Web design & FOSS
Front-end web technologies and Free Open Source Software.
Thursday 20 November 2008, 6:53 PM
Introduction to synthesis with Pure Data
A shameless plug for a good man’s book!
I met Andy Farnell because he was leading an audio synthesis session at a Pure Data workshop run by Goto10 (who are purveyors of a fine multi-media Linux distribution called pure:dyne).
For those that don’t know, Pure Data is a high-level realtime audio & video programming environment, created originally by Miller Puckette who also created the similar MAX/MSP. It is a fantastic environment to create your own audio effects, instruments and sounds. And, thankfully, it is Free Open Source Software.
Andy Farnell has written a book called Designing Sound, and there is a free excerpt available to download. It is a thorough and engaging introduction to using Pure Data for synthesis (creating sounds computationally rather than from samples).
If you are interested in creating sound effects, music, synthesisers or just have a plain healthy interest in things you don’t know about, download a copy today!
For me, myself, I’m interested in creating an audio application that makes it easy to split up and save out snippets from radio shows that I download.
PreviousComments on this post
Sounds like a nice parallel to sound synthesis (something sonys audio chips on their playstations excel at) there being many modules for windows available that enable you to do this.
For the last part of your blog would something like the open source audacity suit your purposes, or am I barking up the wrong street suggesting windows software?
Interesting looking program (though I can't run it, not yet having a functional windows machine!). I think that the Pure Data is more nuts and bolt, more meccano than lego, so it's a fairly steep learning curve but with lots more control.
It is also available for Windows and Mac as well as Linux:
http://puredata.info/downloads
Audacity is a lovely program (and it's available as a Mac and Linux download too:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/
However, it's a bit slow to open up an audio file, and there's not a simple way to mark, name and export multiple areas. So I think I'll try to roll my own!!
Ah...ok. I'll be having a look at the pure data.info.....I reckon you could get some really incredible results with that kind of kit.
I think it's a bit powerful! I'm looking forward to having a play myself, I really know very little about it. Here's some handy links that my multi-media-fiend Oiio (http://antradio.com) sent me:
The Pd wikipedia:
http://wiki.puredata.info/en/Help:Contents
Miller Puckette's book on the matter
http://crca.ucsd.edu/~msp/techniques.htm
hth, Jake
