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Andy Farnell

Designing Sound (The MIT Press)

by Andy Farnell (Author)

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A practitioner's guide to the basic principles of creating sound effects using easily accessed free software.

Designing Sound teaches students and professional sound designers to understand and create sound effects starting from nothing. Its thesis is that any sound can be generated from first principles, guided by analysis and synthesis. The text takes a practitioner's perspective, exploring the basic principles of making ordinary, everyday sounds using an easily accessed free software. Readers use the Pure Data (Pd) language to construct sound objects, which are more flexible and useful than recordings. Sound is considered as a process, rather than as data―an approach sometimes known as “procedural audio.” Procedural sound is a living sound effect that can run as computer code and be changed in real time according to unpredictable events. Applications include video games, film, animation, and media in which sound is part of an interactive process. The book takes a practical, systematic approach to the subject, teaching by example and providing background information that offers a firm theoretical context for its pragmatic stance. [Many of the examples follow a pattern, beginning with a discussion of the nature and physics of a sound, proceeding through the development of models and the implementation of examples, to the final step of producing a Pure Data program for the desired sound. Different synthesis methods are discussed, analyzed, and refined throughout.] After mastering the techniques presented in Designing Sound, students will be able to build their own sound objects for use in interactive applications and other projects

ISBN-10

0262014416
ISBN-13

978-0262014410
Publisher

The MIT Press
Publication date

August 20, 2010
Language

English
Dimensions

7 x 1.19 x 9 inches
Print length

688 pages
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Andy Farnell's

"Putting the creativity of every single sonic nuance in the hands of the sound designer--and the listener--is the gift that Farnell brings through his book "Designing Sound". What an empowering experience!"--David Sonnenschein, Director, Musician, and Author of "Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice and Sound Effects in Cinema"

"Andy Farnell's "Designing Sound" is a fantastic and incredibly inspiring book. With hundreds of fully working sound models, this 'living document' helps students to learn with both their eyes and their ears, and to explore what they are learning on their own computer. Perfectly balanced between theory and practice, the book will help students and professionals alike to develop and refine the skills and understanding that they require to synthesize the worlds of sounds around them and the sounds in the imagined worlds of advertising, TV, film, computer games, and their own original audio art. A great textbook, a great workbook, a great way to actually learn how to design sounds--I can't wait to use "Designing Sound" in my classes."--Richard Boulanger, Professor of Electronic Production and Design, Berklee College of Music

"An excellent, practical introduction to sound synthesis methods. The most useful resource on Pure Data that I've come across. Essential reading for anyone wanting to learn how to create sounds."--Karen Collins, Canada Research Chair in Interactive Audio, University of Waterloo

"A monumental work. This surely has the potential of becoming the sound designer's bible!"--Kees van den Doel, Scientific Computing Laboratory, University of British Columbia

Review

Putting the creativity of every single sonic nuance in the hands of the sound designer―and the listener―is the gift that Farnell brings through his book Designing Sound. What an empowering experience!

―David Sonnenschein, Director, Musician, and Author of Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice and Sound Effects in Cinema

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ The MIT Press (August 20, 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 688 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0262014416
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0262014410
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.4 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7 x 1.19 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #766,375 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #81 in Digital Audio Production
- #910 in Computer History & Culture (Books)
- #3,072 in Computer Science (Books)

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Engel Sanchez

If you want to create sounds from nothing, this is your book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 21, 2010

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I found this book in my quest to learn how to create sounds Ab Initio (from nothing but basic principles, not recorded samples). This is absolutely the right book for those interested in that area. This book is NOT for audio beginners. You will need to have a good grasp of basic digital audio concepts, understand frequency domain analysis concepts, a bit about DSP filters, have payed attention at those Physics classes and at least be familiar with some of the math. Andy tries to get away with not writing too many equations, but he still throws a differential equation on you to explain harmonic oscillators and some trigonometry when explaining modulation, for example. I have found nothing in its 600+ that I would remove or skip over. In fact, I just wish he had written 1,200 more pages!! There are four main sections in the book: Theory, Tools, Techniques and Practicals. Theory includes background information on acoustics, psychoacoustics, sound perception and digital signals. The Tools section will introduce you and get you productive using Pure Data, the free and deceptively simple looking visual sound programming software package used throughout the rest of the book. In Techniques you will get practical information on the various sound synthesis methods at your disposal, and the Practicals section has dozens of example uses of these techniques. You will, for example, learn how to create models for telephone bells, rolling objects, fire, running water, etc.

Like another reviewer said, you will not get every single detail of every single technique or theory in this book. You will get enough to get a good idea, good examples and excellent links in the reference sections so you can go wild and study any of the ideas in the book much further by yourself.

Some of the sample code links for the MIT Press version of the book are broken. I contacted Andy Farnell directly by email about this, and he was kind enough to point to his other website which does not have this problem . I hope the MIT Press folks fix this soon, but even with the broken links, the code is available in the website in text areas, so you can cut and paste it and save it in a file and it will work, but is more tedious.

I could not recommend this book anymore. It's a great introduction into a fascinating field. As a disclaimer, I am not an audio person, but a software engineer interested in audio with a bit of DSP background from school. I imagine audio professionals might have a different experience with the book, but I can't imagine anybody calling it anything but an excellent, epic work.

