The SuperCollider Book

SuperCollider is one of the most important domain-specific audio programminglanguages, with potential applications that include real-time interaction, installations,electroacoustic pieces, generative music, and audiovisuals. The SuperCollider Book is the essentialreference to this powerful and flexible language, offering students and professionals a collectionof tutorials, essays, and projects. With contributions from top academics, artists, andtechnologists that cover topics at levels from the introductory to the specialized, it will be avaluable sourcebook both for beginners and for advanced users. SuperCollider, first developed byJames McCartney, is an accessible blend of Smalltalk, C, and further ideas from a number ofprogramming languages. Free, open-source, cross-platform, and with a diverse and supportivedeveloper community, it is often the first programming language sound artists and computer musicianslearn. The SuperCollider Book is the long-awaited guide to the design, syntax, and use of theSuperCollider language. The first chapters offer an introduction to the basics, including a friendlytutorial for absolute beginners, providing the reader with skills that can serve as a foundation forfurther learning. Later chapters cover more advanced topics and particular topics in computer music,including programming, sonification, spatialization, microsound, GUIs, machine listening,alternative tunings, and non-real-time synthesis; practical applications and philosophical insigh"sfrom the composer's and artist's perspectives; and "under the hood," developer's-eye views ofSuperCollider's inner workings. A Web site accompanying the book offers code, links to theapplication itself and its source code, and a variety of third-party extras, extensions, libraries,and examples.

Scott Wilson is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Birmingham, England.