> > > I have a new cd. It's called "electroclips" : a collection of 20+
> > 
> > in which i had the same reaction:
> > > I listened to it over and over again and slowly became discouraged :
I
> > 
> >         listen to Jonty's CD and you will have no interest in synthesis
> > anymore..
> 
> Nonono you guys think backwards...
> My best (read: only full-scale) work built on, um, somebody's
> Buchla synthesizer piece -- he made it sound like dozens
> of instruments, voices and concrete-ish sources. 
> The method was: I listened to a small part (it's 2 hrs+),
> then went to the studio focusing on a particular sound, spent
> my 3 hrs trying to imitate it (on the studio's $15000 Buchla), 
> completely and pathetically failed, but in the process I was 

I like the phrase : "completely and pathetically failed", I know what it
means when this happens...
Ever tried to imitate a timbre of Stéphane Roy ?? Don't even think about
it.
Stephane Roy is the man who makes those...uhm...soundscapes with motion.
Almost-voices
that vitally and enigmaticly fly and run around your head.



> virtually guaranteed to get at least 30 sec's worth of 
> *brilliant* (and utterly different) sounds.
> 
> Then it's just a matter of cramming them together in an 
> interesting and entertaining shape... but with such first-class
> material the sounds almost laid themselves side by side right away.

Yes...I don't know how you guys do it, when composing a piece, but I just
have (thank God for that)
that FEELING for atmosphere and soundworlds. I think that does the job
fairly well. A recent example
of this is a rather unusual piece by Claude Schryer on the Electroclips
album. It starts with a somewhat
distant, rumbly traffic/city noise fading in, holding maximum volume and
fades out nicely at the end, and
as the noise arises, Claude had the **GRREAT** idea to put a goddamn
*weird* sound of an unknown
little animal in the foreground of all the noise.  

The whole piece recalls a vision of an crying, injured and lost little
creature on a traffic-jammed 
boulevard in a strange city. Can you people imagine ?? 

 
> Ah! Now, has anybody recently done any masterpiece in Csound?

Yeah....haha.....the rms of my voice controlling it's own
pitch.....bleeiipsshPwaoh
no, kiddin.




> (- or generally, is it today possible to do anything worthwhile
> _synthesizing_ sounds rather than fiddling with samples?

No.  The best pieces are the one builded from sampled sounds.
When trying to compose 100% synthesized stuff, one always tries to make it
as complex until
it sounds like builded from sampled data.

David.