TUTORIAL WORKSHOPS

Composers Desktop Project: Tutorial Workshop 1

by Archer Endrich    For new CDP users

This first Workshop is designed for users who are new to CDP. It shows how to use over 150 functions, with specific examples that fully document what to do.

The download has .doc files for the 9 Worksheets along with their associated files and Play Lists. Complete sounds for all the examples, which can be auditioned in sequence for comparative listening are also included. To take advantage of this, burn the Workshop to CD as a data CD. Upon loading it, your audio player should automatically begin to play through the entire list of sound examples. If you follow along with the Play Lists, you can hear what each example sounds like. The text for each example describes how each sound is made, with reference both to Soundshaper and Sound Loom. This Workshop provides an excellent way to get acquainted with a major part of the CDP software.

The link below to the information page in .pdf format provides a specific example of how the material is presented, along with a list of all that is contained in the download.
Tutorial Workshop 1 Information (PDF)

Download Tutorial Workshop 1 (234.4Mb)

Composers Desktop Project: Tutorial Workshop 2

by Archer Endrich    For intermediate to advanced users

The second Workshop is How to Compose with the CDP Texture Programs. The CDP Texture Set contains incredibly powerful ways to shape multi-event textures, with time-varying pitch, density, amplitude and duration parameters as starters. Events can be snapped to harmonic grids, motifs can be defined in both pitch and rhythm, and lines can be layered contrapuntally. The Workshop begins with a comprehensive survey about setting up a working environment for these programs, and how to enter the data that is used to shape the textures.

The core of the Workshop consists in 21 worked examples, with soundfiles and a Play List for comparative listening. There are also useful charts, Presets and Patches for quickly loading the parameters for each example, which can then be tweaked to explore other possibilities. The Information Page link below goes into much more detail regarding its contents.

The workshop has an introductory file Readtxws.txt which describes how to set it up on the PC or the Mac. For the PC, users should first create a folder C:\Txws, and on the Mac this is ~/txws (where ~ is your home directory). Preset patches are supplied for SoundLoom, which should be copied to the _cdpatch directory (PC or MAC); for Soundshaper (PC) there is a similar presets file Txws.dat.

The Information page below also goes into more detail about this Workshop. All soundfiles are included on the download.
Tutorial Workshop 2 Information (PDF)

Download Tutorial Workshop 2 (134Mb)

Composers Desktop Project: Tutorial Workshop 3

by Archer Endrich    For intermediate to advanced users

This third Workshop is about Transposition, Shifting and Combinations and covers all the main programs in the CDP software that deal with these functions, most of which are in the Spectral Domain (analysis & resynthesis). The 'Combinations' referred to are interactions of pitch traces (.pch) – outlines of significant pitch movement in a sound – and transposition files (.trn) – a powerful but difficult part of the CDP software.

The Information page below goes into more detail about this Workshop. All soundfiles are included in the download.
Tutorial Workshop 3 Information (PDF)

Download Tutorial Workshop 3 (60Mb)

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Composers Desktop Project: A Learning Manual for CDP

by Archer Endrich

The Learning Manual for CDP is designed to be used in conjunction with either the SoundLoom or Soundshaper GUI or the Command Line (Terminal). It sets out various aspects of the CDP software in 33+ concise HTML documents distributed over 5 Topics, along with Worksheets for some practical hands-on experimentation. With a 'how to' bias, the emphasis is on a variety of composition goals, and in various places it presents some more general observations about composing with sounds. It is written with new users in mind, but also distils many years of working with the software, so is peppered with practical tips that may be helpful to more experienced users.

The Download contains a zip file named ALearningManual.zip (357 Mb). Wherever unzipped, it creates the folder 'ALearningManualforCDP' with subfolders for images and sounds. The unzipped size is 516 Mb. The Index file is 'A Learning Manual for CDP.html'. There is also a printable version (no left panel) of this file: 'A Learning Manual for CDP_PRN.html', and a concise listing of the contents of the Manual: 'A Learning Manual for CDP-CONTENTS.rtf' as below (and a .docx version of the same file). All soundfiles are included in the download.

A Learning Manual for CDP is being distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License.

The link to the rtf file below outlines the contents of the Learning Manual.
A Learning Manual for CDP-CONTENTS.rtf

Download A Learning Manual for CDP