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. 

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.

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.

The dance musician/producer BT has used Csound in a number of tracks. The soundtrack to the film Traffic also used Csound for a prominent cue. These of course are isolated instances.

I have attended a number of International Computer Music Conferences over the years and I can see that there has been a trend towards use of Max/MSP for realizing the pieces heard at these conferences. I asked some composers why they used Max instead of Csound and they said, "Because I have to teach Max, I use it myself." I also know (again from asking) that composers who work in a more purely "electroacoustic" way simply take sounds into Pro Tools or some other editor and simply do lots of cutting, pasting, and effect processing.

As one of the Csound developers, and also the author of a prototype software synthesis system myself, I make it my business to understand the capabilities of most of the systems that are out there. 

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. 

Csound does seem to be the system that demands the most patience and knowledge to get music out of. But on the other hand, Csound also has, as far as I can see, the largest set of unit generators, the best facilities for time/frequency analysis/resynthesis (phase vocoder etc.), and the best interfaces to external languages. And I am quite confident that there isn't any system in use, commercial or otherwise, that has better raw audio precision and sound quality.

I think that if one is interested in composing pieces for live performance, interacting with performers, and so on, probably Max/MSP is a better choice.

I think that if one is working intensively in a recording studio or project studio, probably Reaktor would be more useful.

I use Csound myself because it is the most suited to my personal approach to composing, which is to write music by programming. 

I know I can make pieces that would be difficult or impossible with Max, and I know I can make Csound instruments that sound better than any Reaktor patch I have heard -- I used to own Reaktor and I tried to use it to realize some of my algorithmically generated scores.

Believe me, if I found some already existing software does what I need better than Csound does, I would drop Csound and switch. In order to use Csound, I have had not only to learn how to use it, but also to become a Csound developer myself. This has been a significant investment of time and effort.

To sum up, I think the place of Csound in the world of recorded music reflects the manner in which people today are making music. 

If more people were writing music by programming, Csound would be much more widely used. As long as computer music students are doing interactive pieces, Max/MSP will be used. As long as people are tracking in studios, Reaktor and such will be used.

These choices are always changing. I do feel that recent improvements in Csound are leading to renewed interest in Csound. 

Regards,
Mike

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jim Aikin" 
To: 
Sent: Saturday, March 22, 2008 8:53 PM
Subject: [Csnd] Csound Music Archive


> In looking around today for music I could listen to that was created 
> using Csound, I didn't find much. This page 
> (http://bumpermusic.blogspot.com/2005/07/csound-internet-concerts.html) 
> looks promising -- but the links there, which point back to items on 
> csounds.com, are dead.
> 
> Googling for "csound compositions," I find things like this 
> (http://www.mail-archive.com/linart@li.org/msg00421.html), which is a 
> nine-year-old mail message from a Paul Winkler. It has a link to a site 
> that's described as being "under construction." After nine years? Not a 
> good sign.
> 
> I also found a page of compositions by Dr. B's students, which is the 
> type of thing I'm looking for ... but are his students the only ones 
> composing in Csound? And while that page is on the csounds.com site, it 
> doesn't seem to be visible on the home page. What's up with that?
> 
> I'm sure a lot of people are using Csound. Is it that no one is 
> producing finished work with it? Or are the composers all tucking their 
> work away on their own websites, where no one but their friends can find it?
> 
> I'd love to see a central repository of great music that folks who are 
> curious about Csound could explore. Does anyone else think this would be 
> a good thing?
> 
> --Jim Aikin
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Send bugs reports to this list.
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"



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