Monthly Archives: June 2014

Music 147 assignment for Tuesday June 10, 2014

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“Final Exam”: Presentation of completed programs

The final meeting of this class will take place in the scheduled final exam time:
Tuesday June 10, 10:30-12:30 in CAC 3006
(N.B. Starting time is 10:30, not 11:00.]

1) Plan a 10-minute presentation of your program (one presentation per project). Think of it as a) a concise report on what your program is intended to do, b) a brief demonstration of its use, c) a mention of key features of interest and/or particular challenges for which you had to devise a solution. Because of the limited time of the entire session and the number of programs to be demonstrated, your presentation will have to be finely tuned to that amount of time. (Ten minutes is not much.) You should rehearse your presentation to check that it’s feasible within the allotted time. If it’s a group project, it might not be practical for all members of the group to speak in the presentation, but at least two members of the group should share the speaking duties.

2) Deposit your complete project in the EEE DropBox called “CompleteProject” by the end of the day, Tuesday June 10, 11:59pm. Your project should be accompanied by whatever documentation is necessary for every detail of your program to be understood. That might include a User’s Manual, a “Read Me” file, and/or a prose description (and/or flow chart) describing how the program works. It should certainly include extensive commenting of the code itself. Assume that the reader of your code needs to have just about everything explained or clarified in plain English. (You’ll be glad you did that when you look at your code six months later!)

Music 147 assignment for Thursday June 5, 2014

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Solve the following problem in the form of a computer program in Max, Java or C.

Given a sensor input that goes linearly from 0.0 to 1.0, what is the expression that will convert that into a linear change from -100 dB to 0 dB (i.e. an exponential change from 0.00001 to 1.0)?

And three “extra credit questions”:

1) An exponential curve will only truly reach 0 when the dB reaches -infinity. What should we do about that?
2) Is -100 dB the best value to use as the minimum nonzero amplitude? Why or why not? If not, what might be better? Explain.
3) Ideally, we should interpolate to each new amplitude value to avoid clicks. How should that be implemented?

The patch provided here gives the pertinent formula, and creates a template for making and testing your solution in Max.

Deposit your solution in the EEE DropBox called, “DecibelControl”.

In class we will work together to solve any problems we’re encountering with our programming projects. Come to class ready to work on your own project—either by bringing your own computer or by bringing the files you need to work on your project on one of the lab computers—as well as to help others with their project. If you are struggling with any aspect of your program, be prepared to explain it succinctly to others so that they can suggest improvements. If you’re not struggling with any aspect of your program, that’s great, and you should therefore make yourself available to help others. (And if nobody needs help, then you’ll have plenty of time to continue working on your own project.)