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
