Theory And Techniques Of Electronic Music

Theory and Techniques of Electronic Music
DRAFT: March 3, 2006

Miller Puckette

Copyright c 2006 Miller Puckette All rights reserved.

Contents
1 Sinusoids, amplitude and frequency 1.1 Measures of Amplitude . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Units of Amplitude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Controlling Amplitude . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 Frequency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . 1.5 Synthesizing a Sinusoid . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.6 Superposing Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.7 Periodic Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.8 About the Software Examples . . . . . . . . . Quick Introduction to Pd . . . . . . . . . . . How to find and run the examples . . . . . . 1.9 Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Constant amplitude scaler . . . . . . . . .. . Amplitude control in decibels . . . . . . . . . Smoothed amplitude control with an envelope Major triad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conversion between frequency and pitch . . . More additive synthesis . . . . . . . . . . . . Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Wavetables and samplers 2.1 The Wavetable Oscillator . . . . . . . . 2.2 Sampling . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . 2.3 Enveloping samplers . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Timbre stretching . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 Interpolation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6 Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6.1 wavetable oscillator . . . . . . . 2.6.2 wavetable lookup in general . . . 2.6.3 using a wavetable as a sampler . 2.6.4 looping samplers . . . . . . . . . 2.6.5 Overlapping sample looper . .. 2.6.6 Automatic read point precession iii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . generator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 5 6 7 8 9 12 13 14 17 19 19 19 21 23 24 24 25 27 29 31 35 37 41 45 49 49 50 52 54 56 58

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CONTENTS 61 61 63 65 69 70 71 73 75 77 79 79 81 82 84 84 86 89 89 92 94 95 96 98 98 99 102 103 103 106 107 110 113 119 119 122 126 132 135 135 137 138 139 140

3 Audio and control computations 3.1 The sampling theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Control . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Control streams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Converting from audio signals to numeric control streams 3.5 Control streams in block diagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.6 Event detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.7 Control computation using audio signals directly . . . . . 3.8 Operations on controlstreams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.9 Control operations in Pd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.10 Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.10.1 Sampling and foldover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.10.2 Converting controls to signals . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.10.3 Non-looping sample player . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.10.4 Signals to controls . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . 3.10.5 Analog-style sequencer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.10.6 MIDI-style synthesizer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Automation and voice management 4.1 Envelope Generators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Linear and Curved Amplitude Shapes . . . . . . . . 4.3 Continuous and discontinuous control changes . . . . 4.3.1 Muting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....