Excellent free online course

Music and Computers: A Theoretical and Historical ApproachGrowing out of classes in computer music at Dartmouth College in the early 1990s, the text Music and Computers was begun by Larry Polansky and Douglas Repetto in 1997 as part of an NSF Math Across the Curriculum (MATC) grant at Dartmouth College. Dan Rockmore, Mary Roberts, and Phil Burk joined as co-authors in 1998, and together we self-published the book online as a freely available resource, and for use in classes co-taught by Polansky and Rockmore. In 2002 Key College Publishing purchased the rights to this web-book, and Music and Computers was only available as a commercial website for several years. In 2008 Key College Publishing returned the rights to the book to the authors, and we have decided to once again make it a freely available resource.
We have reorganized and updated some minor aspects of the book for this current version. We hope it is useful and interesting.
http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/MusicAndComputers
 
This is a superb course for anyone interested in getting a better idea of what is going on under the hood. Math through trigonometry is a plus, but generally the work is very approachable with a lot of audio examples and interactive Java applets that demonstrate the principles being discussed. Absorb this course and you will feel right at home chiming in on those endless Cakewalk forum arguments about how many samples can dance on the head of a pin.