To me, I think of IDM not as a style, but an approach to electronic music that presents experimental sound design and compositional techniques in the context of techno. This book frames sound synthesis methods and alternative tunings in the context of IDM in order to make these concepts practical and applicable for intermediate electronic music composers
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To me, I think of IDM not as a style, but an approach to electronic music that presents experimental sound design and compositional techniques in the context of techno. This book frames sound synthesis methods and alternative tunings in the context of IDM in order to make these concepts practical and applicable for intermediate electronic music composers.
.PP
Access to music technology is universal for anyone with a computer, but education isn’t. To write this book, I conducted endless experiments in SuperCollider and studied computer music textbooks to discover what’s useful. Through experimentation, I found that certain tools suit certain purposes — but if one piece of intellectual advice is missing, the results can be boring or hideous.
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A lot of advanced music tools aren’t actually difficult to use—they’re just underexplained. The problem isn’t too many parameters, it’s that you’re rarely given a reason to choose one over another. It’s easy to get stuck in the illusion that tools like granular synthesis, convolution, or wavetable manipulation are out of reach, when the real issue is a lack of actionable ideas. Most tutorials teach the "how," but not the "why."
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This book doesn’t aim to simplify the tools—it aims to make them *composable*. Once you move beyond raw sound exploration, you need more than technical walkthroughs; you need aesthetic direction. We’ll look at how to pick source material, set meaningful constraints, and choose signal paths that lead to expressive outcomes. We’ll also talk about how to handle techniques that become non-linear and abstract—like using clustering algorithms on wavesets, or reshaping impulse responses until they become something else entirely. At that point, you’re not just using synthesis—you’re inventing it.
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This book aims to give intermediate electronic music producers advice on how to think more critically about their sound design choices. For true beginners without any music or technology background, this book might be too advanced — you might benefit more from starting with foundational music theory, especially if you struggle to create melodic or harmonic content. Although IDM compositions tend to be simple theory-wise, they're still strong compositions. You need a stable structural base to build the complex sound design.
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If I end up working professionally in sound design — not just for electronic music, but for film, animation, or games — this book could eventually expand to explore how sound design functions across those mediums. In IDM, sound design is the foreground; it carries the structure and invites deep, focused listening. In film and animation, sound design supports another medium — it sets the mood, enhances the world, and reinforces narrative without drawing too much attention to itself. The techniques often overlap, but the intent shifts: where IDM prioritizes sonic innovation for its own sake, film sound must serve timing, emotion, and story. In both cases, though, sound design is applied sound art — and understanding how to shape, place, and transform sound remains a core compositional skill.
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I used to wish I didn’t take so long to compose. But I’ve come to realize the reason it takes so long is because I’m constantly experimenting — and that’s not a flaw in the process, it is the process. Each piece is built through trial and discovery. I’m not just composing, I’m conducting research. This book is a map of that ongoing research: a record of the tools I’ve tested, the techniques I’ve uncovered, and the paths that led somewhere unexpected.
\" Dad: maybe provide a paragraph overview of all the different sections before getting into micro sounds? It might help people to consider how the different processes work together to create the whole composition before they start navigating the details of one.
\" Me: yes, once I've written the chapters, that'd be a good idea.
\" what convolution is, and which impulse responses produce interesting results, how to avoid feedback on them, unorthodox uses of them.
\" Not explaining what convolution is, but rather creative uses of it, e.g. LFO modulating between two IRs, using non-IR samples or synthesizing those IRs -- which wave structures are interesting. Could also be interesting using a wavetable patch as an IR -- oh wait, you can't do that with convolution since it has to be a static wave structure. Best not use the convolution ugen itself and SC and use Alik Rustamoff's methods.
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Convolution applies the acoustic properties of one sound—typically a space or a system—to another. This is achieved using an impulse response (IR), which captures how a system reacts to an impulse signal. Convolution can replicate the reverb, coloration, and spatial qualities of the original environment or hardware.
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An impulse response is typically recorded using methods like:
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Playing a sine sweep (a tone that gradually moves through all audible frequencies) into the space or device, then recording its response and mathematically deconvolving it to extract the IR. This method is the most accurate and has a high signal-to-noise ratio.
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Using short, broadband sounds, usually a balloon pop, to approximate an impulse directly.
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The early part of an IR tends to define the stereo image and spatial location cues, while the later part conveys the reverberant tail, which contributes to a sense of space and depth.
In traditional convolution, the IR is static. To speed up real-time convolution, many implementations pre-calculate and store filter values derived from the IR.
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However, in more experimental uses—like modulating between multiple IRs, or using unconventional sources such as a wavetable synth patch as an IR—traditional convolution tools fall short. These techniques require non-linear or time-varying convolution methods, which demand different mathematics and tools beyond standard IR convolution. We'll explore these unorthodox uses in depth later.
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The interesting thing about convolution is that it can have a substantial effect on the timbre of a sound—just as a low-pass filter does on an FM synth. By attenuating one source through an IR, convolution can amplify hidden or subtle frequency content, revealing textures and resonances that weren’t previously audible. This makes it not just a spatial effect, but a powerful tool for timbral transformation.
Phase vocoding is a way of working with sound that uses the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to convert audio from the time domain to the frequency domain. This process decomposes a sound into composite sine waves with varying frequencies, amplitudes, and phases—these are called bins, and they represent the spectral content of the original sound.
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FFT isn't the only method for spectral analysis, but it’s the most commonly used because it’s fast, efficient, and well-supported. Other methods, like wavelet transforms, offer compelling alternatives—not just because they can offer higher resolution, but because they analyze sound in fundamentally different ways. Where FFT assumes each frequency is present for the entire analysis window, wavelets allow for variable resolution across time and frequency, which can reveal more detail in transients, textures, and irregular events.
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Wavelet transforms also hold deep creative potential. But their rewards come more slowly. Working with wavelets often means stepping into a compositional mindset where you're not producing sound immediately. You might be writing code, tuning parameters, and experimenting blindly for long stretches before anything interesting emerges. That’s not a drawback—it’s a different way of composing. We’ll explore wavelets later in the book, when we dig into more speculative and time-stretched approaches to synthesis. But that difficulty is part of what makes it powerful. New research means new sounds, and new sounds mean new culture.
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That said, simply applying PV unit generators (UGens) to a single sample, or just modulating those UGens in isolation, rarely yields compelling results. To make phase vocoding expressive, you need either:
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Spectral morphing — combining the spectral data of two or more samples. This requires careful sample selection and matching of PV UGens, which we'll get into.
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Decomposing the sample into multiple frequency or amplitude streams, processing them independently, and then resynthesizing them in parallel.
\"I'll start by listing which tunings I like and what they're like and what they're good for in the context of IDM, and then I'll expand on how they work and how complex they get -- keeping it artistically minded, not super mathy.
