Course Number: 15-322A
Class time: 10:30 - 11:50 (Tue & Thur)
Location: WEH 7500
Instructor:
Roger B. Dannenberg
rbd@cs.cmu.edu, 268-3827, GHC 7003
Office hours: Tues & Thurs, noon-1:30pm
Teaching Assistants:
Zeyu Jin<zeyuj@andrew.cmu.edu> GHC 7208, Mon 2~3pm (was 3~4pm)
Alex Limpaecher<alimpaecher@gmail.com> GHC 7709, Wed 11~12am
Gus Xia<pkuxgy@gmail.com> GHC 8008, Fri 10~11am
For on-line discussions, questions and answers, and announcements, please use Piazza.
Textbooks
Curtis Roads, The Computer Music Tutorial. This is a BIG book. It’s great. It covers most of what we will do in class, but it does not cover the language Nyquist or the editor Audacity, nor does it talk about composers, composition, and specific compositions that we will listen to in class. The scope of this book is much larger than the scope of the class, so there is plenty of extra material in case you want to explore areas outside the class. It may seem overkill to buy such a comprehensive book that we cannot fully utilize, but the book is actually cheaper than what I consider to be good alternatives.
Mary Simoni and Roger B. Dannenberg, Algorithmic Composition: A Guide to Composing Music with Nyquist. This book gives an introduction to the Nyquist programming language and contains many examples of algorithmic composition. Many students will be able to skip or skim thse sections on Nyquist and programming, which are intended for beginning programmers. However, class projects will be based on algorithmic composition concepts presented in the book.
The Nyquist Reference Manual (PDF, HTML) is a book in electronic form. You can print it (and bind it, and I’ll autograph it, but I digress ...) from a PDF file, or you can access it on the web or from your local Nyquist installation. The first half (up to the chapter "Nyquist Functions" is intended to be introductory and explanatory, so please use this to supplementAlgorithmic Composition and the Nyquist lectures.
Grading
- Attendance is required. You should not expect your grade to be higher than the percentage of classes you attend
- Projects 1-6 count 48%. Do not skip projects or, as simple math will tell you, your grade average will plummet.
- Project 7 counts 16%
- Midterm counts 16%
- Final counts 20%
Late Policy
Every student has up to 3 late days that may be used for any projects throughout the semester. If the late days are used up, The grade will be
(1-10%*extra_days) * the_earned_grades
By one day late we mean 24 hours late. No project submission will be accepted one week after the deadline. For example, if a student is 2 days late for Project 2 and 3 days late for Project 4, and he/she gets full marks in both projects, then his/her grades will be:
100/100 Project 2
80/80 Project 4
Laptops and Cell Phones
As research on learning shows, unexpected noises and movement automatically divert and capture people’s attention, which means you are affecting everyone’s learning experience if your cell phone, pager, laptop, etc. makes noise or is visually distracting during class. For this reason, I allow you to take notes on your laptop, but you must turn the sound off so that you do not disrupt other students’ learning. If you are doing anything other than taking notes on your laptop, please sit in the back row so that other students are not distracted by your screen.
Recording in Class
Classroom activities may be taped or recorded by a student for the personal, educational use of that student or for all students presently enrolled in the class only, and may not be further copied, distributed, published or otherwise used for any other purpose without the express written consent of Roger B. Dannenberg. All students are advised that classroom activities may be taped by students for this purpose.