macOS Audio Programming - Direction

[joe.cavers]

Hi,

I am currently in my second year of Music Technology at University, and I'm getting into the idea of audio programming. I use programs like Ableton Live and Logic to sequence music, but last year at Uni we started to use Pd and Max/MSP and my mind has been blown. I've started looking into audio programming as a career path and every job I look at has C++ listed as a requirement.

Essentially what I'm looking to find out is what exactly Audio Programmers (for example, working for games companies) actually program? As in, do they write the scripts that trigger certain bits of audio or sound when certain things happen?

If there are any audio programmers here who want to contribute to this thread, I'd be greatful.

Thanks
JC

 

[kainjow]

I would guess someone doing audio for a game is not a programmer but someone who actually creates the sounds using various audio applications/synthesizers. Playing back audio is easy. I'd think "audio programming" might fall into the signal processing category, and that gets significantly more complicated.

 

[wmw71190]

Well I'm not an expert on audio programming or music tech, but I have taken a lot of music classes and a few computer science classes (I'm on my second year of computer engineering). Last semester, in my C++/Matlab Intro to Comp Sci class, we did a lesson on music programming, and basically had to produce different notes/tunes from scratch, by creating sin functions that would create certain frequencies (notes). I would suggest looking up "Music Science" if you need some more relative material between computer science and music science.

I think in the real world, you would be more in charge of creating scripts which call on certain fragments of music depending on coordinating events (such as, in a game, if your character jumps off a cliff). It may seem like any old programmer could do this, but in terms of combining different fragments of music, overlaying them, and resequencing them, they would need someone more experienced in the music field as well.

Let me know if this helps at all

 

[joe.cavers]

That sounds interesting. We do Matlab next year and C++ in 4th year of my course. I am fairly curious to know exactly what this kind of job entails now. I might try contacting some games companies to see what exactly is involved in terms of musical knowledge.

Keen to find out...

Cheers
JC