Mike Cook is the author of a series of titles on Rasberry Pi, including a well-reviewed title in the “For Dummies” series [1]. This title, in contrast, is not for dummies: it is targeted at musicians and the musically inclined who already have some experience in both C code and homebrew “make”-style hardware tooling.

The book is somewhat divided into three parts. The first contains nine chapters centered on musical instrument digital interface (MIDI) and open sound control (OSC). The bulk centers on MIDI: an introduction, how to manipulate it, how to create instruments, and detailed examples of two complete projects--a simulated guitar (without strings), and a harp (with strings). They seem to contain sufficient information and visuals for recreation by those interested. The final two chapters concern OSC and ideas on further projects. I don’t know how useful the OSC information would be, as I have never run across it.

Part 2, “Generating Waveforms,” starts with a good chapter on the anatomy of sound. An early sample project is a foot pedal for changing a sound form. Further chapters cover square waves, other wave shapes, and building a SpoonDuino to show these off.

Part 3, “Signal Processing,” discusses sampling, audio effects (through building a sound card), digital effects, and digital signal processor (DSP) projects. This section will be of the least interest to musicians and artists.

The short index is relatively complete and useful. Pointers with uniform resource locators (URLs) of outside resources are provided in the main body of the chapters. A search produced only one competing title, which was just published in April 2016 [2]. This is a very targeted title for a special hands-on audience, and for that reader it is of interest and utility.