The idea of long-term projects is something very important to me and
is the topic which I'm writing (well, should be working on) for the
Composing with Csound book.  The idea of electronic music versus
computer music and how we go from electronics and software as
instrument to a system of musical notation is interesting to me.
There's a lot of stuff in between when we consider where does musique
concrete within the context of all this, but it's a part of the ideas
in mind.

I think about how we are able to see work drafts of notated works by
composers as well as completed scores and are able to learn a great
deal about their way of thinking about and working with music.  This
is something that isn't so often available for electronic works.

One of the things I like most about Csound (and blue) is that I am
able to keep a complete record of my work, especially when using
version control software like Mercurial (I'll be completing an article
on using this SCM tool with Csound projects for the next Journal).  I
can go back and see different versions of my work, read comments on
the different versions, see the choices I made and understand what I
was doing at the time.  It'd also be easy to create a script to go and
checkout each version of the piece and rerender it so I can listen to
a sort of audible history of the piece.  I'm finding it's not
something I need to take advantage of much at this time, but I'm sure
I'll be glad to have those notes and revisions available years from
now when the work is not so fresh in my memory.

I discussed this a little bit earlier in the year in Ireland in a
presentation I gave there about the long-term and how Csound, because
you work with it in text, has a very good long-term prospect.  For
example, I can create instruments and effects in blue.  When I finish
a project and move on to the next project, it might be the case that I
decide to modify an instrument or effect.  Having one version in one
project and another version in another project is no problem, though
doing some similar with binary instrument plugins like VST's is much
more difficult. I can also move my projects from OS to OS and cpu
architecture to cpu architecture (wherever Csound is compiled for) and
I can use those instruments and effects as-is. (This was not the case
for a friend of mine using Logic who is stuck on PPC because some of
the plugins he purchased are not compiled for Intel and won't be; it's
likely the history of his project file will be tied to the PPC machine
and OS version he has.)

For me, I don't think the whole binary-based music systems we see
today are going to have longevity in this sense, at least those
systems that aren't protected by a layer like Csound is or a system
based on a virtual machine.  (Which is also to say that evaluating a
musical system to use depends for me not only on performance and
capability, but these kinds of long term concerns).

steven


On 9/13/07, rasputin <tims45@aol.com> wrote:
>
>
> Andres Cabrera wrote:
>  Hi, Can the author be contacted to remind him? I'm sure many here would
> like to hear / see the piece. I would sure like to see the code as well.
>
> Andres Cabrera wrote:
> This post makes me think two things: First, when a music piece is software,
> it's interesting that it may no longer music in the legal sense, but
> software, so copyrights apply, but not performance or editorial rights... So
> actually even if the piece is originally by Chowning, the new version could
> be considered entirely by Baudouin, since all he did was write software, and
> is not violating copyright per se.... This reminds me discussions I
> occasionally read of producers who are in love with a particular sample or
> loop but can't get clearance to use it in a project. They can actually
> re-create the sample from scratch and it is then their IP and doesn't
> violate the original's copyright. In fact if I remember correctly, there was
> an article in Sound On Sound some years ago about a couple of guys whose
> business it was to recreate samples for this exact reason.
>
> Andres Cabrera wrote:
> The other thing this got me thinking is that Csound seems to be the only
> computer software which has an interest (both in the software and in the
> community around it) in preservation of history. Most other languages and
> programs are ever advancing software which tends not to look back, and many
> like pd and supercollider, since they are mostly real-time oriented tend not
> to produce "tangible" or "fixable" pieces.... Food for thought. Ever since I
> started with my first electronic music set up (using MIDI and hardware
> synths) around 1993 it always bothered me that I wouldn't necessarily be
> able to revisit old pieces and re-arrange/edit/continue working on them. But
> to 95% success, you can run an old Csound piece and it will work. (I
> examples I've seen in the distro and CSound book date to the 1990s.)
> SuperCollider (and now ChucK) are intriguing but it's true that they seem to
> be aimed at a different style of composition/performance. ...r...
> ________________________________
>  View this message in context: Re: Chowning's _Stria_ Recomposed with Python
> and Csound (CMJ)
>  Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>