Ask HN: Share your audio programming knowledge?

5 points by eagerNewb 9 years ago | 7 comments

Hello Hacker News,

I have been learning programming for 4 years now, primarily involved in the field of web development. Have some decent knowledge working with php, javascript, ruby, css and html.

I'm self taught. The main disadvantage of this is having unstructured and chaotic know-how. After 4 years I decided to branch in a field of programming I don't know much about - Audio programming. My research concurs that I need a new set of tools, mainly revolving around C++ When I started programming I had a mentor. He is an experienced software engineer who eased my initial frustration with programming. I will be grateful for the rest of my life, he gave me a chance to learn. What I'm saying is basically: When the student is ready, the master will come.

The time has come. Will YOU be my mentor? Share your audio programming knowledge.

No need to say I love music. Play the bass and love a solid groove!

Have a great day!

fundamental 9 years ago |

It's a pretty big area and there's plenty of open source projects in this space (and a decent crowd of people working on linux audio development). I'd say a great way to learn a new domain is to help out existing open source projects (though I'm biased towards that as that's how I learned).

Let me know what you're specifically looking for (via a few examples if possible) and I might be able to direct you to some resources.

eagerNewb 9 years ago | |

What I decided to do is use https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Audio_A...

I know it's javascript and that it's definitely not the best choice for sound manipulation, but I'll learn a lot from practicing. C++ has a very steep learning curve and even if I understood music theory( which I dont, just a bass player ), I wouldn't be able to express myself in C++. So, decided to learn some music theory and implement this theory in javascript code.

fundamental 9 years ago | | |

If you have decided to stay in javascript then I wouldn't be of much help. Most of my focus is on hard-realtime audio generation and processing and languages like javascript are unsuitable for that task. C/C++ introduce a variety of new concepts which may lead to a steep learning curve, but the same can be said about learning many other languages for the first time. Additionally I would like to say that audio programming and music theory are very separate areas when it comes to learning each topic.

jventura 9 years ago |

> Will YOU be my mentor?

Sorry, not knowledgeable enough. But if "written" music is your thing, you can check https://musescore.org/ and try to ask someone on their forums?

eagerNewb 9 years ago | |

Thanks for the link! Looks great. Gonna give it a whirl :)

bythckr 9 years ago |

Sorry, kindly do explain what is Audio Programming? I assumed it was something that the composer & arranger does.

eagerNewb 9 years ago | |

What I mean is creating sounds programmatically. Representing musical notes and chords in code.