Hi,

You wrote:

> So my question would be, should I give up on CSound and just use CakeWalk?

Don't give up on Csound but you may wish to concentrate your efforts more on
MIDI.  When you start becoming dissatisfied with the limitations of your
sound card's presets you may want to try Csound again.

>Would I need to jump back and study a couple years of sound
>analysis stuff before I could expect to make my own groovy sounds?

You should be able to get some good sounds using some of the examples posted
to the list and available on the net.  Choose a sound you like and modify it
to your liking.

Does one
>need significant mathematical skills (above College Algebra) to really make
>CSound wail?

I don't think so.  You only need the advanced math skills to do some of the
more advanced programming.

>Am I wimping out if I quit?

When I first tried Csound I did not use it very much for over a year.  I was
reinspired and started learning one opcode each week or so.

> Does anyone take MIDI seriously?

I still use MIDI and it often gets the job done faster than Csound.  Typing
in scores by hand is always difficult.  It is much easier to improvise on a
keyboard and save the good bits using a MIDI sequencer.  In the future I may
try to make more instruments which read MIDI files for input.

I'm more of a sound experimentor than a composer or musician so Csound is
perfect for me.  I hope that there are skilled composers who will find my
instruments useful for creating compositions.  It is helpful to be able
recompile the sources so I can add my own opcodes.  Also the Csound user
community is really incredible and addictive.

I'm also a POV-Ray user and I find there are many similarities between
POV-Ray and Csound.  POV-Ray does for 3D graphics rendering what Csound does
for sound.

Bye,
Hans Mikelson