Making Musical Apps

Chapter 2. Making Noise with Pure Data

This chapter gives a brief overview of Pure Data, focusing on the most important features from the point of view of libpd. If you’re already familiar with Pd, you will learn how to create patches that work well with libpd. If you aren’t yet familiar with Pd, you will learn how to create simple patches that will go beep on demand, just enough to create mocks for testing while you’re waiting for your sound designer to come through.

This chapter is not a thorough introduction to Pd—nor does it need to be, because excellent books on Pd have already been written. I highly recommend Theory and Technique of Electronic Music by Miller Puckette (World Scientific), as well as Designing Sound by Andy Farnell (MIT Press), which includes a tutorial introduction to Pd that’s available online as a free excerpt. Both books cover Pd as well as a wide range of other fascinating topics, but they are not for the casual reader. If you are looking for a gentle introduction to Pd, the free FLOSS Manual (http://flossmanuals.net/puredata/) as well as Johannes Kreidler’s Pd Tutorial (Wolke Verlag, http://www.pd-tutorial.com/) will serve you well.

Installing Pure Data

You can download Pure Data from http://puredata.info/. You will find two flavors of Pd there, Pd Vanilla and Pd Extended. Make sure to choose Pd Vanilla because that’s the branch that libpd tracks. You generally want to choose the latest stable release.

Note

If you’re new to the world of open source software, ...