory and very up-to-date. If I may offer some superficial criticism, I found the covered material was at odds with the title. The title evokes themes of algorithmic composition and experimental whole-music generation, while the book is actually about digital synthesizers and effects on a digital signal processing level. Of course I'm having a hard time coming up with anything better, but mayb…
My first thought was the same. Swapping "music" for "audio" would probably work. On a side note is generative music even music? (I think it can be but) According to my undergrad music prof the answer would be no, it would be classified as "not music", same as bird song. I've since seen research that refutes her birdsong claim (she wrote extensively on it) but I'm curious what the general consensus is?
Re: Computational Music Synthesis
#24Building a synthesizer from scratch was the most fun I've had as a programmer: http://www.plastaq.com/scythe_vst/ I'd strongly advise against trying to write music software for a living though. The market is just too competitive now and DAWs are increasingly bundling everything a user might need to make music.
I hope the current giants in DAWs are doing much experimentation with VR tools, with the addition of multi-modal interfaces (like the mimu gloves and others), which could open up some marvelous ways of re-thinking music creation as a whole-body experience. The tech for VR might still be a bit limited but the potential for the intersection of it and multi-modal interfaces is, in my opinion, very interesting.
Almost every DAW fails to handle spatial audio rendering properly, so I doubt this is the case. Spatial computing that relies on spatial audio rendering is basically impossible to predict in current DAW offerings - you have to rely on game engine technology for the most part.
The most accessible DAW that can handle spatial audio is Reaper, which doesn't even allow an odd number of channels.
Re: Computational Music Synthesis
#25[deleted]
Re: Computational Music Synthesis
#26This seems nice, introductory and very up-to-date. If I may offer some superficial criticism, I found the covered material was at odds with the title. The title evokes themes of algorithmic composition and experimental whole-music generation, while the book is actually about digital synthesizers and effects on a digital signal processing level. Of course I'm having a hard time coming up with anything better, but mayb…
My first thought was the same. Swapping "music" for "audio" would probably work. On a side note is generative music even music? (I think it can be but) According to my undergrad music prof the answer would be no, it would be classified as "not music", same as bird song. I've since seen research that refutes her birdsong claim (she wrote extensively on it) but I'm curious what the general consensus is?
There is no general consensus. It's a work in progress.
But given that a fair amount of post-war contemporary classical was written using aleatoric techniques - basically constrained randomisation - and no one had a problem thinking of it as music, and modern generative music can be far more sophisticated both culturally and structurally, I think your prof was just plain biased and wrong.
See also: digital photography isn't real photography, vinyl is better than FLAC, computers will never play chess/go, etc.
Re: Computational Music Synthesis
#27Building a synthesizer from scratch was the most fun I've had as a programmer: http://www.plastaq.com/scythe_vst/ I'd strongly advise against trying to write music software for a living though. The market is just too competitive now and DAWs are increasingly bundling everything a user might need to make music.
I hope the current giants in DAWs are doing much experimentation with VR tools, with the addition of multi-modal interfaces (like the mimu gloves and others), which could open up some marvelous ways of re-thinking music creation as a whole-body experience. The tech for VR might still be a bit limited but the potential for the intersection of it and multi-modal interfaces is, in my opinion, very interesting.
This is harder than it sounds.
Waving your arms around explicitly conflicts with the very fine motor control required to play an instrument accurately and expressively.
You need between two and 12 or so (including feet) channels of very precise movement data to make a useful musical instrument. VR hardware isn't designed to have that level of precision.
Of course you can have virtual pads/buttons triggering samples, with a few faders for control of effects. But that's more like sample-based DJing than instrumental performance. It might well have commercial value, but it's a very limited subset of music production as a whole.
Re: Computational Music Synthesis
#28Wow, didn't expect to see my free book on HN. I'm the author.
How did I not know about Edisyn? The Microwave XT will be getting an outing this evening, I think. Thanks.
Re: Computational Music Synthesis
#29Wow, didn't expect to see my free book on HN. I'm the author.
Thank you for this! Look forward to digging into it when I have more time.
Just curious: on your list of publications[1], music shows up only once. How does this course relate to your other work, if at all? Or is this more of a side interest for you?
Re: Computational Music Synthesis
#30Building a synthesizer from scratch was the most fun I've had as a programmer: http://www.plastaq.com/scythe_vst/ I'd strongly advise against trying to write music software for a living though. The market is just too competitive now and DAWs are increasingly bundling everything a user might need to make music.
Why discourage people from entering music tech R&D? I’ve worked in this space for 7 years and we’re constantly on the lookout for talent! DAW programming is just one option for people wanting to develop musical applications, e.g. game industry (procedural audio, adaptive synthesis, etc), generative/adaptive music services (generative composition/arrangement for media or context dependent listening), mobile app development (on device synthesis, voice processing, etc). Furthermore, thanks to online learning resources (e.g. this author, JUCE ADC, etc) and online communities (e.g. KVR), it’s never been easier to learn how to build music DSP applications. However, we’re increasingly looking for people who have a strong background in both musical DSP and ML, so if you want to pursue a career in this space I suggest brushing up on traditional DSP and modern DSP/ML combined approaches (e.g. DDSP https://magenta.tensorflow.org/ddsp, QMUL research topics http://c4dm.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/audioengineering.html)