35 people found this helpful

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Ichiro OTA

A really good book but Kindle edition has an issue

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 30, 2020

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This is really a good book for those who want to learn the art of sound design. Having said that, I suggest a hard copy of the book over the digital edition. The issue with the Kindle edition is that all the images are small and not clear enough, which makes it very hard to read small letters in diagrams. Especially because all these PureData visual diagrams contain a lot of small texts, this can be straining to your eyes.

4 people found this helpful

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Owlster

For the Serious Sound Designer

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 13, 2010

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While not for a rank beginner, Andy Farnell's book is an excellent review of acoustical principles related to sound design. This book will be of interest to those who do sound design for film, gaming, and even experimental DJing, and could be used for an undergraduate course in a media studies program or in a beginning electronic music class.

To illustrate the principles needed for sound design and to conceptionalize the methods of realization of a particular sound emulation, Mr. Farnell utilizes an OpenSource programming language known as Pd (Pure Data). Designing Sound is an excellent introduction to Pd and demonstrates how basic physics principles can be turned into sonic entities.

Pd is a project related to programming sound in a similar sense that Processing is related to programming live graphics, and GEM is related to programming live video. Since all of these programming strategies are related, they can be used together (or separately) by artists with interest in live performance art or art installations.

Andy Farnell's book is well written and full of interesting problems. If you are looking for a book that will "hand hold" you through every problem you may be somewhat disappointed. On the other hand, if you are willing to use the excellent reference materials for further study, you will be rewarded.

25 people found this helpful

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David L. Phillips

An essential text.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 28, 2011

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Quoting from an article I wrote on Pure Data, regarding books on Pd :

"... I recommend especially Designing Sound, by Andy Farnell. Apart from its great significance to users of Pd, Designing Sound is a most engaging and deeply fascinating book. Ostensibly targeted towards game sound designers, this book is a treasure for anyone who works with digital audio. It covers a vast range of subject material, all relevant to his topic-at-large, much of which is potentially difficult to impart to a non-specialist reader. However, Mr. Farnell is a master of exposition and explanation, and I'm absorbed by whatever I read in his book. Designing Sound has a particular appeal for Pd people - every example in the book is presented in Pd, and although the author states that it is not a Pd tutorial, beginners may find his presentation especially enjoyable."

Amazing book. Kudos to Mr Farnell and to the estimable MIT Press that keeps pumping out such wonderful books. Keep 'em coming ! :)

4 people found this helpful

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Steve Jones

Binding broke within a day of receiving it

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 19, 2022

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Binding broke within a day of receiving it.

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Dara

An excellent book worth its weight in gold

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 30, 2010

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I really love this book. It removes the fog of buzzwords and fancy ideas and leaves the reader with true analytical and engineering and software-like knowledge necessary to understand the nature of the sound we hear.

The references in each chapter are great treasures spanning to early 20th century.

The language of the text is very useful for the researchers to adopt. The writer was astute in selecting the terms carefully describing the analysis of the situation.

The Pd code and review is outstanding and to the point.

I believe this is an instant classic, indeed a must to have for all who are dealing with sond.

6 people found this helpful

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Silvano

Amazing

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 17, 2013

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Its a lot more than i expected , but get it if you are and like very technical stuff it starts with some heavy reading for newbies and people who dont like to read and know about fisics.

If you do this goes with lots of detail and its really worth the read you will understand and be able to think how a sound its produced in the fisical world so it helps for phisical modeling and stuff like that wich its amazing for me.

One person found this helpful

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Nolandsman

Not for Pure Data beginners

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 8, 2012

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Initial impression: full of useful and interesting information. In use, however: very frustrating.

This book is badly let down by its feeble index. If like me you're used to picking up a new computer language on the fly - by random accessing reference books - then you will find this book very frustrating because virtually NO attempt has been made to provide any reference in the index to the Object set (i.e. the methods, the keywords that call up the operations that you will actually want to use).

For example, to find any reference to an Object, the Index requires you to look under 'Object'. You might assume that at least the core Objects will be listed there. But they are not.

For example, if you want to find information on 'vline~', not only is 'vline~' not referenced under 'Object', but neither is any other specific audio object. Instead, what it DOES say is "Audio, 185". This turns out to be the first page of Chapter 11 "Pure Data Audio": typically you are more likely to find what you are looking for in this book by first skimming through the contents, and then by browsing. ('vline~' is in fact described on pp 189 - 190).

If you want a crisp and detailed manual on Pure Data, with a DECENT index, then Johannes Kreidler's 'Loadbang: Electronic Music in Pure Data' is a far more suitable book.

10 people found this helpful

T. Nav

Let down

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 29, 2021

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Favourite part is the audio test instructions where you’re able to get sound out of pure data by following instructions from the book. Would be cool if it gave instructions on how to manipulate the pure single heard in audio test. The cover is also very badly designed.

Ben

incredible

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 8, 2019

Verified Purchase

This is an amazing book with so much knowledge of designing sound from a computer with free software such as Pd and it is useful for those using Max Msp as well. It has incredibly explained theory and and practical patches and descriptions of this art that I think is useful for anybody looking at advanced sound engineering. As another review has put it, it is a bible.

Leonard M. Reidy

Arrived a day early in perfect condition. Thanks Amazon!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 3, 2020

Verified Purchase

What can I say that the headline doesn't? Great book. Arrived a day early, close to 20 bucks cheaper than any copy I could buy locally. What's not to be happy about!

Basil Hush

Excellent

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 8, 2011

Verified Purchase

A great book. If not fabulous. Covers everything from acoustics, through the creative process as well as an excellent rapid start primer on puredata. One of the best audio books I have, if not the best.

3 people found this helpful

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