Books
The following books are highly recommended. Wherever possible, each title is a dual-purpose link to the product on Amazon if you want more details. HOVER the mouse pointer over the link to pop up a thumbnail of the book; CLICK the link to go to the page on Amazon.
Press Backspace or your browser's Back button to return to this list after visiting the product page.
The Computer Music Tutorial (Curtis Roads) This is the definitive encyclopaedia of all things related to computer music, including algorithms, history of synthesis, techniques of synthesis, and much, much more. It's a complete and detailed survey of the entire field (not really a tutorial at all).
Microsound (Curtis Roads) This book is a detailed exploration of Roads' research into granular synthesis and a dozen related sub-fields. It's not an overview. Recommended for people seriously interested in the subtleties of granular synthesis.
The Csound Book (Richard Boulanger, ed.) Csound is a programming language for synthesizing audio waveforms, developed by Barry Vercoe. This book is a collection of instructional papers on using Csound, from a variety of experts. Recommended for people who want to get deep into the algorithmic creation of sound or audio experiments. Even if you're not actually using Csound, this book can provide a broad perspective on what Csound is used for, and what's involved in software-synthesis at the bottom level.
Audio Postproduction for Digital Video (Jay Rose) Includes a CD of examples. This book is an excellent introduction to the issues involved in preparing the soundtrack for a movie. It's not especially focused on DV, but comes from a solid background in audio for film production. The emphasis is on post-production, not on studio or location recording.
Film Directing: Shot by Shot (Steven Katz) One of the standards in film schools, its relevance to sound design is indirect, but significant. Composers of symphonies and concertos build their works around a framework of themes, and film scores (or ambience stems) have an equally important underlying structure. Even if one is composing pure sonic art, an understanding of how space and POV and timing are handled in film can be surprisingly valuable.
Practical Art of Motion Picture Sound (David Yewdall) Sound in film can be more complex to edit and prepare than the film itself. We hear around corners (the camera doesn't), and we "read" a cut in sound as a location change (the camera doesn't). The sound within a scene is a fluid thing which substantially defines the reality of the multiple shots within that scene, from roomtone and ambience to foley and sound fx.
SoftSynths & Other Software
Reaktor 5 (Native Instruments) The ultimate synthesizer synthesizer, Reaktor is an advanced digital signal processing laboratory with a slick, drag-to-connect graphical interface. Although its capabilities are astoundingly advanced and exhaustive, it's also easy to build your own basic synthesizers from scratch, and it comes with an unusually creative set of pre-defined synths to play immediately, without any design work required. This software is truly a masterpiece.
Hardware
Korg KARMA synthesizer —.
(P)©Copyright 2004, 2005 Allen Cobb. All rights reserved. All text, audio, and images are owned by the copyright holder. Downloading excerpts, tracks, thumbnails or larger versions does not convey any rights to store, reproduce, modify, or distribute these works. For commercial use of any kind, direct or indirect, written permission is required from the copyright holder.
