If you've ever tried to make custom sounds play on a computer, including the raspberry pi, then you've likely heard of the graphical language, called PureData. Let me say at the out set that you can find this tutorial online, and read it for free. However, this text, along with its exercises is very much worth having in hand, if you don't mind paying the modest price. I have a rich background in programming, so I'm not in a position to say wether or not a true beginner could self teach themselves with this help of this text. What I can say is that the author's intention was to provide just such a book, and there is a generous amount of time spent explaining basic programming principles. However, it didn't bore me at all, since these principles are implemented in a graphical language with "patches" in place of traditional imperative programming paradigms.