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Last year Ibought the book, downloaded everything, and played with it for a week or two. Idefinitely think that it's an interesting technology, especially since it's "open" code. For those who don'tknow what it is, it's kind of a "rendering" engine for sound. Just as you may take a CAD drawing in DXF format andrender it (ray trace, etc.) into a 3D image, CSound takesa scripted music file wherein all musical events are defined (not unlike a MIDI file...in fact, there are conversionutilities) and it also takes in an instrument definition script. Using the two,it renders an output audio file. The instrument definitions can be ANYTHING,and there are already huge libraries of 'primitives,' although someare so sophisticated it's hard to use that word. Unlike a Nord Modular or something where you can add modules up untilthe processor tops out, all you add to CSound isrendering time. So you can stack on stuff to your heart's content.
Phrases like "limitedonly by your imagination" are overused, but in this case, if you have thepatience, there's pretty much NOTHING you cannot do with CSound. It's extremely flexible, but very low-level.It's a bit like programming the nuances of a WAV file in assembler.Conceptually, it's not difficult-you can do a little reading andthen sit down with Notepad and in a few minutes have a sawtoothwave sweeping the spectrum. But the leap from there to a quadraphonic symphonyis immense. With some nice interfacing tools, which people only just seem to bedeveloping, CSound could be incredible, especially ascomputer power keeps racing ahead... the rendering is approaching real-timefor many things.
Now that I'vesaid all that, I just didn't have the time to dig into CSound much further. I put it on the shelf thinking I'dhave time for it in my retirement.
I was interestedin CSound because I thought that it might be possibleto write a VB program as a front end that would allow me to easily create wild samplemaps for my Kurzweil KVP2000. (Yeah, I admit it, Ihave a sampler). But I never had the time to work it out.
At the time Iwas dabbling, there was talk of a uProcessorbeing developed to work with CSound that was to becommercially available. I read the blurbs thinking that some clever personmight incorporate that chip into an MOTM module, with some CVs in andprogrammable, somehow, from a PC. With something like that you would have acompletely reconfigurable module that fits right in with the system.
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Any MOTMers out there play withCsound? Am curious to know if the results are worth the learning curve. Yes, Csound is about as far off topic as one can get. Yet, makinginteresting noises is pretty cool no matter how it is done. (Csound is afree, script-based music instrument definition language. One can createinstruments, assemble them into "orchestra" groups and then throw MIDI sequencesat them to be played. Search the web for "Csound" or go towww.csound.org for a taste. The source code to Csound is freelyavailable, too. Programmer types can have their way with it.)