Ways to make sound with a computer, from a first lesson in the browser to live-coding a set to putting a track on Spotify. I've used most of these — I built a browser synth, wrote songs with an AI model, and shipped them through a distributor — so the notes are from practice, not the brochure.
The best first hour anyone can spend on music. Beats, melodies, chords and song structure, all playable in the browser, no software to install. Ableton gave this away and it's better than most paid courses.
The companion: oscillators, filters, envelopes, LFOs, each one a knob you turn and hear. Everything a synth does, explained by doing it.
Live-code music in the browser with the TidalCycles pattern language in JavaScript. Type a line, hear a groove, edit it while it plays. The fastest path from idea to sound I know.
Sam Aaron's live-coding instrument, built for classrooms and used on stage. Ruby-ish, friendly, and the manual is a genuine music education.
Lists on Bindle are hand-picked links with a note on each. Every link is archived, so it stays readable even after the original page is gone. More lists
The engine under a lot of the above. A real-time audio synthesis language from 1996 that still defines what 'programmable sound' means. Steep, deep, worth it eventually.
The Web Audio framework for building instruments and sequencers in JavaScript. Transport, scheduling, synths, effects — the parts you'd otherwise rebuild badly. What I'd reach for first for anything in a browser.
The primitive underneath: a graph of audio nodes in every browser. Read the concepts page once so the frameworks stop being magic.
A free, open-source modular synthesizer that behaves like a wall of Eurorack, with thousands of community modules. The cheapest way to find out whether patching cables is your thing.
Miller Puckette's visual patching language — boxes and wires, real-time, free since the nineties. Max/MSP's open sibling and the one that runs on anything.
The portable synth/sampler/four-track that made constraint feel like a feature. I liked its design enough to build a browser imitation of it; the original is still better.
Text to finished song. I've written and released tracks with it. Whatever you think of the ethics, it is now a real instrument, and the interesting work is in the writing, structure and editing around it.
How an independent track gets onto Spotify and Apple Music: flat annual fee, upload a WAV and cover art, fill in the credits (AI-generated work must be disclosed as such). Unglamorous and necessary.
A database of the chord progressions in thousands of real songs, browsable by progression. When you want to know why a chorus works, it usually shows you.