A true Stradivarius can handle the wrong kind of bow

Bill Alves wrote:

> I always have to emphasize to my students to save as "text only"
> from their favorite word processor. (Very occasionally there
> will be invisible and spurious characters in a text file that
> cause Csound to crash, but that's the fault of the word
> processor, not Csound.)

I have been busy lately and only following the list
loosely. I will get caught up eventually and make some
points about various things that have come up that I think
important, but I REALLY must momentarily step in here in
defense of proper design, before people get the wrong
idea. Bill's statement I suppose reflects an unfortunate
fact that much software we are forced to deal with is
deeply flawed and that unfortunately many people have come
to expect that as normal and uncorrectable.

In defense of proper engineering, let me say the
following:

If you have a program that *crashes* when reading a text
file that has 'spurious' characters, or incorrectly
formatted information, or whatever, then you have a
program with serious bugs that should be corrected.

When encountering odd, unexpected input, a program
(perhaps ESPECIALLY a batch mode program like csound for
which there is really to excuse not to other than
incompetance and/or extreme laziness and/or profund
sloppiness) should do something like one of these:

1. Automatically correct the input if possible

or

2. Notify the user that the file has problems,
helpfully identifying the line # and type of
error encountered.

I have used csound myself occasionaly for designing and
prototyping effects before I code them in C or whatever
and have not encountered these kinds of errors, but I
doubt I have fed csound 'weird' files either. But you know
what, people DO feed programs weird files and inputs from
time to time. It is to be expected. It is not the fault of
the user or the word processor. It is not even a case of
bad design. It is a case of bad coding. Bad input happens
all the time and if your program cannot robustly deal with
it gracefully and helpfully, then your program has a flaw
that needs to be corrected.

But please, let's not say that this situation is the best
we can expect. Dealing with spurious input in a batch
program is such a simple and common problem that it really
should be corrected.

Other than that, I agree with Bill's advice.

I'll add that csound is not for everyone.

It is not the same as building your own instruments.
To experience that, you need to WRITE csound.

Yes, csound could be made into something completely
different -- a word processor perhaps, or maybe a totally
graphical synthesizer. But the engineering time would be
unjustified unless someone wanted to do it just for fun.
There are plenty of fine text editors out there, many of
them totally free. And there are better programs available
that do more and have better features if you want
graphical editing -- like PD. So I would not advise anyone
to hold their breath, or put off doing creative and
interesting stuff while waiting for csound to become
something it is not.

At this time I think it would be appropriate to note that
I have typically found a self-defeating attitude among
many would-be composers that they "can not" do anything
because they don't have the right technology, or it is not
available at the right price, or it doesn't come in the
right color, or whatever. As an example, I will mention an
extremely well known computer music researcher who
believed himself a composer but had written absolutely
nothing that anyone could remember ever since he wrote an
article 'proving' that the MIDI interface was too slow for
serious music. He knew that someday though, people would
realive he was write and there would be something better.
When that happened, he would once again be able to write
music. It's true that MIDI is relatively slow compared to
how it could be if the world was perfect but let's face it
-- MIDI is here to stay and it's long past time to deal
with it.

If anyone recognizes in themselves that they have all
these big plans and they never even get started on them,
much less finish them because of an ever changing ongoing
set of excuses, the fact is they need to get their act
together, sit down and do something with what they have
and stop talking about it. I often hear from many people
about their great ideas and if 1/10th of 1% of the
population acted on any of their great ideas, all the
world's problems would have been solved a long time ago.
Let's stop talking and start writing music, designing
beautiful things, building them, raising gardens, planting
flowers, finding things to praise in others, being nice to
our friends and neighbors, treating others better, driving
less, producing less garbage, polluting less, and helping
other people along more.

[These remarks are general remarks along these lines that
I make often and are most definately NOT directed at
anyone that I know of on this list. I assume that all of
you write music.]

> It's frustrating to me that people find so many of these
> problems, because it turns them off from a very powerful tool,
> especially for tuning. No doubt the reason it is coming up on
> the tuning list is that, unlike most synthesizers, it is not
> tied to any particular tuning model. I have used it several
> times for "free-style" JI, something very, very difficult with
> any conventional acoustic or MIDI solution.

Yes, csound is a fine general purpose tool for what it is
-- a sound design and composition programming language for
compiling music and audio. Using csound is the same as
writing music on paper -- you don't hear it right away (in
'real time'), you hear it later. But csound is much more
precise than standard notation and in fact is perfectly
precise. It is probably not suitable as a method for
generating scores to be followed by human performers,
nor as a tool for composing improvisationally.

