Making Music with Computers: Creative Programming in Python

Teach Your Students How to Use Computing to Explore Powerful and Creative Ideas

In the twenty-first century, computers have become indispensable in music making, distribution, performance, and consumption. Making Music with Computers: Creative Programming in Python introduces important concepts and skills necessary to generate music with computers. It interweaves computing pedagogy with musical concepts and creative activities, showing students how to integrate the creativity and design of the arts with the mathematical rigor and formality of computer science.

The book provides an introduction to creative software development in the Python programming language. It uses innovative music-creation activities to illustrate introductory computer programming concepts, including data types, algorithms, operators, iteration, lists, functions, and classes. The authors also cover GUIs, event-driven programming, big data, sonification, MIDI programming, client–server programming, recursion, fractals, and complex system dynamics.

Requiring minimal musical or programming experience, the text is designed for courses in introductory computer science and computing in the arts. It helps students learn computer programming in a creative context and understand how to build computer music applications. Also suitable for self-study, the book shows musicians and digital music enthusiasts how to write music software and create algorithmic music compositions.

Web Resource
A supplementary website (http://jythonMusic.org) provides a music library and other software resources used in the text. The music library is an extension of the jMusic library and incorporates other cross-platform programming tools. The website also offers example course and associated media resources.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction and History
Chapter 2: Elements of Music and Code
Chapter 3: Organization and Data
Chapter 4: Transformation and Process
Chapter 5: Iteration and Lists
Chapter 6: Randomness and Choices
Chapter 7: Sonification and Big Data
Chapter 8: Interactive Musical Instruments
Chapter 9: Making Connections
Chapter 10: Music, Number, and Nature
Chapter 11: Exploring Powerful Ideas