Hi,

John Weeks wrote:

>I was recently working on a project trying to attach fractal graphics to
>musical compositions.  A professor told me to look into CSound.
>I have downloaded and read about half of the CSound manual.

Not exactly a light read!

>I've got what may be an insane notion that Orchestra files can be
>compiled in a program that utilizes the values sent from a fractal
>iteration.  I primarily code in C or C++.

I think what you are talking about is generating scores from a fractal
program.  This is a good approach.  The other approach is to use the
fractals as tone sources.  For examples of the latter see my web page at:

http://www.werewolf.net/~hljmm/csound/

For examples of the former (not in Csound) visit the Fractal Music Project
home page at:

http://www-ks.rus.uni-stuttgart.de/people/schulz/fmusic/

>
>My questions are:
>1.  Is there anything else that I need to start experimenting with
>CSound?

Sounds like you already have a good imagination.  You will probably want to
look at some of the available examples to get you started.  The "dream"
examples are good.  The Amsterdam collection is good too.  I already
mentioned my page.  Also Dave Phillips has a good introduction.

>     There are quite a few "players" out there, what might be the best
>combination?

Players?  Do you mean sound players?  Try Cool Edit if you want more than
what is built into your computer.

>2.  In your experience is an "Orchestra creator" utilizing fractals a
>possibility or a fools errand?

Absolutely not a fools errand.  I did some work like this with midi years
ago triggering midi events with different fractals like the Mandelbrot set.
You probably will want to set up some constraints.  My old program used to
restrict the notes to chords or scales and then change chords or scales
periodically.  It was good at creating ambient textures although the music
was not extremely interesting.

Another approach would be to use fractals in granular synthesis instead of
using random numbers.  I recently did some experiments with this with a Perl
program I wrote although I haven't come up with anything worth bragging
about yet.  If you want I can send it.