Introduction to synthesis with Pure Data

A shameless plug for a good man’s book!

I met Andy Farnell because he was leading an audio synthesis session at a Pure Data workshop run by Goto10 (who are purveyors of a fine multi-media Linux distribution called pure:dyne).

For those that don’t know, Pure Data is a high-level realtime audio & video programming environment, created originally by Miller Puckette who also created the similar MAX/MSP. It is a fantastic environment to create your own audio effects, instruments and sounds. And, thankfully, it is Free Open Source Software.

Andy Farnell has written a book called Designing Sound, and there is a free excerpt available to download. It is a thorough and engaging introduction to using Pure Data for synthesis (creating sounds computationally rather than from samples).

If you are interested in creating sound effects, music, synthesisers or just have a plain healthy interest in things you don’t know about, download a copy today!

For me, myself, I’m interested in creating an audio application that makes it easy to split up and save out snippets from radio shows that I download.