Structured for use in university courses, the book is an overview of the theory and practice of Max/MSP, with a glossary of terms and suggested tests that allow students to evaluate their progress. Comprehensive online support, running parallel to the explanations in the book, includes hundreds of sample patches, analyses, interactive sound-building exercises, and reverse engineering exercises. This book will provide a reader with skill and understanding in using Max/MSP for sound design and musical composition.
Chapter I - Introduction to Sound Synthesis and Signal Processing
Chapter II - Additive Synthesis
Chapter III - Subtractive Synthesis
Chapter IV - Controls and LFO
The book contains more than 500 pages, interactive examples, hundreds of patches, online support, theory and Max/MSP glossary, test, reverse engineering exercises, analyses, completion and correction of patches, etc.
Note that this is the first volume of three. Vol. 2 and Vol. 3 will include digital audio and sampled sounds, delay lines (echo, loops, flangers, chorus effects, phasers, pitch shifting, reverse, comb filters, allpass filters, Karplus-Strong algorithm), MIDI and realtime control, dynamic processors (compressors, expanders, gates, limiters), reverb and spatialization, Max for Live, non-linear synthesis (AM, RM, FM, PM, PD and non-linear distortion), granular synthesis and formant synthesis, convolution, analysis and resynthesis, micromontage and concatenative sound synthesis, physical modeling, and jitter for audio.
David Zicarelli writes:
"Alessandro Cipriani and Maurizio Giri's book is one of the first courses on electronic sound that explicitly integrates perception, theory, and practice using examples of real-time sound synthesis you can manipulate and experience for yourself. In my view, the manipulation aspect of learning about sound is critically important. It helps lead you to what Joel Chadabe terms 'predictive knowledge' — the ability to intuit what will happen to a sound before you take an action to change it. We all have some level of predictive knowledge. For example, most of us know that by turning a volume knob clockwise, the sound coming from our amplifier will get louder. Once we enter the realm of digital sound synthesis, things quickly get more complicated than a volume knob, and we need the first-hand experience of manipulation and perception in order to deepen our predictive knowledge ...
"In my opinion, Cipriani and Giri have done a masterful job of allowing experiential and theoretical knowledge to reinforce each other. This book will work either as a textbook or as a vehicle for the independent learner. As a bonus, the book includes a thorough introduction to digital signal processing with Max/MSP and serves as a wonderful introduction to the programming concepts in that software."
Paperback. 548 pages. 17 x 24.4 cm. ISBN: 978-88-905484-0-6
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