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From: Jeff Taylor <taylor.jeff.d@gmail.com>
To: csound@lists.bath.ac.uk
Sent: Tuesday, December 9, 2008 8:43:29 AM
Subject: [Csnd] Mixing with Csound

A recent discussion on this list about a specific mixing situation with csound got me thinking a bit about how I make music.

When writing music I personally like working only with csound (sequencing and synthesis) and Snd (for analysis and playback).  I don't use any real-time features of csound.  I like the simplicity and minimalism this provides but I find the final stages of mixing very frustrating in this setup.

I freely admit that I am not very experienced with mixing and this is likely much of the problem, but it is, at very least, exacerbated by the fact that it often takes very long periods of time to hear the results of any changes made to the code.  Small changes and tweaks became very time-prohibitive.

The track I have on csounds.com ( http://www.csounds.com/node/38 ) is a good example of the problem.  I am not at all happy with the mix on this track.  I think it sounds kind of muffled, I guess, and certain parts are difficult to hear.  I eventually just decided to call it done because it was taking so long to do anything (several hours for a compile wasn't unusual) and I wasn't sure what I needed to do to make it sound better, exactly.  I don't think it is an issue with csound itself because I have heard nice sounding mixes done in csound.

So how exactly do you all all handle the work flow of doing the final mix with csound when not working in real-time?  Is it just a matter of having a good idea of what needs to be done ahead of time (i.e. avoid the necessity of tweaking) or perhaps putting the code together in a certain way to facilitate the process?  Do you just use another application, like a multitrack with vst plugins?  Or is everyone just working in real-time with csound these days?  If it is a matter of just knowing what you are doing, how did you learn?

Thanks.

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Electronically,
Jeff Taylor