Making Music with Computers: An Introduction to Programming in Python
Purchasing Options
Features
- Provides a theme-based introduction to computer programming in Python
- Introduces digital music production techniques
- Organizes the book sections around project-based learning tasks
- Includes concept quiz sections for self-assessment as well as programming practice exercises for remedial and extension activities
- Offers instructor resources and code on a supplementary website
Summary
Through music examples, this introductory text illustrates software development in the Python programming language. The authors explain musical and programming concepts in a coordinated way. They interweave musical and computational material, while maintaining a natural, steady increase in computational skills. The book assumes little musical and programming experience and introduces topics through extensive examples and project-based learning tasks. It also includes many concept quiz sections and programming practice exercises. A supplementary website provides files with code for all examples used in the text.
Table of Contents
Computer Music (Intro to Computing)
History
Electronic Music
Music Technology
Audio Recording
Music Publishing
MIDI Sequencing
Algorithmic Music
Sound Synthesis
Live Performance
The Computer as a Musical Instrument
Why Music?
Integrating jMusic into your Musical Workflow
Reading Music (Information vs. Data Representations)
Representing Music
Notes (pitch)
Rhythm
Rests
Clefs
Time Signatures
Chords
Keys
Piano-roll display
Tablature
Writing Music in Code (Intro to Python)
Notes (Numbers, MIDI Constants)
Rhythm (Duration Constants)
Installing jMusic
Making it go Bing!
I/O
Creating Melody and Rhythm (Writing Simple Programs - Sequence)
Musical Components and Structure
The jMusic Data Structure
Notes and rests
Saving data as MIDI files
How time is represented in jMusic
Phrases
Parts
Scores
Putting it all together
A Drum Machine
Creating Polyphony and Repetition (Writing Programs with Loops - Iteration)
Playing Many Parts
J.S. Bach - Making Canons
Specifying Instruments
The jMusic Mod Functions
Repetition and Phasing
Chord Progressions
Making Arpeggios
Playing with Randomness and Choices (Writing Programs with If Statements – Selection; Randomness)
Random Notes and Chaos
Lorenz Attractor for Rhythm Generation
Random Walk - White
Random Walk - Brown
Random Walk - Pink
Gaussian Distribution
Markov Chains
Sound and Timbre (Floats, Lists - Combining Sequence, Selection, Iteration)
Digital Audio
Bits, bytes and the binary system
jMusic audio
Accessing recorded sound
Saving samples as an audio file
Audio File Types
Reversing samples
Splicing audio clips
Digital Audio Details
Audio Dynamics
Aliasing
Quantization
Volume
Normalizing and Clipping
Fading
Limiting
Compressing
Soundscapes (Functions, Encapsulation, Information Hiding)
Interpolation
Mixing audio clips
Reversing samples (revisited)
Echo
Amplitude Modulation
Frequency Modulation
Psychoacoustics Model
Adding sounds as notes to scores
Assembling Soundscapes
Algorithmic Music Composition (Modularization, Top-down Design, Bottom-up Implementation, Testing)
Modularization
Themes and variations
Musical Forms
Scales and Modes
Composing with Chords
Various Instruments
Computer Music Performance (Classes, Event handling, GUls)
Computer as an instrument
Laptop Orchestra
GUls
Building virtual instruments
Code as an expressive musical instrument (live coding)
Music and Nature, Nature and Music (Mapping number sequences, Iterative function systems, Recursion)
The Music of Nature
Sonification
Kepler's Harmony of the Spheres
Zipf's Law
Literate music (music from books)
A-life
L-Systems
Fractal Music
Epilogue
Musical Explorations
The Veil is Lifted
