I’d like to recommend this excellent—and free—online course:
Audio Signal Processing for Music Applications
by Prof Xavier Serra, Prof Julius O Smith, III
The brief: In this course you will learn about audio signal processing methodologies that are specific for music and of use in real applications. You will learn to analyse, synthesize and transform sounds using the Python programming language.
This is the second session of the course, which will start on September 21, 2015. Enrollment is open here:
https://www.coursera.org/course/audio
I took the first session last fall. My primary motivation was to try a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), and I wanted to pick a topic I already had knowledge in, to better evaluate the experience. For me, this topic was one in which I had an idea of the basic techniques used, but not the details and no practical experience, so it was a good fit. Plus, the course requires the use of Python, which I had interest in and wanted an excuse to learn.
Professor Serra delivers the course videos, and does an excellent job—clear and well-paced. The course helps to give a better understanding of musical components of sound, and the techniques used to alter individual aspects (especially pitch and duration, independently).
The ten-week course is not easy, and requires at least a few hours per week—a relatively small percentage of the large number of enrollees completed the course with a passing grade (yes, I passed). It requires a relatively modest amount of programming, as the sms-tools package handles most of the work, but will be tough for non-programmers. However, you can watch the videos even if you do not wish to do the weekly assignments and quizzes. The assignments will give you a much better understanding, of course.
Thank you