Two points here.

First, Csound supports MIDI control messages. These may be sufficient for
your purposes. There are various "slider" goodies around for realtime
control of instrument parameters in Csound using MIDI control messages.

Second, I am working to adapt Csound to various plugin formats including
JavaSound and VST 2. This is slow going and I may have to rewrite the Csound
kernel in order to have a maintainable application in the end. The reason is
that Csound is driven by score events, but plugins need to be driven by
their hosts. I am sure I will be able to solve this problem, which is not a
large one, but I am not sure what the final form will be.

But for your purposes, the plugin version of Csound will be able to receive
realtime score events as well as realtime MIDI messages. This could
certainly be the basis for a score-driven sequencer. In fact, I will look
into doing a Buzz machine plugin interface for Csound so that that Buzz, a
tracker, can use Csound in addition to its native synthesizers and sound
processors. Buzz machines use custom text-driven inputs; the information is
simiilar to MIDI but can contain additional parameters.

Realtime score events are simpler than realtime MIDI events. In fact, I have
already implemented and tested programmatically driven realtime score events
in AXCsound, but I have not yet uploaded the latest version because I am
working on streaming audio into and out of Csound for plugins.

In the new version of AXCsound, realtime score events can be sent to Csound
from Visual Basic, C++, or Java programs.

As soon as I have the JavaSound interfaces working for MIDI input and audio
input and output, I will upload the new version of AXCsound.

-----Original Message-----
From: James Andrews 
To: csound@maths.ex.ac.uk 
Date: Friday, July 23, 1999 7:56 AM
Subject: sequencer


>
>hello all
>
>i was following the list for a while but i lost email functionality for a
>while recently so i don't know if this topic has come up at all...
>
>does anyone know of or is anyone currently developing a sequencer for
csound
>or dcsound?  I am astounded at the potential and power of csound, but i am
>almost completely stifled by the text based score format required to create
>compositions.  I understand that csound supports MIDI and that I could use
a
>MIDI sequencer to compose, but as i see it, this is not a solution, because
>when using MIDI much of the functionality of the instrument is lost.  you
>are left with pitch, velocity, and a few limited MIDI capabilities like
>pitch bend, modulation, aftertouch, etc.  Unfortunately these functions are
>limited and are difficult to implement in a controlled and flexible way
with
>a MIDI sequencer.
>
>as a result, i propose a sequencer, similar to your average or
below-average
>MIDI sequencer, except instead of keeping track of the song by MIDI data,
it
>would drop MIDI entirely and focus on the design and flexilbity of csound.
>As an example of a key feature, one would be able to directly specificy
>things like instrument arguments for each note, while maintaining the
>visual, user-oriented environment of MIDI sequencers like cakewalk or
>digital orchestrator.  The ability to select a section of the sequence and
>render it alone, even with the ability to mute out or single out specific
>instruments or "tracks", would also be crucial, and is an unquestioned
>feature of any MIDI sequencer, yet is difficult to implement in csound
>without much modificaiton of text files, etc.  Imagine having all the
>standard tools of a MIDI-style sequencer *and* the standard flexibility of
>csound all at your disposal.  Change general volumes easily, transpose a
few
>bars here or there up or down, move this part of the song over there, copy
>and paste this onto that, change a melody's instrument instantantly, adjust
>the reverb for this track, visually adjust the rhythm and pitch of your
>melodies, etc etc etc etc.
>
>I am talking about software that molds the power of csound in a way that is
>more condusive and effective for the musical mind.   Csound is an extremely
>powerful tool for both the creative and rational mind, but it leaves the
>musician's mind in the waiting room while the rational mind changes this,
>tweaks that, etc., leaving so little room for the process of creative
>expression.  Many times i have devoted my csound time to thinking in and
>around csound, and not in and around my music.  If both the rational and
>musical minds can be accomodated comfortably, without either one having to
>make a big sacrfice, then csound as a medium would become immeasuarbly more
>powerful.
>
>I would take the time myself to code such a sequencer, simply because i can
>forsee the benefits of it, unfortunately i am only familiar with DOS Turbo
>Pascal as a programming language, and coding a DOS-based application of
this
>type would, i am sure, waste a lot of my time on things that windows and
>object oriented programming makes into a breeze.
>
>whew.  any thoughts?
>
>josh whiting
>joshwhiting@hotmail.com
>
>
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>----- End forwarded message -----