Experimental Music Programming : Session 2.

This week in Experimental Music Programming, we were learning about Analog Sounds and the waveforms that they produce, as well as improving our knowledge of the software 'Max 6'.

We began by learning that Analog Sounds often appear dirtier and rougher, as they are susceptible to outside noise. This means that they sound slightly distorted and gritty.

We also learnt about the various oscilators that are used in 'Max 6', 'triangular', 'square' and 'sawtooth'. Although technically 'Sawtooth' is not an oscilator, it is a processor. The difference between the three is that the 'Triangular' and 'Square' oscialtors can not work independently, they must use 'Sawtooth' as a reference.

The waveforms are named so due to the shapes they resemble when produced, caused by the differentiating deviations from 0. The sawtooth and square waves are commonly used in music that use subtractive analog and virtual analog music synthesizers.

Once we opened up 'Max 6', we learnt how to turn a pre-existing patch into a sub-patch, which would prove to be very helpful once we'd started creating our final projects, as it would allow us to keep our work tidy and professional looking.

Finally, we learnt how to import a sample into our patch, and how to see that sample in waveform, which would ensure that we had imported the correct one.

Though at this time I have not decided on a final project, I was assured by Pere that this was not neccessary just yet, as we are still in the preliminary stages of Experimental Music Programming and are still getting used to the software.