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Sound Design and Synthesis for Electronic and Modern Music: Beyond the Drop book cover

1st Edition

Sound Design and Synthesis for Electronic and Modern Music Beyond the Drop

By Rick Snoman Copyright 2026
396 Pages 128 B/W Illustrations
by Focal Press

396 Pages 128 B/W Illustrations
by Focal Press

In Sound Design and Synthesis for Electronic and Modern Music: Beyond the Drop , Rick Snoman draws on over three decades of experience in production, teaching and sound design to explore how synthesis, performance and engineering merge to form the true language of electronic music, bringing together both technical depth and real-world perspective. Through the book's focus on how to create and... Read more

Part I: The Theory of Sound Design  1. Factory Sounds, Generic Results  2. The DNA of Sound  3. The Art of Dynamics  4. The Shape of Sound: Texture and Time  5. Developing a Sound Designer’s Ear  6. From Signal to Sentiment  7. Exploring Oscillators  8. Carving Tone: The Art of Filtering  9. Motion and Emotion: The Art of Modulation  10. Bending Time: Envelopes in Sound Design  11. Beautiful Damage  12. Painting with Harmonics  13. Signal Discipline  14. Warmth on Repeat: The Sonic Signature of Tape  15. Tube Tone in Modern Sound Design  16. Shaping Tone with Germanium  17. Shaping Sound with Transformers  18. Reverb as a Design Tool: Understanding the Parameters  19. Textures of Space: Exploring Reverb Types  20. Time as Texture  21. Understanding Modulation FX  22. The Art of Controlled Impact  23. Processing Paths: The Art of Effect Placement  24. From Glitch to Grit: Aliasing in Modern Sound Design  25. Recycling Sound: Sampling as Composition  Part II: The Practice of Sound Design  26. From Silence to Signal 1: Analogue Subtractive  27. From Silence to Signal 2: Wavetable Synthesis  28. From Silence to Signal 3: Phase Distortion Synthesis  29. From Silence to Signal 4: Frequency Modulation Synthesis  30. Dialling into Identity  31. Beyond the Knobs: The Art of Shaping Tone  32. Composing Emotion Versus Shaping Texture  33. The Role of Touch  34. The Width of Emotion  35. Rethinking Oscillators  36. From Utility to Emotion: Rethinking Modulation  37. Layering for Frequency and Function  38. Design Aesthetics: Kicks  39. Design Aesthetics: Subs  40. Building Bass: Timbre, Texture and Energy  41. Designing Lead Timbres: Cutting Through the Mix  42. Design Aesthetics: Stabs  43. Design Aesthetics: Musical Anticipation  44. Spectral Architecture

Biography

Rick Snoman is a music producer, sound designer and Apple-approved mastering engineer, and the owner of Altar Studios. He has designed sounds for numerous synthesisers and sample libraries used by producers worldwide, and is the author of the award-winning Dance Music Manual, widely regarded as the definitive textbook on electronic music production. He delivered a keynote at NAMM in Los Angeles and, as co-chair of Electronic Dance Music for the Audio Engineering Society, has presented on EDM production and remixing in New York, Los Angeles and Dublin.

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