The SuperCollider Book

by Wilson, Cottle, Collins, McCartney

ISBN: 9780262295192 | Copyright 2011

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SuperCollider is one of the most important domain-specific audio programming languages, with potential applications that include real-time interaction, installations, electroacoustic pieces, generative music, and audiovisuals. The SuperCollider Book is the essential reference to this powerful and flexible language, offering students and professionals a collection of tutorials, essays, and projects. With contributions from top academics, artists, and technologists that cover topics at levels from the introductory to the specialized, it will be a valuable sourcebook both for beginners and for advanced users. SuperCollider, first developed by James McCartney, is an accessible blend of Smalltalk, C, and further ideas from a number of programming languages. Free, open-source, cross-platform, and with a diverse and supportive developer community, it is often the first programming language sound artists and computer musicians learn. The SuperCollider Book is the long-awaited guide to the design, syntax, and use of the SuperCollider language. The first chapters offer an introduction to the basics, including a friendly tutorial for absolute beginners, providing the reader with skills that can serve as a foundation for further learning. Later chapters cover more advanced topics and particular topics in computer music, including programming, sonification, spatialization, microsound, GUIs, machine listening, alternative tunings, and non-real-time synthesis; practical applications and philosophical insigh"s from the composer’s and artist’s perspectives; and "under the hood,” developer’s-eye views of SuperCollider’s inner workings. A Web site accompanying the book offers code, links to the application itself and its source code, and a variety of third-party extras, extensions, libraries, and examples.

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Contents (pg. v)
Foreword (pg. ix)
Introduction (pg. xiii)
Tutorials (pg. 1)
1 Beginner’s Tutorial (pg. 3)
2 The Unit Generator (pg. 55)
3 Composition with SuperCollider (pg. 81)
4 Ins and Outs (pg. 105)
Advanced Tutorials (pg. 125)
5 Programming in SuperCollider (pg. 127)
6 Events and Patterns (pg. 179)
7 Just-in-Time Programming (pg. 207)
8 Object Modeling (pg. 237)
Platforms and GUI (pg. 271)
9 Mac OSX GUI (pg. 273)
10 SwingOSC (pg. 305)
11 SuperCollider on Windows (pg. 339)
12 “Collision with the Penguin” (pg. 355)
Practical Applications (pg. 379)
13 Sonification and Auditory Display in SuperCollider (pg. 381)
14 Spatialization with SuperCollider (pg. 409)
15 Machine Listening in SuperCollider (pg. 439)
16 Microsound (pg. 463)
17 Alternative Tunings with SuperCollider (pg. 505)
18 Non-Real-Time Synthesis and Object-Oriented Composition (pg. 537)
Projects and Perspectives (pg. 573)
19 A Binaural Simulation of Varèse’s Poème Électronique (pg. 575)
20 High-Level Structures for Live Performance: dewdrop_lib and chucklib (pg. 589)
21 Interface Investigations (pg. 613)
22 SuperCollider in Japan (pg. 629)
23 Dialects, Constraints, and Systems within Systems (pg. 635)
Developer Topics (pg. 657)
24 The SuperCollider Language Implementation (pg. 659)
25 Writing Unit Generator Plug-ins (pg. 691)
26 Inside scsynth (pg. 721)
Appendix: Syntax of the SuperCollider Language (pg. 741)
Subject Index (pg. 745)
Code Index (pg. 751)

Scott Wilson

Scott Wilson is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Birmingham, England.


David Cottle

David Cottle is Lecturer Associate Professor at the School of Music, University of Utah.


Nick Collins

Nick Collins is Lecturer in Music Informatics at the University of Sussex.



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