Thanks for your mail. Really, Buzz got me more excited in some ways than
Csound itself (though make no bones about it, Csound is a much better
instrument if all you care about is how the end result sounds, which is all
I care about). Buzz took me back to my college days in 1972 at the
University of Utah where I met Vladimir Ussachevsky and Nyle Steiner and
played around patching modules on Nyle's home-built version of Moog modular
synthesizers. I can fall into the same trance patching Buzz machines that I
did patching analog synth modules...

You can reference the Csound front page at
http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-books/csound/frontpage.html for Buzz users, or my
web page at http://www.pipeline.com. For non Buzz people, see
http://www.buzz2.com.

If you don't mind, I'm copying this mail to the Csound list, the music-dsp
list, and to buzz-talk, because I feel that the issues touch on the future
of musical composition and performance and the kind of software support
required for them. I believe we are moving towards various generic
composition frameworks with notation/MIDI sequencing/realtime audio that use
standardized plugins to do a lot of the real work... Cubase, Logic, and Buzz
are all examples of such frameworks (though Buzz is less general than audio
sequencers, it still is a complete composition environment).

Csound is potentially the most powerful of all plugins, because it's a whole
language unto itself, and it can produce acoustically beautiful results.

Needless to say, it's vitally important that such a universal standard be
technically adequate. This is a whole other can of worms...

I am currently waiting for Steinberg to release the VST specification
version 2, which is said to support MIDI note control. When it does come
out, I plan to make Csound into a VST 2 plugin. At that time, I will look
into how well this all integrates with Buzz. I hope that Buzz will be
upgraded to VST 2 support also. If those things happen, no more need be
done; Csound will just plug right in along with everything else. If VST 2
does not prove adequate, the JavaSound API may have the potential to become
a universal plugin format.

If that doesn't happen, I don't think it would be too hard to make Csound
itself into a Buzz machine, or rather into two Buzz machines, one generator
machine and one effect machine. The Csound machine would have to be
programmed to get a filename for its orchestra file from somewhere; score
lines could come from the tracker patterns (the Csound machine could
interpret them either as real-time command-line events or as MIDI events).

Technically, my version of Csound, AXCsound/JCsound, begins by making Csound
into a library with an encapsulated C++ version of Csound that is partly
re-entrant (you can stop it and start it again without reloading it). This
is why making Csound into a Buzz machine should not be too hard. But I don't
think it's just a piece of cake, either; the audio ins and outs have to be
patched to the Csound processing loop (I don't have pluggable ins and outs
at this time). It may also be necessary to change some global static objects
in the Csound code to allow more than one instance of Csound to run at the
same time, that is, to finish the job of making Csound re-entrant.

As I write this I find the idea rather exciting, because Csound is not the
world's most interactive program, to say the least, but the joy of Buzz is
building up pieces interactively, moving the loop points around while
tweaking the machine connections and pattern parameters. It would be great
if Csound could be used in this interactive context, developing patterns
while Buzz is looping. The learning curve needn't be so steep for Buzz
people because there are a lot of great Csound orchestra files floating
around on the Web.

Note to the Csound community: All of this can be done without changing any
existing features or ways of using Csound at all.

Csound and Buzz are alike in that they are small, free programs that do more
than almost all their competition...

-----Original Message-----
From: Dorian Mode 
To: gogins@nyc.pipeline.com 
Date: Sunday, June 20, 1999 6:26 AM
Subject: Buzz,VST,CSound


>Dear mr Gogins,
>
>I'm a Buzz enthusiast  and I read with great interest and excitement your
>postings on Buzz on CSound list. As  you probably already have noticed that
>Buzz file format *.bmw or .bmx is described in  buzz104/dev folder that
>installer program creates.
>
>One fascinating feature with tracker programs is the fact that they are not
>"tools" in sense that there would necessarily be an end product separated
>from the writing/composing/producing enviroment; there is a kind of shared
>space for the artist and the audience.
>
>What does Buzz incorporate:
>from "folk" music - the community aspect
>from "serious" music - notation, or score
> - virtuoso performance aspect ( the sequencing side )
> this century - music concrete > sampling ( wavetable, tracker )
> -synthesis (various generators)
> and maybe the possibility for the artist to explain the rationale behind
>incomprehensible noise in "blah blah" screen
>from "popular" music - the idea about studio as a compositional tool
> - effective distribution
>
>minus sides: the relatively rigid timing. And then it is a question of
>personal preference how structured or pattern based music one wants to do.
>
>what i woud like to see in future versions:
> machines generating control data and note data
> machines modifying above
>
>so that there would be this algorithmic/aleatoric dimension; or
> "generative"  aspect.
>
> and some easier way to develop own plugins than using MSVisualC++; Oskari
>Tammelin has said that Buzz per se is not supposed to be synth creating
>program like Generator, but this prospect of utilising Csound in Buzz via
>VST is very fantastic indeed: actually I speculated about it on Buzz-talk
>mailing list some time ago but then concluded that it's too utopistic.
>
>I hope you don't mind, but I clipped some of your postings to Csound list
>and posted those clips to buzz-talk list; there have been expressed
interest
>in Csound and some people I reckon have already dabbled with it: but the
>vertical learning curve is probably too much for most of others than Buzz
>machine developers... I think it would be a gesture greatly appreciated  if
>you could in your spare time write something to buzz-talk@unreal.org, and
>tell about Csound's and your programs possibilities for the
>electronic/computer musicians and future prospects .... and stuff.
>
>sorry 'bout my english
>
>Dorian
>
>
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