Dear Csounders,

a member of this list wrote:

> I personally think it's more productive to use Csound to create the
> digital audio files and use a commercial product such as cakewalk or
> Studio Vision to synchronize digital audio to MIDI. I would favor
> Csound version that produced a standard MIDI file rather than either
> f the realtime MIDI approaches.

Mike Berry wrote:
 
> I think that MIDI out from csound, while intriguing, does not seem
> worth sacrificing any audio performance.  As most of us agree, csound's
> strength is in the orchestra, not the score.  I find it hard to imagine a
> situation where I would rather be making control data in csound than in a
> sequencer, or a control language (MAX, etc...) .  A much more fruitful
> approach would be to make csound capable of running side-by-side with a
> control app, and able to exchange high density data (i.e. floats and 4
> byte ints) with the control app.

I don't know MAX but I think it is possible to do a lot of realtime
things with MIDI OUT opcodes in Csound. First of all to store chords and
melodies in different tables and modify them in realtime (while
listening) with standard krate opcodes. Also the timing and rithms can
be computed by csound engine generating a stream of midi event.
Highly complex control signals and envelopes can be generated and sent
to the MIDI sinth, so even if sinth has not a complete native control
power, it can be transformed in an amazing sinth.

I think it is extremely restrictive to stop at the traditional concept
of "note" when making computer music. I agree with Mike when he says
csound's strength is in the orchestra, not the score. In fact csound 
orchestra can generate itself a flow of events and notes starting from a
single score opcode. This flow can be gradually modified in realtime by
means of gestual input devices. It can bring toward new concepts of
making and composing music. Granular synthesis, in which macro and micro
structure levels can be scrambled, is an example of that. So Csound can
be a powerful control language too. A commercial sequencer is hugely far
from Csound elaboration capabilities.

I also agree with Mike when he says making csound capable of exchanging
high density data (such as floats) with a control application would be
very useful. 

bye and happy Csounding!

-- 
Gabriel Maldonado

mailto:g.maldonado@agora.stm.it
http://www.agora.stm.it/G.Maldonado/home2.htm