One of the hardest things I'm finding about using Pd in the classroom is that I have to invent every homework exercise by myself.

If I were teaching music theory, I would have a textbook with exercises at the end of each section.

I have looked at a few Pd books and nobody -- nobody -- has bothered to leave anything for students to do. (MSPuckette's Theory and Practice book has theoretical questions, but not so much in the way of "build x in Pd.") So the learning model is primarily passive -- "look at how to do x" -- without much in the way of progressively graded active assignments.

Which leads to the conclusion that the state of graphical patching pedagogy may be surprisingly underdeveloped for a 25 35 year old paradigm that is more popular than code in music-academic settings.

What am I missing? Apart from being exhausted, with health side effects, by the labor of developing course material from scratch (without being paid extra for the extra labor).

hjh

@ddw_music I think the hardest thing would be to tell students to do things that aren't freely available to view. (plus they could get help on reddit, stackexchange, and other places)
I think the simplest things to build are simple enveloped saw (phasor~) & sine waves & noise, ring/amplitude modulation, and simple delay lines. The step after that is waveshaping, FM and granular synthesis, maybe phasers/allpass filters, and finally STFT/FFT, bandlimited waveforms, interpolation, resampling, and other filters.
I would say gear assignments around techniques they have to use rather than things they have to build. That's how my electronic music classes were taught iirc.
also iirc at first I mostly learned pd from, johannes kreidler's book which does have some exercises right before each "appendix" section http://www.pd-tutorial.com/english/index.html

@seb-harmonik.ar said:

I think the simplest things to build are simple enveloped saw (phasor~) & sine waves & noise, ...

Continuing the analogy to music theory: "Start with simple things like modes, triads, then chord functions, non-harmonic tones, secondary dominants..." but the devil is in the specific decisions about what is given and what is left to the student. Those "complete the 4 part chorale" exercises don't design themselves based on vague descriptions. It takes a lot longer than you think.

I don't think it's quite enough to tell them to replicate something I demonstrated in class -- I want them to show some comprehension -- but it gets very tricky. If you just give it to them whole, they can copy without understanding. If there is connective tissue that was presented but they have to finish, it's very very easy to forget some crucial details in class. Then they get frustrated with the assignments and stop doing them. So it's either out of their grasp, or boring.

Maybe I'm making a wrong assumption and maybe having them duplicate structures is enough.

I would say gear assignments around techniques they have to use rather than things they have to build. That's how my electronic music classes were taught iirc.

I wish I were blessed with a larger number of students with the vision to see the connection between techniques for their own sake and artistic applications of techniques... but that is sadly a small percentage in this department. They need a bit more guidance to have something functioning at the end.

also iirc I mostly learned pd from, johannes kreidler's book which does have some exercises http://www.pd-tutorial.com/english/index.html

Thanks, will have a look.

hjh

Hm, €45, could be promising though.

https://www.contemponet.com/en/shop/pure-data-electronic-music-and-sound-design-1/

hjh

How about the homework assignments from Miller Puckette's classes, all freely available online? They're much more approachable than the text, and the accompanying videos are great to see how he uses pd himself. The videos and homeworks are often themed around examples from electronic music history that he puts into context during the video lectures. http://msp.ucsd.edu/syllabi/171.20w/index.htm

@ddw_music said:

Hm, €45, could be promising though.

https://www.contemponet.com/en/shop/pure-data-electronic-music-and-sound-design-1/

hjh

I second that. I've read the Max version, years ago, and it is a very good book. The Pd version is supposed to be equivalent, so it should be worth it. If you're a member of an Institute, you could convince the librarians to buy it.

@jjjd said:

How about the homework assignments from Miller Puckette's classes, all freely available online?

Useful link, thanks. It gives me a sense of what's realistic for undergraduates, at least.

One thing that I will do in the next cycle is alternate between a lecture one week and a workshop the next week. Students can read an outline first; then the lecture will fill in details; and then they get their hands on it the next week. This may also cut back on the number of assignments. I found in the past that many students got behind on homework and then felt that they couldn't catch up.

I also think I'm going to pull back from trying to get the students to put together some parts of the patches independently. Students who are really interested in it will do it anyway; students who aren't just get the idea that "I can't do this."

@alexandros

I second that. I've read the Max version, years ago, and it is a very good book.

That's good to know. I've just checked a couple of Chinese online shops and this title is available (remarkably!) but roughly twice as expensive -- assuming 6 or 7 RMB : 1 USD, I'd have expected around 360 RMB but I find it for 719 RMB... jeez... maybe my department can spring for it.

hjh