More tools for composers

I forgot to mention (and also forgot to link to on my home page) CDP
(Composers Desktop Project), a collection of tools for (mostly) musique
concrete-like and analysis-synthesis operations on sound files. They have
two GUIs, only one of which I've used. The URL is

http://www.bath.ac.uk/~masjpf/CDP/CDP.htm
--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky, Chief Scientist, Borasky Research
http://www.borasky-research.net http://www.aracnet.com/~znmeb
mailto:znmeb@borasky-research.com mailto:znmeb@aracnet.com

If there's nothing to astrology, how come so many famous men were born on
holidays?

> Message: 8
> Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 05:29:41 -0000
> From: JSZANTO@ADNC.COM
> Subject: Re: Silence (was CSound)
>
> Dear "M.,
>
> --- In tuning@y..., "M. Edward Borasky" <znmeb@a...> wrote:
> > A viable alternative to CSound is "sfront"
>
> [snip]
>
> > It doesn't have a GUI, but the orchestra / instrument language is
> > C-like rather than assembler-like.
>
> "Well, young man, be thankful that this medicine is castor oil-like
> rather than Drano-like."
>
> > ... although CSound code is so hard to read I'm not sure that's a
> > disadvantage of "sfront".
>
> I think that all of this is swell that it is another fine product of
> open-source development, but to leave things in the state where a
> musician has to muck about *that* deep into coding to use it for its
> intrinsic purpose... sigh.
>
> Wouldn't we laugh if you had to put together files for "font format
> lists" and "page layout widgets" to compile in order to use a word
> processor (I realize that I'm stretching the metaphor, but I also
> think that, without better up-front tools, Csound isn't being
> utilized as much or as well as it could. Or I could be wrong.)

It's a question of marketing. There are *really* great GUI soft synths out
there but they ain't free or for that matter even inexpensive. And some of
them only run on Macintosh, which eliminates them for me. The jSYN
developers' licence is $90US; that is within my budget. And, as I've
repeatedly noted on this and other lists, it is best to think of even
today's high-speed PCs when running something like Windows as a control-rate
device, and do one's actual DSP operations in off-board dedicated gear,
which ain't cheap either.

Actually, your comparison with word processors isn't that far-fetched at
all. I work a lot with a GPL statistics package called R. When one writes
documentation for R, one does not open up Microsoft Nerd and get what one
sees. Oh, no ... that would be too easy. One in fact uses Tex, complete with
macros, and edits a text file with whatever one chooses (this one chooses
"Vim" :-), using a markup language to specify things like indentation and
such.

Jon, there's two kinds of folks in this world, programmers and the rest of
us :-). Programmers write stuff like UNIX and R and Tex and CSound and even
"sfront" for themselves and for other programmers. They ("we" is more
correct :-) get stuff done on computers, whether it's statistics,
microtonality, analytical chemistry or accounting, getting the most out of
available hardware in the process.

Come August, if all goes well, I will have a two-processor server with a
state-of-the-art sound card, with one processor dedicated to DSP operations
and the other running Linux and handling such GUIs as I care to build --
even though "we programmers" don't need them :-). I think I can do this for
around $1600 US, and the challenge is to do this with minimum hardware cost,
i.e., very little RAM and disk and the cheapest processors I can get.
Low-end single-processor servers can be had for about $900, pre-loaded with
Linux. Throw in $300 - 400 for a decent sound card and $200 - 300 for the
second processor and you get my $1600 figure. The point is that I will need
something like CSound or sfront on the DSP end -- something I can tune to be
as efficient as possible in memory and processor usage -- if I'm going to
pull this off. And I'm going to need a programmer-customizable OS like Linux
to tune the priorities so the GUI and DSP activities both run in real time.

The big question is: what will I do with the software? Will I package it and
attempt to sell it to a very limited market with some *huge* competitors?
Will I post it for free on my web site? Or something in between? I'm 99
44/100 percent certain at present I will be using sfront as the synthesis
engine and Red Hat Linux as my OS; both are GPL. And I'm 100 percent certain
I will not be selling hardware :-).