Csound can certainly be used to make mainstream instruments, but I think it
will always be a fair bit of work. I feel it is best summed up as making the
simple things harder, but the complicated things easier. And this for me has
been having a profound effect on how I write music. I feel that one of the
major traps in most midi/audio graphic multitrackers (
cubase/cakewalk/logic, etc ) is that it becomes very very fast to do things
the easy way. But if you decide you really want to do things differently,
that's difficult. And at least subconsciously, I find that makes one take
the easy way out all the time. It's also easy to make decisions based on
what your music *looks* like in the track window as opposed to listening to
it critically. So even if you begin your journey by only doing some things
in Csound and adding those to conventional projects, I'm sure you won't
regret the learning.

Also, I think Csound becomes much much more useful when combined with really
learning a good text editor ( either Vim or Emacs ) and a scripting language
( Python/Perl, etc ). This allows you to decide what you want to do
regardless of the complexity and render it feasible. Like Csound itself,
using text is a pain if you only want to do simple things. But if you know
how to combine say Vim and Python with Csound, you can automate all kinds of
difficult processes. For Linux I would also suggest Ecasound and Ardour,
though I haven't personally used them so that is secondhand. And PureData.

I know Dr Boulanger is working on a large instrument database with some
colleagues, which should make using pre-existing instruments a lot easier.

Hope that helps a bit!
Iain


> Hi all,
>
> About a year ago, I bought The CSound Book edited by Boulanger, but never
> really got into it at the time.  Recently I've looked back into it and
> want to write some music with it.
>
> I have some experience with classic trackers like Octamed and FastTracker,
> but most of my time was spent with a software studio called Buzz
> (www.buzzmachines.com).  I have decided to move away from Buzz for the
> time being, partially because I no longer have a Windows box kicking
> around, and partially because I'd like to hear some new sounds.
>
> My interest is in writing more mainstream music, rather than
> electroacoustic.  While I would like to play with and tweak instruments, I
> am not looking to build them from the ground up.  Mostly I want to
> compose, at least at first.
>
> Here are some questions:
>
> 1. What do you suggest for a Linux computer?  I am using Mandrake Linux
> 9.2.  In addition to CSound, what other software is invaluable for playing
> with / editing sound files?
>
> 2. Are there many ready made instruments available, ones that do not
> require a PhD to use?
>
> 3. If you are making mainstream music with CSound, can you tell me if you
> find more difficult than by using a tracker, or Buzz, and if so, to what
> degree?  Perhaps there is something someone can say that will help to
> smooth out the learning curve.
>
> Thank you,
> Jason Garrison
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