MTC191 Electronic Music I > is going to be a fun class. It's only the first week of school and I'm already really excited for what this fall has in store. If you know me even the slightest bit then you know that I'm apeshit for music, especially the electronic form. You probably also know that I am part geek with a raging technology boner. Thus it shouldn't be difficult to fathom why I've enrolled in a course at the SCC Department of Music this semester to get synthetic sound savvy and learn the science of what pleasures my earhole the most.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: An introduction to producing music with MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) and digital audio. Individual workstations consist of Mac G4 computers, Yamaha keyboard controllers, Pro Tools, Digital Performer, Reason and Native Instruments. Synthesizers, drum triggers and other MIDI controllers are also available.
Today being the first day of class, we did the whole standard intro thing, syllabus walkthrough and got familiar with the Pro Tools 9 interface. I played around with the BOOM drum machine for most of the time until we got to break. Then for the lecture we dug into the basics of how sound works and the different types of waveforms. It's relatively simple to grasp the concept of sound waves at a high level but it gets much more complex further into the subtractive synthesis process in that every sound we know can be broken into collective sine waves.
The theory aspect of sound alone fascinates me but the hands-on learning is far more intriguing. I can't wait to take my GarageBand-limited production talent to a much more sophisticated level and I'll be sure to share my amateur gold with you lucky peeps along the way.
[Check out these links for more info on the MTC191 course and my rad instructor, Elaine Walker.]