I suppose I think that every composition student should
learn csound or one of its cousins -- I think it
is accurate to say that both csound and PD and cmusic
and perhaps others are descended from Music V. Even if you
don't use it (or Neapolitan 6ths, say), you should know
what it is and how it works. It's a basic skill and
might come in handy some day.

But, like music theory and western music notation, it can
be rather confounding to learn without a teacher and I
sympathize with and encourage all who are taking the leap.

- Jeff

Jeff,

Thanks for this profoundly true bit of advice, and the depth to takes
to convey it. I like to constantly remind folks with these issues,
how much better we've all got it, as far as the ability to produce
music today, than even just a few years ago. If we just look back in
5 year increments, we can see each phase as going back into the Dark
Ages as far as electronic music is concerned. With the affordability
of computers with sound cards, and the ability to make your own CDs
and do hard-disk recording (not to mention the profusion of used gear
that trickles down), there is little that should hold one back from
producing.

I just wish I could have had all this back in the day, when things
were really primitive, so that I could have documented years of work
in a digital format. My humble beginning stories could qualify me to
run for public office.

: )

I first encountered Dan Stearns through the underground home taper
networking movement that was so active there for about 15 years (way
pre-internet/computer for me) - I know he would have a few things to
say about what it was like to make music with little. Of course, you
young "whipper-snappers" out there won't know what the heck I'm
talking about, as you've never had to walk 10 miles to school
barefooted in the snow, or chop wood for the stove when you got there
to thaw out your feet - or hook up the oxen to the cart to go off to
church, or grow your own food, or make your own Banjer out of an old
gourd and some bailing wire. Well truth is, I can't tell you much
about this either, but I can tell you lots about what it's like to
make music with a 4 track cassette recorder. Quite analogous to the
Paleolithic Period, when we used to pragmatically bang on what ever
we had - you know stones and bones, and the like. But man -
microtones were big back then! Ah - the good old days! Don't you
miss'em?

[Insert image of Ape-like Man-Thing throwing bone into air, like on
2001 Space Odyssey, with accompanying theme]

--- In tuning@y..., "J Scott" <xjscott@e...> wrote:
>
> At this time I think it would be appropriate to note that
> I have typically found a self-defeating attitude among
> many would-be composers that they "can not" do anything
> because they don't have the right technology, or it is not
> available at the right price, or it doesn't come in the
> right color, or whatever. As an example, I will mention an
> extremely well known computer music researcher who
> believed himself a composer but had written absolutely
> nothing that anyone could remember ever since he wrote an
> article 'proving' that the MIDI interface was too slow for
> serious music. He knew that someday though, people would
> realize he was write and there would be something better.
> When that happened, he would once again be able to write
> music. It's true that MIDI is relatively slow compared to
> how it could be if the world was perfect but let's face it
> -- MIDI is here to stay and it's long past time to deal
> with it.
>
> If anyone recognizes in themselves that they have all
> these big plans and they never even get started on them,
> much less finish them because of an ever changing ongoing
> set of excuses, the fact is they need to get their act
> together, sit down and do something with what they have
> and stop talking about it. I often hear from many people
> about their great ideas and if 1/10th of 1% of the
> population acted on any of their great ideas, all the
> world's problems would have been solved a long time ago.
> Let's stop talking and start writing music, designing
> beautiful things, building them, raising gardens, planting
> flowers, finding things to praise in others, being nice to
> our friends and neighbors, treating others better, driving
> less, producing less garbage, polluting less, and helping
> other people along more.

This last part here comes from a wise and beautiful spirit, speaking
in a language of love! This is such a precious and greatly needed
thing in our time. The True Role of the Artist in a Culture shines
through in this writing. There's so much more to it all, than the
moments of "ego gratifying, glory on the stage", that much music has
evolved toward these days - especially the variety that is spoon-fed
through the "Corporate Content Controlling, Mass Marketing Media
Machine", which dominates almost all except our immediate hearts.

Even though it is my well worn Mantra, I must recite it here again in
order to harmonize my voice with my dear friend Jeff:

Let's harness this Life, and this Moment for the betterment of all
that may come. Make Music - do Good - Love One Another! There's no
time to waste!

Tenderly,

Jacky Ligon

(Ha - ha - ha Yahoo! You didn't get me this time! This is why I
ALWAYS compose my posts in Outlook, then paste them into your clunk-o
form - the last one didn't make it, but this one will!)

Jeff,

Thanks for this profoundly true bit of advice, and the depth to takes
to convey it. I like to constantly remind folks with these issues,
how much better we've all got it, as far as the ability to produce
music today, than even just a few years ago. If we just look back in
5 year increments, we can see each phase as going back into the Dark
Ages as far as electronic music is concerned. With the affordability
of computers with sound cards, and the ability to make your own CDs
and do hard-disk recording (not to mention the profusion of used gear
that trickles down), there is little that should hold one back from
producing.

