Designing Sound - a new audio reference text

Posted by Gavin Brockis on Friday 13 March 2009 at 11:57am
Tags: composition | music | open source | software

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Designing Sound gives us a new reference text on the physical and psychological nature of sound itself, and the modelling of audio environments, instruments and effects for the entertainment industry, music and research. It also includes tutorials and guidance on almost every aspect of the open-source sound design software Puredata, on which its author, Andy Farnell is a recognised authority.

Firstly, a disclaimer: I have known Andy Farnell for many years, and have been fortunate enough to work with him on many music and audio projects. This familiarity happily enables me to say with total confidence that the author of Designing Sound is an exceptional sound designer, with a deep theoretical and technical understanding of sound. Here he starts literally from first principles, and builds a foundation from the physics of sound, which informs the subsequent broad discussions and detailed expositions of how to generate and model real-world sounds with digital systems. There is also a welcome acknowledgement of the emotional effects of sound and music, which stops this becoming a dry and cerebral read, and constantly reminds us of why audio is such a powerful tool in artistic, scientific and educational communication.

The latter two thirds of the book is devoted to a full exploration of the open source object-orientated audio programming language Puredata, which bears more than a passing resemblance to Max MSP, and indeed shares the same roots. Puredata, as a bit of a ‘poor relation’ of Max MSP, has always lacked a definitive guide or manual. Not any more. The totally modular nature of Puredata enables the graphical assembly of almost any digital audio generation system, for both music and sound effect creation, and its use is explained in a logical and intuitive way, relatively free of technical jargon.

I would strongly recommend Designing Sound to anyone with an interest in sound design and generation, and it also carries huge relevance to musicians, sound engineers and composers, through a transparent and detailed examination and analysis of the very building blocks of sound. Any Puredata user will, it goes without saying, find it completely invaluable reference, as will educators and researchers in all areas which use creative sound design.

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