[sdiy] Jean-Claude Risset, Shephard etc.

[Richard Wentk]

At 13:42 01/03/2005, David J. Hughes wrote:
>Richard,
>
>on 1/3/05 1:21 PM, Richard Wentk at richard at skydancer.com wrote:
>
> > Ya think? I know someone who built themselves a complete performance synth
> > in Csound. It only took them four years.
>
>Four years... err, that's a long, long time...

Isn't it. This was for a synth that would capture keyboard phrases in real 
time, loop them, drive a couple of virtual softsynths and play drum samples.

It's sort of impressive he got it working, but it seems like the long way 
round.

> > It's a rather stupid language in many of ways. Max/MSP is much more
> > productive, but - of course - costs money.
>
>I've used both briefly and neither session was particularly productive, much
>to my dismay. Some of the Csound digital filter emulations are very good.

They both have steep learning curves, but Max/MSP seems far more 
musician-friendly and generally capable.

Csound is really a kind of programmer's sand pit. It's very rare to find 
musicians using it on a regular basis.

>Any other packages available?

Only Reaktor, which is much more synthy, but lacks some of the cleverer 
features in Csound - especially the FFT/spectral processing possibilities.

If NI added those I'd likely never touch Csound again.

I wish they'd improve the oscillators and filters in Reaktor too. They're 
okay, but they could be a lot better.

Richard