I just wish I could have had all this back in the day, when things
were really primitive, so that I could have documented years of work
in a digital format. My humble beginning stories could qualify me to
run for public office.

: )

I first encountered Dan Stearns through the underground home taper
networking movement that was so active there for about 15 years (way
pre-internet/computer for me) - I know he would have a few things to
say about what it was like to make music with little. Of course, you
young "whipper-snappers" out there won't know what the heck I'm
talking about, as you've never had to walk 10 miles to school
barefooted in the snow, or chop wood for the stove when you got there
to thaw out your feet - or hook up the oxen to the cart to go off to
church, or grow your own food, or make your own Banjer out of an old
gourd and some bailing wire. Well truth is, I can't tell you much
about this either, but I can tell you lots about what it's like to
make music with a 4 track cassette recorder. Quite analogous to the
Paleolithic Period, when we used to pragmatically bang on what ever
we had - you know stones and bones, and the like. But man -
microtones were big back then! Ah - the good old days! Don't you
miss'em?

[Insert image of Ape-like Man-Thing throwing bone into air, like on
2001 Space Odyssey, with accompanying theme]

--- In tuning@y..., "J Scott" <xjscott@e...> wrote:
>
> At this time I think it would be appropriate to note that
> I have typically found a self-defeating attitude among
> many would-be composers that they "can not" do anything
> because they don't have the right technology, or it is not
> available at the right price, or it doesn't come in the
> right color, or whatever. As an example, I will mention an
> extremely well known computer music researcher who
> believed himself a composer but had written absolutely
> nothing that anyone could remember ever since he wrote an
> article 'proving' that the MIDI interface was too slow for
> serious music. He knew that someday though, people would
> realize he was write and there would be something better.
> When that happened, he would once again be able to write
> music. It's true that MIDI is relatively slow compared to
> how it could be if the world was perfect but let's face it
> -- MIDI is here to stay and it's long past time to deal
> with it.
>
> If anyone recognizes in themselves that they have all
> these big plans and they never even get started on them,
> much less finish them because of an ever changing ongoing
> set of excuses, the fact is they need to get their act
> together, sit down and do something with what they have
> and stop talking about it. I often hear from many people
> about their great ideas and if 1/10th of 1% of the
> population acted on any of their great ideas, all the
> world's problems would have been solved a long time ago.
> Let's stop talking and start writing music, designing
> beautiful things, building them, raising gardens, planting
> flowers, finding things to praise in others, being nice to
> our friends and neighbors, treating others better, driving
> less, producing less garbage, polluting less, and helping
> other people along more.

This last part here comes from a wise and beautiful spirit, speaking
in a language of love! This is such a precious and greatly needed
thing in our time. The True Role of the Artist in a Culture shines
through in this writing. There's so much more to it all, than the
moments of "ego gratifying, glory on the stage", that much music has
evolved toward these days - especially the variety that is spoon-fed
through the "Corporate Content Controlling, Mass Marketing Media
Machine", which dominates almost all except our immediate hearts.

Even though it is my well worn Mantra, I must recite it here again in
order to harmonize my voice with my dear friend Jeff:

Let's harness this Life, and this Moment for the betterment of all
that may come. Make Music - do Good - Love One Another! There's no
time to waste!

Tenderly,

Jacky Ligon

>I wrote:
>(Very occasionally there
>> will be invisible and spurious characters in a text file that
>> cause Csound to crash, but that's the fault of the word
>> processor, not Csound.)
>
Jeff responded:

>If you have a program that *crashes* when reading a text
>file that has 'spurious' characters, or incorrectly
>formatted information, or whatever, then you have a
>program with serious bugs that should be corrected.

I should respond that I don't remember in all of those cases whether Csound
actually crashed. I do know that in some cases it gave compilation errors
without actually crashing, so I should have been more careful in what I
wrote. That said, there are plenty of examples Csound users can recount of
the program crashing when it should have handled errors more gracefully.
Unfortunately, because opcodes have been written by many different people,
their error handling sometimes lacks consistency.

There are also bugs that creep in, of course, though I must say that John
ffitch does a superb job of tracking most of them down and fixing them in
relatively short order. Csound list subscribers frequently alert him and
others users to these bugs on the Csound list. All of this, needless to
say, comes with the territory, though in general I find Csound (these days)
much more reliable than many other freeware packages, especially given its
size and complexity.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^ Bill Alves email: alves@hmc.edu ^
^ Harvey Mudd College URL: http://www2.hmc.edu/~alves/ ^
^ 301 E. Twelfth St. (909)607-4170 (office) ^
^ Claremont CA 91711 USA (909)607-7600 (fax) ^
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