Digital Music Composition

About This Book

This book will cover the composition of music in the digital domain, from the basic concepts behind synthesizers and sequencers to production techniques such as mixing, mastering and signal processing. The reader is assumed to have some knowledge of music, and at least a passing familiarity with computers, but is just learning to put the two together.

Specific examples will make use of Free software running on a Linux-based operating system. All the packages mentioned should be available in the standard repositories for Debian and its derivatives, such as Ubuntu and Linux Mint. You should be able to find and install them by name using a GUI package manager such as Synaptic.

Related Wikibooks

I found a couple of other wikibooks on related subjects. As of this writing, they are in a very unfinished state and appear to have been inactive for some years:

• Sound Synthesis Theory — just a few pages.
• Sound in the Digital Domain — just one page.

Some of the material from these could be reused here.

Linux Information

For those needing help with basic sound setup on Linux, the wiki at linuxaudio.org seems like the best source of information. Other useful links are available on this page of the Ardour tutorial. And the Fedora Project Musicians’ Guide looks very useful as well.

There are some related wikibooks here on wikibooks.org, but they all seem rather incomplete:

• Sound specifics:
  • Configuring Sound on Linux
  • Linux Audio: A Guide For Beginner and Beyond
• More general Linux information:
  • Linux Guide
  • Using Ubuntu Linux

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Understanding Sound
• Making Sound
• Sequencing
• Trackers and chiptunes