The list below roughly follows the table of contents for Curtis Roads' book "The Computer Music Tutorial". This is a very thorough treatment of many aspects of sound and music on the computer, and covers topics in both theoretical and more practical ways. Ther are some excerpts from the book on the class notes page. Go to the reference page for more books, web material and links to software.

1. The nature of sound - the human ear, sound waves, loudness, psychoacoustics.

2. Digital representation of sound - waveforms, conversion, sampling rates, aliasing. Assignment: to generate sound files using a C program with varying waveforms and sample rates.

3. Digital Sound Synthesis - table lookup, CSound, envelopes. Assignment: to generate sound files using table lookup using a C program.

4. Sampling and additive synthesis - Fourier transform, partials, harmonics. Assignment: to use the FFT algorithm to analyze standard instrument sounds.

5. Introduction to Csound – orchestra and score files, built-in opcodes, wave tables generators. Assignment: to use Csound to analyze the spectrum of a recording of an real instrument and then to synthesize the sound using additive synthesis in a variety of ways. The audio editor Audacity.

6. Subtractive synthesis – digital filters: lowpass, highpass, comb and allpass. Software synthesizers with time-variable filters. The Keyboard magazine “synthesizer school” software synthesizer. ZynAddSubFX. Assignment: to use ZynAddSubFX to synthesize standard instrument sounds using subtractive synthesis.

7. Sequencing – the MIDI protocol, standard MIDI files, how to read a MIDI instrument specification.

8. Tuning – the harmonics series, natural tuning, just temperament and equal temperament, the piano keyboard.

9. Digital filters - difference equations, frequency response, transfer function, convolution, the z-transform, poles and zeroes.

10. Physical modeling – waveguide theory as applied to plucked string, blown tubes, nd vibrating membranes. Assignment: to use Csound to model waveguides.

11. Music theory - notation, recording, chords. Assignment: to take a short musical score and render it using a MIDI sequencer (Rosegarden and FluidSynth).

12. Recording – audio sequencing, EQ, mixing, mastering (Ardour, Jamin, Cubase).

13. Audio compression - psychoacoustics, temporal and tonal masking, the MP3 compression algorithm.

14. Composition - standard, algorithmic. Band-in-a-box.  Assignment: to take a Band-in-a box arrangement of a chord sequence and to compose a melody that follows the chords.