> Richard Wentk wrote:
> 
> >I haven't tried it, but my guess is that you can't change the =
> sound of an
> >instrument after it's started. The sound will only change if you
> >reinitialise the instrument - hence no funky wavesequencing =
> effects, at
> >least not without major effort. Can someone confirm this?=20
> 
> It does work! On my system, I have a note running infinitely
> and send the new wavetables over a realtime pipe when editing
> the wave graphically, and I can hear the sound change.
> 
> Peter Neubaecker
> 

Sounds wonderful - but it would be good to have some more detailed
information on how you are doing this. It is easy enough to replace
one ftable with another, on a held note, less so to manage the
takeover without a glitch, even less so to do something like gradual
interpolation between wavetables. Also, not everyone has a system which
allows real-time pipes, we have to settle for a score. Can we see an
example orc. and sco. file?

Richard Dobson













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From: Richard Dobson 
Message-Id: <199705091516.QAA04151@talisker.pact.srf.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: the way Csound works
To: csound@maths.ex.ac.uk
Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 16:16:37 +0100 (BST)
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Erm, well, rather a lot of your text slightly misses the target. For example:
Csound is not 'based on C', but written in it - the Csound language itself
is more a glorified form of assembly language. The score file does not 'play'
wavetables; rather, these are data structures given to an instrument to use as
it sees fit, typically picking out values in a wrap-around sequence to make 
a tone of a given pitch. Thes values (which become the 'samples' of which the
sound is made, can be passed to other routines ('opcodes' or 'unit generators')
which modify them, add them to others, and so on.

If you are writing at thesis level, you really need to read the primary books on
subject, such as Moore's 'Elements of Computer Music'; though this mostly
gives examples in CMusic rather than Csound, the two are very close conceptually
(all derived from Max Mathews' original MUSICx programs), so the principles
described apply equally to Csound.

If you can find Mathews' original book (now long out of print so far as I know)
so much the better - the core techniques have really not changed that much - and
Jean-Claude Risset still finds a use for MUSIC5 and FORTRAN.

Richard Dobson

PS: if you find TWO copies of the Mathews book, can I buy the other one?