Announcement: Pd Book is released
I am pleased to announce that the big Pure Data (Pd) tutorial I wrote
in the last years with the help of a grant by the Music University of
Freiburg / Germany, is now online, in english and in german.
It is also available as a book (paperback) and can be purchased at Wolke Publishing House.
http://www.wolke-verlag.de/musik_u_t/loadbang.html
Pd was initiated by American software engineer Miller Puckette, who
previous co-developed the well known and similarly structured software
Max/Msp. Pd is not commercial software; i.e., it was not developed by
a corporation and is not for sale. Instead, it is "open source": its
source code is not the (patented) property of a corporation, but is
rather freely available to all. One drawback to this is that a
detailed operating manual for users who lack programming experience
has not existed until now. In contrast to a corporation--- which has a
monetary interest in ensuring that first-time users can easily operate
new software---the open source movement lacks such a driving force to
make itself accessible. This book is an attempt to fill that gap.
This tutorial is designed for self-study, principally for composers.
It begins with explanations of basic programming and acoustic
principles then gradually builds up to the most advanced electronic
music processing techniques. The book's teaching approach is focused
primarily on hearing, which we consider a faster and more enjoyable
way to absorb new concepts than through abstract formulas.
The patches described are available for download.
Regards,
Johannes Kreidler
