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PERSONAL LEARNING LAB ONLINEMUSIC TECHNOLOGY · AUDIO ML · CREATOR TOOLSCURRENT RELEASE · COURSE 01

ETHAN MUSIC LAB INDEPENDENT LEARNING SYSTEM

Learn technology by experimenting

Ethan
Music Lab

A personal lab about sound, music and AI

Here I build courses and sound experiments you can adjust yourself, and keep notes on music technology and creative tools. We start with sound, then move step by step toward audio machine learning and tools for creators.

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INTERACTIVE LEARNING INSTRUMENT LIVE
A light grey desktop teaching synthesizer, with waveforms and control knobs visible under a clear cover
LEARNING SYSTEM ACTIVE · EML LAB
LEARNING MODEREAD / HEAR / TESTCOURSE ONLINEAUDIO SIGNAL 01LAB STATUS8 MODULES READY

Listen first, then learn

Every sound in the course plays right on the page. You hear the difference first, then read why it happens.

Move a slider, see it click

Drag the frequency and volume sliders and the waveform and sound change straight away. No formulas to memorise first.

Start from zero, one step at a time

The 23 lessons begin with “what is sound?”, and each lesson adds just one small step.

Stuck? Leave a comment

Every lesson has a comment section. Sign in to ask questions and talk with other readers.

What you can learn here

Right now you can learn the basics of sound. Audio machine learning and creator tools will follow.

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Available

Sound and signals

How does sound become a list of numbers inside a computer? From waveforms to spectra, in 23 lessons.

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Coming soon

Audio machine learning

Teach a computer to recognise a sound: prepare the data, train a model, then see where it gets things wrong.

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Ongoing

Creator tech and AI

Notes on how I use AI and automation tools to make courses and content.

See the plans →

INTERACTIVE FIRST · 8 LABS

The first sound labs

Follow the course and take sound apart and put it back together with your own hands, so understanding doesn’t stop at the formula.

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LAB.01CH.02

Hear frequency and amplitude

Turn two knobs and compare how the waveform changes with how it sounds.

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LAB.02CH.10

Frequency probe and spectrum

Sweep through frequencies and watch one sound get split apart and rebuilt.

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LAB.03CH.20

From spectrum to MFCC

See how mel filters and the DCT compress the information in a sound.

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CURRICULUM · 23 LESSONS

Current course: Audio Signal Processing in 23 Lessons

The lab’s first complete course, from physical intuition all the way to audio features.

PHASE 1CH.01-07

Sound and digitisation

Build a basic feel for sound, waveforms, frequency, loudness, sampling and time-domain features.

  1. 01Sound and waveforms
  2. 02Sampling and bit depth
  3. 03Audio features
  4. 04Framing and time-domain analysis
PHASE 2CH.08-15

Frequency and the Fourier transform

Starting from complex numbers and frequency probes, understand the DFT, the FFT and the short-time Fourier transform.

  1. 01Fourier intuition
  2. 02Complex numbers and phase
  3. 03The discrete Fourier transform
  4. 04STFT
PHASE 3CH.16-23

Features a model can use

Turn spectrograms into mel spectrograms, MFCCs and frequency-domain statistics you can compare.

  1. 01Spectrograms
  2. 02Mel filter banks
  3. 03MFCC
  4. 04Spectral statistics

CREATOR NOTE

Turning hard technology into something you can test yourself

I’m Ethan. Beyond this audio course, I’ll keep adding my research on music technology, audio machine learning, interactive teaching and tools for creators. For every topic, I try to line up the intuition, the experiment, the code and the pictures.

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START FROM COURSE 01

Start with the lab’s first course

All 23 lessons of “Audio Signal Processing in 23 Lessons” are free to read. Sign in to join the discussion under each lesson.

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