I have a collection of instruments I like. I assembled it by collecting all kinds of instruments from all kinds of places (including the Csound catalog and the Csound book) by googling for instr, Csound instrument, csd, and so on and downloading files and running them. Many of these instruments have been adapted by me and are in the Csound examples directory -- there are some large csd files there that are essentially collections of adapted instruments.

Another thing is to read articles about synthesis in Sound on Sound and other magazines about synthesis and adapt patches from other synthesizers to Csound. This is easy with the Sound on Sound articles because they use block diagrams that make it fairly obvious how to re-create the patches in Csound.

I find that good instruments do not always need to have complex patches. The Cooking with Csound book contains quite convincing patches for imitation French horn, etc. that are very simple. Such patches usually require a great deal of tweaking of parameters to sound good. The Cooking with Csound patches were actually evolved by software to sound good.

It would be helpful for you to identify some favorite sounds from CDs, concerts, movie and TV soundtracks, etc. and then to try to re-create them or vary them. Feel free to bring some of these up on this list and ask for help with them.

Hope this helps,
MIke

-----Original Message-----
>From: Panos Katergiathis 
>Sent: Mar 6, 2008 3:49 AM
>To: csound@lists.bath.ac.uk
>Subject: [Csnd] Newbie in need of instruments
>
>Hello all
>
>I am a spoiled ex-(windows-asio-cubase-vst) user that had (until now) 
>too many "instruments" to play with. I have come to understand that this 
>"wealth" of options has nothing to do with creating music itself, and i 
>am willing to limit my instrument choices to a minimum. Still, since i 
>am not-much-of-an-expert in csound (yet, that is), i am currently 
>limited to very simple instruments that (yes) they keep me interested 
>but not excited at all.
>
>Of course, i have purchased the "csound catalog" that actually contains 
>some nice instruments (along with some others, not so nice), however i 
>wouldn't know if these instruments represent the cream of what one can 
>do with csound or if they are "mediocre" by today's standards. Surely, i 
>have listened to some extremely exciting instruments in the (long gone?) 
>csound radio page - nothing in the catalog comes close.
>
>So, the question is forged: what is the easiest and what is the best 
>approach for creating csound instruments? Please share your experience.
>
>Regards
>
>Panos
>
>
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