Programming Sound with Pure Data

Visualizing Sound

When working with sounds it’s at least as helpful to see what it looks like as to hear it. In fact, I recommend both listening to and looking at as many visualizations of sound as you can. Each sense will reinforce and support the other as you develop your mental vocabulary of the attributes and characteristics of sounds. Visualizations of sound are important because when working with sound it’s possible to hear something only over time. That may sound trite or even tautological, but it’s important: audibly experiencing a sound happens only over time. In contrast, you can look at a graph of a sound and quickly guess how it might sound without listening to it.

We’ve spent a whole chapter making and hearing some simple sounds; ...