Just to note, one of the best manuals I can think of reading was Max Matthews' "The Technology of Computer Music". I found a copy at the San Francisco public library some years back. It's a manual for using Music V, and so there's some differences between conventions that were developed in Csound versus Music V, but there are of course many commonalities. One great thing I really liked about the manual was illustrating using music notation on a staff an excerpt, then showing how that would be expressed using Music V note lists and PLN(? can't remember the exact name of the scoring scripting language). I also loved how even then there was discussion about the expressiveness of note lists but that they were difficult, and a mention of using the scripting language to offer the composer the ability to work with terms they were more familiar with rather than what Music V needed to run, thus preserving "the dignity of the composer". (I'm not sure if goes exactly like that as it's been a while since I read the text). Anyways, I'd highly recommend checking out that text to anyone interested in computer music regardless of tools being used as it was written long before MIDI and so many other conventions of computer music were established. Really neat to get at the contemplation of what is music and how to express these things in computers, which I think is in that text if I remember correctly. I've always thought that some kind of cookbook of examples like that, using standard and avant-garde notation and then illustrating how to achieve it, would be very useful for csound (and probably should do something like that for blue too... =) ). steven On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 12:35 PM, Anthony Kozar wrote: > Wow! I am amazed at the amount of overlapping interest in Csound and > interactive fiction. I too have been interested in IF for a few years and I > have played around with the Inform compiler. > > I don't know what else to say about making Csound easier to learn. The > Reference Manual is exactly that: a reference. I will point out that Barry > Vercoe's Csound tutorial and Dr. B's Toots used to be distributed as part of > the manual. If we added a similar gentle introduction of significant length > to the Csound Ref. Man. maybe that would help. (Maybe it wouldn't *shrug* > -- Csound is tough :| ). > > The Csound developers are mostly professional teachers and/or programmers. > And as someone who has tried, I will say that writing truly accessible, > clear, thorough but concise documentation is a lot of work!! The first few > chapters of the Csound book are among the best material in this vein, I > think. > > Having a centralized place for Csound music is a good idea. But some things > that I like about having my music on my own site are being able to count > downloads/listens and to precisely control the presentation of "program > notes" and license info. (Some of my music is on ruccas.org too which is > flexible enough for my needs. BTW, I think that sounding like "being > trapped inside a robot cow" is part of the ruccas credo ;) > > Regarding the differences between IF tools and Csound tools, there really > are almost as many different ways and reasons to use Csound as there are > users. I am not sure, but I suspect IF is a "narrower" art form from this > perspective. Four major ways of using Csound come to mind: (1) as a > real-time performance instrument, (2) as a sample manipulator, (3) as a > "traditional" compositional tool (i.e. write a fixed score and "perform" > it), and (4) as an algorithmic compositional tool. > > Which Csound front end you use and how much you have to deal with the > orchestra and score languages in their raw text form is largely dependent on > how you are using Csound. Here are some highly personal opinions that do > not diminish the value of other tools and methods. For (2), I think that > Cecilia is a wonderful Csound front end. For (3), I think that blue is the > best tool I've ever seen. For (4), using the programming language of your > choice with an appropriate computer music library may be best (eg. OMDE or > athenaCL for Python, Common Music for Lisp) but blue and other standalone > tools such as CMask are also useful -- this is a highly personal area. For > (1), I am still not convinced that Csound is the "best" choice. Several > people have written successful Csound RT front ends for their personal use > but that is not a course of action for everyone. I really don't know enough > about RT performance to judge, but I suspect there are good reasons so many > people are using other software entirely (such as PD or Max). > > And this brings me to my final point: maybe Csound isn't for everyone. We > spend a lot of time discussing ways to bring more people into our community > or at least not to alienate people who are curious about Csound. But > perhaps Csound is not a good replacement for all users of Cubase, Logic, > Midi studios, Max, PD, or even Supercollider. Maybe there are even some > aspects of Csound that will always seem alienating or uninteresting to some > musicians no matter how we dress it up or how great the tutorials are. > > And maybe that's OK. > > Anthony Kozar > mailing-lists-1001 AT anthonykozar DOT net > http://anthonykozar.net/ > > > Michael Bechard wrote on 3/24/08 9:56 AM: > > > > As a fellow one-time IF'er, I have to agree about the community. Very strong > > community, great tools, good documentation. > > > > CSound has a long way to go to get to that level of friendliness and > > centralization. [...] The manual that comes with CSound doesn't have any > > > tutorials, something which the manual for Inform (IF language) does. Even > > if one does happen to find a tutorial, it will involve text-editors and > > command-line work. Most people like GUIs, easy-to-use interfaces. Getting > > introduced to CSound in this manner, while maybe strong academically > > speaking, will not engender many new, non-student types. I think there are > > other ways to introduce people to CSound that aren't as archaic but will > > teach one the fundamentals nonetheless. > > > > Michael Bechard > > > > ----- Original Message ---- > > From: Jim Aikin > > To: csound@lists.bath.ac.uk > > Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2008 9:21:23 PM > > Subject: [Csnd] Re: Csound Music Archive > > > > Thanks for the tip. Right now I'm being confronted by a randomly chosen > > piece from ruccas. I won't mention the name of the piece or the > > composer, but it's like being trapped inside a robot cow. And not in a > > good way. But that gets us into the aesthetic questions, which would > > belong in a different thread. > > > > I thought to bring up the idea of a Csound music repository because I'm > > also involved from time to time in another digital art form that uses > > highly sophisticated (and free) software tools -- interactive fiction. > > > > I don't mind programming. It's kind of fun. For me the discouraging > > thing about Csound is having to produce an event list in Excel. That > > gets laborious very quickly. I've downloaded and installed blue, which I > > think might be what I need, but to be honest I haven't yet been able to > > come to grips with the manual, which seems to start in the middle and > > assume I know a lot of stuff that I don't in fact know. > > > > Again, the contrast with the interactive fiction tools is striking. > > Writing IF is programming, no two ways about it. But the two leading > > languages both have very slick IDEs and profuse documentation. If Csound > > had anything like that -- wow! > > > > > > Send bugs reports to this list. > To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound" >