On 8/5/07, garton@columbia.edu wrote:

One of the primary author's of ChUcK, Perry Cook hisself, has several terrific books out. You might want to check:

"Real Sound Synthesis for Interactive Applications"

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9781568811680&itm=16

for a good intro into the theory behind sound synthesis and DSP. It includes a CD-ROM with the STK on it, the basis for a lot of CHuck dsp stuff.

Indeed! It covers a part of ChucK, easily fits in any bag and it's often funny. None of those can be said about mr. Road's "Computer Music Could You Please Check That Book In Because It Might Be Used As A Weapon". That last one is still a excelent introduction to computer music making and after you've outgrown the introductory stage you'll find yourself using it as a reference. It's big, intimidating and at times a bit dated but I never heard about anyone regretting buying that one. Kas.

garton@columbia.edu wrote:

One of the primary author's of ChUcK, Perry Cook hisself, has several terrific books out. You might want to check:

"Real Sound Synthesis for Interactive Applications" http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9781568811680&itm=16

for a good intro into the theory behind sound synthesis and DSP. It includes a CD-ROM with the STK on it, the basis for a lot of CHuck dsp stuff.

My old 'recommend this' standby is by Charles Dodge and Thomas Jerse:

"Computer Music: Synthesis, Composition, and Performance" http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9780028646824&itm=1

although it is indeed old now. I think they updated it not too long ago, but it does talk a lot about ugen theory, etc.

The Big Giant Book That is Really Big and Giant That Covers Everything and it is Really Big and Giant is a collection put out by Curtis Roads (former and long-time editor of the Computer Music Journal):

"Computer Music Tutorial" http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9780262680820&itm=1

I also know that Eduardo Reck Miranda has a new synth-techniques book out, don't know anything about it though.

There was a terrific 'on-line' book/tutorial that Larry Polansky, Douglas Repetto and Mary Lee Roberts developed, but I'm not sure what happened with it. You might try contacting douglas (douglas - at - music ddot columbia dot edu) to see what happened to it. It had some wonderful interactive tutorials.

You might also want to scan the music-dsp reviews to see if any of those appeal to you:

http://www.music.columbia.edu/cmc/music-dsp/dspbooks.html

Finally, for a really fun read that introduces a lot of music-cognition work (if you are interested, this is not a 'techie' book at all), Dan Levitin has a great one:

"This Is Your Brain on Music" http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9780452288522&itm=2

Hope this helps...

brad http://music.columbia.edu/~brad

Well ... yeah ... they're all good, and of course I have all of them. But I also don't think a working computer musician can live without Dr. Richard Boulanger's "The CSound Book". http://csounds.com/book/index.html Which reminds me ... I need to update my web page (http://algocompsynth.com) to add some pointers to ChucK!