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. Don't get me wrong; this email list is great, and this community is more than willing to help newbies, but it's kind of a crap shoot to find a good starting resource that will fit one's particular style of composition (the ratio of tutorials to deep-in-the-weeds articles seems to be about even).  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

 > Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2008 13:27:34 -0400 (EDT)
 > From: Michael Gogins 
 > Subject: [Csnd] Re: Csound Music Archive
 >
 > I think your repository idea is great, and I would love see such a thing
 > myself. When mp3.com was open to general upload, it had a Csound 
channel that a
 > number of us contributed to and listened to. The world of digital 
distribution
 > is changing, and is no longer as hospitable to "unsigned artists" as 
it was. I
 > do not know the best place to host such a thing today.

Well, there's always csounds.com. Not to be obvious about it or anything.

One great thing about Csound is that a repository could have the actual 
.csd or orc/sco files -- instantaneous download, and pristine audio 
quality. Who needs mp3?

 > There is quite a bit of electronic and computer music on sites such as
 > http://www.ruccas.org and http://www.sonus.ca, and I know some of the 
pieces on
 > these sites were made with Csound.

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 myself have two CDs of music entirely rendered with Csound on digital
 > distribution (including iTunes and CDBaby), Garden of Algorithms and 
Semblance.
 > I have two more albums, Summertrees and Gradus, that I am just now 
mastering
 > and will release soon.

Cool. I'll look for them.

 > There are currently a number of general-purpose software sound synthesis
 > systems in use (Max/MSP, SuperCollider, Pure Data, Common Lisp Music, 
RTCmix,
 > Nyquist, and snd-ls seem to be the current leaders along with Csound).
 >
 > As I am sure you know, there also are packages such as Reaktor, 
SynthMaker, and
 > KarmaFXSynth which bring many of the capabilities of general-purpose 
software
 > sound synthesizers into the world of popular music production. These 
systems
 > tend to be strong in "virtual analog synthesis" and weak or lacking in
 > time/frequency capabilities, but they are certainly very powerful and 
much
 > easier to use than Csound.

That's a central issue, I think. Composers have many, many computer 
resources to draw on. As a result, there's less incentive to focus one's 
efforts on a single system or technology -- or perhaps I should say, 
less inherent incentive. External factors, such as what one is teaching, 
will naturally come into play.

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. 
(That's the term by which we dignify text-based games.) There's a 
central repository containing hundreds of games and other items of 
interest. There are ezines devoted to reviewing the games. There's an 
active newsgroup.

One enormous difference between writing interactive fiction (IF) and 
composing with Csound is that if you're writing IF, there are no other 
tools. There are four or five good freeware systems to choose from, and 
that's all she wrote. This tends, I believe, to produce a more cohesive 
online community. The community of experimental electronic music, by 
contrast, is hundreds or thousands of times larger, but it seems to be 
quite diffuse.

 > If more people were writing music by programming, Csound would be 
much more
 > widely used.

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!

--Jim Aikin



Send bugs reports to this list.
To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"





      ____________________________________________________________________________________
Looking for last minute shopping deals?  
Find them fast with Yahoo! Search.  http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping

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!

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.
>   
I completely agree with your final point, Anthony!

I would also like to add that I suspect that most people (me, for 
instance) use CSound as a tool, an instrument and not necessarily as a 
part of the aesthetics of their work (and thus releasing music as 
source, as .csd files). These days I often use more than one open source 
audio programming languages for a single work. And sometimes I also have 
some tracks with live (acoustic, electric or electronic) instruments 
(maybe reprocessed with Csound).

Cheers,

-c.
> 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"
>
>
>   

I agree w' you Steven about the MMs book. The co-authors list is a  
pretty interesting too! I learned Music V from a photocopy of it as a  
student and was delighted to find a pristine copy (on Amazon?) a  
couple of years ago. It's now an historical document, of course, but  
one thing it did do was teach me how to visualise the instruments with  
the little diagrams like

  P5  P6
   |      |
------------
\  OSC  /
\   F1  /
   \       /
     ----
       |  P9

Simple diagrams with which to think. And I still translate ORCs into  
this form (sometimes just mentally) when reading csound scores. This  
is a different task than turning it into something PD-like. There is  
a  tendency is to try to turn diagrams into a composing tools (which  
is not what is needed, IMO, when visual aids are all that is needed.   
It's better, for locomotion purposes,  to have a VW with 4 wheels and  
an engine than the hubcap of a RR!
I looked a few years ago and perhaps I missed it, but I couldn't find  
a suitable tool which took a csound ORC defn and diagrammed it in the  
old way. Pencil and paper is good though, even if one does have to  
learn again how to hold the thing every time one picks one up.

D.


On 25/03/2008, at 6:48 AM, Steven Yi wrote:
> 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!
>>
>>