>From now on, I am going to attempt to provide a summary of New York Csound Users Group meetings. This time the attendees were:

Michael Gogins  
Leonid Hrabovsky 
Judy Klein 
Sal Sofia 

Judy Klein reported on her jury duty for Bourges, and estimated 400 of 500 pieces heard were in the stylistic vein of Jonty Harrison and Dennis Smalley, the remainder an eclectic mix. It seems her personal, hands-on use of Csound was considered impressive. She played for us a draft of her new piece, commissioned by Bourges, containing some recorded sounds but rendered entirely with Csound. The piece is spare, low-key, contains simple but beautiful sounds, and even has tonal chords in it, a feature that the composer said she found herself unable to remove.

Sal Sofia played for us his piece "Courtyard of Miracles", also rendered with Csound, which had semi-abstract video as well as sound. The piece is complex, cleanly rendered, and contains subtle and effective rhythmic passages.

Leonid Hrabovsky played for us a CD of his chamber music piece "Concerto Misterioso". None of this piece was rendered with Csound, but the piece is in fact an algorithmic composition, computed by hand from tables of probabilities for selection of scales, notes from scales, rhythmic motives, and so on, with level upon level of random selection resulting in a very detailed texture with clearly organized rhythmic modulations and changes of scale and harmony. The composer is currently self-studying music programming in hopes of being able to automate similar procedures for new pieces. He reported that he was finding it easier to get oriented with Lisp than with Python. He is reading Rick Taube's book Notes from the Metalevel, and I suggested that he contact Tuabe directly for help with Lisp.

There was a discussion of listening environments for computer music composers, and I recommended the book by Bob Katz, Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science, 2nd Edition, Focal Press (http://www.digido.com/misc-content/mastering-audio-2.html).

Regards,
Mike