This 4 day workshop will use the SuperCollider programming language to demonstrate spatializing audio with a practical emphasis on Ambisonics. There will be a survey of spatialization techniques and technologies including: Ambisonics, Amplitude panning, VBAP, Reverberation, Wave Field Synthesis, and HRTF. Hands on lab sessions in SuperCollider will include: installing and configuring SC, SC basics: making and controlling sound, connecting controllers, panning, encoding and decoding in Ambisonics. We'll end with a listening session of workshop student projects. The workshop space itself will be set up with multi-channel sound.
This 4 day workshop will use the SuperCollider programming language to demonstrate spatializing audio with a practical emphasis on Ambisonics.
Spatial Sound with SuperCollider Workshop
This workshop is for musicians, composers, researchers, sound artists, and programmers who would like to gain a greater understanding of modern spatial techniques implemented in a state of the art music programming environment. While experience with SuperCollider is a huge advantage, we'll start with installation and go from there, albeit quickly. Participants should have at least some familiarity with programming.
Please help us by installing and testing SuperCollider in your computer before the workshop starts.
You can download SuperCollider from:
http://supercollider.sourceforge.net/downloads
And you can get started with help from:
http://supercollider.sourceforge.net/learning
We will of course try to help troubleshooting your install if it does not work, but it it would be immensely helpful if you have a working setup when the workshop starts.
The workshop will alternate between background theory, music examples of the different techniques and hands-on lab sessions using SuperCollider.
Day 1
- Course overview
- Auditory Cues (listening to examples)
- Overview of spatialization techniques: Panning & VBAP, Ambisonics, WFS, HRTF and others
- Other approaches: Orchestra of speakers, space in installations
- Introduction to SuperCollider
Day 2
- Ambisonics (history, simple ambisonics, encoders and decoders)
- SuperCollider examples (ugens useful for spatialization)
- Higher order ambisonics
- Musical examples
- Moving sources in space
Day 3
- Recording and Microphone arrangements
- Musical examples (soundscape pieces)
- Reverberation & Virtual Spaces
- Using network connections to share remote sonic spaces
Day 4
- Extra Lab Time for student projects
- Student Project presentations
- More musical examples (complete landmark pieces)
