csound

Greg Schiemer wrote:

<snip>
<Moreover, Barry Vercoe, the composer who wrote Csound, and several
<other synthesis languages before that, has generously made
<it available by releasing the source code in the public
<domain thereby creating an enormous community of creative
<enthusiasts. Many of these are composers who have since
<contributed to its development in order to develop their own
<creative work.
<
<It's a bit like Harry Partch (or Kraig Grady or Ron George
<or Bill Wesley) building their instruments and then giving
<them away so everyone can benefit from their ideas. Imagine
<if one of these guys gave you one of their instruments as a
<gift -- a gift that represented their own unique commitment
<to composing music -- and your only response was "it's too
<complicated. I can't use it. But please fix it for me so I
<too can use it". I sure know how I'd feel! (Boulez meets
<Harry !#@#!) ouch!

<snip>
>This is the best option if you don't want to, as Jon Szanto so aptly
>puts it, "fart around with batch files, path environments,
>and all that". A musician needs to spend time doing
>something productive.
>
>Curiously enough the use of a generic text-editor doesn't
>seem to stop users on this list from spending hours upon
>hours producing email. Yet the time spent doing that might
>otherwise be spent learning from the dozens upon dozens of
>text examples supplied by Richard Boulanger in the Csound
>book. You'll be amazed how playing with these using only
>cut-and-paste in a generic text editor can be quite
>satisfying. Not quite as seductive as doing email, but
>satisfying nonetheless and a far more useful investment of a
>musician's time. Only by doing this will Csound users
>develop a basic understanding of these tools in the same way
>that the skills of violin playing are learned. User
>friendliness has more to do with the way McDonald's treats
>its customers than the way the violin has served the world's
>music.
<snip>

You said a mouthful Greg. I have played with Csound on and off, and
while I have not produced any real music with it, I have learned to make
it do simple things I want. It takes no more time to learn to make
Csound make a good clean simple sound than it does to learn to make a
physical instrument make a good clean simple sound. It takes far less
time to learn to make Csound make astonishing sounds than to learn to
make an instrument do the same.

I started by taking orc and sco files one by one, seeing which ones
worked to make simple tones, and then modifying these little by little
to see what the changes did. I then started modifying more complex orc
and sco files, using first changes that I knew, then unfamiliar ones. If
this type of learning works for you, I guarantee you can learn Csound.

--
John Starrett
"We have nothing to fear but the scary stuff."
http://www-math.cudenver.edu/~jstarret/microtone.html