Clojurians Log v2

Perfect. Thanks.

It's not a straightforward question to answer because it depends on • What you already know • What you're interested in • What your learning style is There's a bunch of different dimensions to explore, and getting better at either one of them will allow you to come up with new ideas and things to try. • Sound theory • Music theory • Synthesis techniques • Supercollider/overtone

The thing is that these are all connected, meaning each gives you pathways into the other things. So you can start from any angle. I'm a pretty chaotic learner, I bounce around. I watch YouTube videos on various sound and synthesis topics, read up on the techniques, look at other examples, etc. I did recently start reading a book that I've seen mentioned a few times as a great overview and introduction into synth stuff: The Computer Music Tutorial by Curtis Road. If you're looking for a single cover to cover primer this one is it.

But honestly I would follow your curiosity. Start from overtone examples. You don't need to understand every detail to have fun with them. Try changing some numbers. Look at the ugen docs that they use. Read up on the ugens you're unfamiliar with.

There's also a guy on YouTube making tons of supercollider tutorials. He's been doing it for years and has explained every concept twice at this point. These are great too watch and convert into overtone. It's often fairly straightforward. Or just ask here how to do it.

This guy https://youtube.com/@elifieldsteel

In case of (pluck) and the bell sound, I have to say that I've been fascinating with synthesizing bells for some time, and so I've read about the acoustics of bells and how folks have tried to emulate that.

There's a really great column that used to appear in Sound on Sound magazine called synth secrets. You can read them all online. These are great, each one goes into another type of sound or instrument

https://www.soundonsound.com/series/synth-secrets-sound-sound

I learned about (pluck) from looking at the overtone stringed namespace. The docstring mentioned karplus strong synthesis, so I looked it up and read the paper.

And then at some point I had the idea of combining multiple of these with some frequency offsets. Bells often have this kind of "beating" sound which is typical for sounds with slightly offset frequencies, like two strings that are just slightly out of tune.

I really wish I had more time to make videos. I have a lot to show and to teach, but I'm so so busy with other stuff... It's gonna happen some day, I'm planning to stick with overtone for the long haul.

If you're really starting fresh I would look at YouTube videos about sound theory. Terms you should understand • Frequency • Waveform • Phase • Timbre • Partials • Overtones • Sampling frequency and nyquist frequency • Square/sawtooth/triangle/sine wave • Harmonic content

Then basics of synthesis • Oscillator • Envelope • Filter • Additive synthesis • Subtractive synthesis • Frequency modulation (FM)

Basics of music theory • Scales • Chords • Degrees • Chord progressions • Arpeggios

But again don't let it discourage you that there's so much to learn, just start somewhere and experiment, follow your curiosity , then gradually fill in the missing pieces in your knowledge.

I'd rather start with a long list gives me more avenues to explore thank you for taking the time for putting this together

Ignore that first link and scroll down, all articles are directly linked from the url I shared

Hi @plexus , I used that link to go Sound on Sound, which took me to a page citing the 63 Gordon Reid episodes, and when I clicked there, it took me to another listing of article series that contained no mention of the Gordon Reid articles. How does one actually find the Gordon Reid articles at SoS? (Sorry to be dense.)

@plexus This thread is a great resource, by the way. Thanks for putting it together.