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Reviewer: Harry B. Lincoln

With its publication of this encyclopedic work, MIT Press continues its role as the leading publisher of serious studies of the impact of technology on music composition and performance. The peripatetic Roads wrote most of this volume over a period of some 16 years, during teaching and research sojourns at MIT, Harvard, and Oberlin, and in Naples, Paris, and Tokyo. He was assisted by other leading researchers, who have contributed chapters, as described below. A short review can provide only a limited description of the vast amount of information presented in this “tutorial.” The book consists of 23 chapters grouped into seven parts. Part 1, prepared by Strawn and Abbott, is titled “Fundamental Concepts” and includes chapters on “Digital Audio Concepts” (Strawn) and “Music Systems Programming” (Abbott). In these chapters—indeed, throughout the whole book—there are references to and descriptions of historically important predecessors (from past decades and past centuries) as well as current research. The large and meticulously prepared bibliography (containing over 1,300 items) provides a rich fund of information for the reader wishing to expand her or his knowledge of a given detail, whether of historical information or current technology. Part 2, “Sound Synthesis,” contains “Introduction to Digital Sound Synthesis” (Roads with Strawn) followed by chapters dealing with the many techniques of synthesis: “Sampling and Additive Synthesis”; “Multiple Wavetable, Wave Terrain, Granular, and Subtractive Synthesis”; “Modulation Synthesis”; “Physical Modeling and Formant Synthesis”; and “Waveform Segment, Graphic, and Stochastic Synthesis.” In Part 3, “Mixing and Signal Processing,” Roads aims to demystify a field that, for the professional, requires a knowledge of applied mathematics. The three chapters—“Sound Mixing”; “Basic Concepts of Signal Processing”; and “Sound Spatialization and Reverberation”—contain much useful information for musicians who might assume that they lack the mathematical basis for a full grasp of these materials. (An appendix contains a more technical discussion of Fourier analysis by Greenspun.) Part 4, “Sound Analysis,” contains two chapters, “Pitch and Rhythm Recognition” and “Spectrum Analysis.” A brief survey of basic principles of the physics of sound precedes discussion of a field that is increasingly important for the future development of computer music. Part 5, “The Musician's Interface,” contains six chapters on such subjects as input devices, music editors, software, and languages. Liberal use of charts and photographs illustrates both the history of these materials and current applications. In Part 6, “Internals and Connections,” much practical information is presented, including a good description of the widely used MIDI protocol, which has been of great importance to the whole field of sound synthesis and computer-based composition. The book concludes with a good summary review by Gordon of the current state of research in “psychoacoustics,” the study of relations among sound, perception, and music psychology. All who are involved in music and computing are greatly indebted to Roads for what he has accomplished in this excellent book.