5 - 1 - section 1.1 - course introduction (8-14)

7/25/2019 5 - 1 - Section 1.1 - Course Introduction (8-14)

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[MUSIC]Hello everyone.And welcome to California Institute of theArts.[MUSIC]My name is Ajay Kapur, and I'm the

associatedean for research and development in thedigital arts.As well as the director of musictechnology here at the institute.Many of you might be wondering where arewe.This is actually in my office.Meet some of my robots.Tammy, Mahadevi bot, whom we'll actuallygetto see move and play music, by the last

week of this class.And this is my custom built, Indianstringed instrument, the e-sitar.So, you have signed up to learn how toprogram.I want to talk a little bit about why Ithink that this is a good idea.First of all, in this day and age those ofyou whoare artists probably use a computer to doyour creative work.If you do not know how to programYou are relying on software that companies

have madeto control what you can do with yourcomputer.When you learn to program, you will be incontrol.I am betting you're one of those peoplewho wantmore out of your computer.And now you can invent what you want.Some of you might be thinking thatprogrammingwill help you get a job in the future.

While I can't promise immediateoutplacement afteryou finish this class, I can say.That I have a great job and my studentswho took this course have great jobs aswell,due in no small part to their ability toprogram and solve problems.There is an increase in demand for peoplewho know how to program or atleast understand the jargon, and theimplicationsimportance of what computer programs and

programmers do.Especially in the creative domain.Perhaps you already know how to program in


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a language such as Java,but you find it doesn't do what you want.Or maybe, you're coming to this classwith a big idea, or many, and just wantthe tools to help you realize them.Maybe you're looking to shift directions.In your art making.

Speaking of which, I've been a musicianall my life.I started playing drums when I was eight,and played in jazzbands, and later electronic dance bands,for the past 25 years.When I was in college, I started to get intouch withmy roots and started to learn how to playIndian classical musics.As I was very interested in improvisation.At the same time as both of my parents

wereboth working for IBM, I was veryinterested in computers.So, since I was youngI would always have this dream of buildinga robot that I could improvise with.After learning how to program, my dreamscame true.Here's an example or me playing my e-sitarwith the Mahadevi bot.Notice that the robot will not play unlessI'm playing.These performance paradigms are possible

onceyou learn to program.When I started teaching at Cal Arts, thefirst thing I did was start developingthis course.I realized how important it was for mystudents to be able to program in orderto achieve their creative ideas asperformers and digital artists.I want to give you an example of howlearning to program changed my studentslives and thetype of projects that they were able toachieve.[MUSIC]They include everything from building newsoftware instruments, to building newinterfaces for musical expression, tobuilding robotic musical instruments.[MUSIC].To building digital arts installations, tointeractive visualizations,to dance technology, to designing newmultimedia performance paradigms.Working with these students, I was able to

create mymachine orchestra, a symbiotic ensemble ofhumans and machines.


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And because we all know how to program, weinvented our own instruments,our own network to communicate to eachother, and our own form of performanceart.Check it out.[MUSIC]

[MUSIC]So I hope I have convinced you as to whyyou should learn to program.And inspired you to become creativeprogrammers and helpbring out new mediums of art of thefuture.In this course, I'm going to teach you howto program in a revolutionary musiclanguage known as Chuck.Chuck is primarily an audioprogramming language but is useful for all

creativework using a computer, as you will soonsee.In this class, each week, we will presentto you aseries of core computer science theory andconcepts, through music examples.And each week, your assignment will be tocreate a 30 second composition using theseskills.So this is going to be a really fun way toget through fairly advanced material.Don't worry if you've never programmed

beforeas we are going to start at the beginning.Also, if you do have experienceprogramming, but want to learn aboutcreative coding or music programming, orjust want to learn about how to use Chuck.Then you will also be happy with how we'veset out this course.We also recommend thatyou get the book that we have written toaccompany this Coursera class as ithas extra examples and differentexplanations of key concepts and more.Information on the book is available onthe Coursera site.Finally, I realize that to make thiscourse the bestit could be, I would have to invite someguestlecturers to join us on our adventure.I invited Dr. Perry Cook.Who was my professor in computer scienceand music at Princeton University.He is a signal processing and synthesisalgorithm master.

And we will bring him in on weekfive to explain the advance topic ofunigenerators.


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And we could not do this course on Chuckwithout inviting the inventor of thelanguage Dr. Ge Wang who created Chuck whiledoing his Phd with Perry at Princeton.And is now a professor at StanfordUniversity atthe Center for Computer Research in Music

and Acoustics.In fact, I'm going to letGowan introduce you to Chuck right now,let's get started.

5 - 1 - section 1.1 - course introduction (8-14)

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