Lesson plan
Unit generator
Unit generators (or ugens) are the basic formal units in many MUSIC-N-style computer music programming languages. They are sometimes called opcodes (particularly in Csound), though this expression is not considered accurate in that these are not written directly as machine-level instructions. Unit generators form the building blocks for designing synthesis and signal processing algorithms in software. The unit generator theory of sound synthesis was first developed and implemented by Max Mathews and his colleagues at Bell Labs in the 1950s.
Article summary
Unit generators (or ugens) are the basic formal units in many MUSIC-N-style computer music programming languages. They are sometimes called opcodes (particularly in Csound), though this expression is not considered accurate in that these are not written directly as machine-level instructions. Unit generators form the building blocks for designing synthesis and signal processing algorithms in software. The unit generator theory of sound synthesis was first developed and implemented by Max Mathews and his colleagues at Bell Labs in the 1950s.
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Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
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