Media Arts and Technology

MAT 240 Series - Digital Audio Programming

University of California Santa Barbara

Instructor: Andrés Cabrera
Email: andres@mat.ucsb.edu


MAT 240A - Introduction to Digital Audio Programming

This course is an introduction to audio programming, and it is the first part of the six quarter MAT 240 series. Audio programming can take many shapes, and requires different tools and practices for artistic projects, scientific research or industrial applications. This course will present an overview of these different aspects of audio programming while introducing and exploring key concepts that permeate most audio programming projects.

MAT 240B - Sound Synthesis and Processing

This course surveys established techniques for audio synthesis and digital signal processing applied to sound. Additive, Subtractive, FM and Granular synthesis will be explored and implemented. Additionally, processing techniques like filtering will be covered. It is a practical course focused on software implementations of the various techniques, and will be permeated by discussions about performance and sound quality.
Theoretical aspects related to the various techniques are discussed, and particular emphasis will be placed on their implementation in computer algorithms. Artistic and practical use of the techniques will also be discussed and tested with the implementations. Different existing implementations will be compared and studied, in particular those found in widespread systems like Csound, Supercollider, Gamma and CSL.

MAT 240C - Events and Interactive Control

An indispensable aspect of audio programming in interactive systems is providing real-time control. This entails being able to receive and interpret data coming from physical interfaces and applying it to audio parameters. There are various widespread technologies like MIDI and OSC that enable this, as well as many challenges related to performance, timing and concurrency.

This course will present a low level approach to these technologies to understand what's needed to integrate them in practical software, as well as a look into the natural extensions of interactive control, like network performance and distributed processing.

MAT 240D - Spatial Sound

Hearing is inherently spatial in nature, and spatial properties of sound can convey meaning and sensations in ways that no other senses can. Sounds that are close and coming from the back can elicit fear and sounds from all directions can be perceived simultaneously, without the need to turn the head. Producing spatial cues and exploiting the properties of multichannel systems presents interesting technical challenges, and can provide new avenues for artistic and practical exploration. Many techniques to work with spatial audio have been developed for different applications and this course will present a practical introduction to them through their application in software.

MAT 240E - Audio Analysis and MIR

Music is a complex and multi-layered conveyor of information and emotion. Music Information Retrieval seeks to extract meaning and elements from music to enable better classification, query, matching, recommendation and transformation of musical material and sets. This course hopes to serve as a hands on introduction into the practice of Music Information Retrieval and Music Data Mining.

MAT 240F - Sonification

Data sonification in auditory displays can provide information to complement, augment or replace visual displays. This course will present the established techniques for auralization, parameter driven sonification and model based sonification.