Csound: A sound and music computing system • Hacker News Board

Re: Csound: A sound and music computing system

#71

Post by acjohnson55 » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 5:43 AM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #60

flats wrote: post #40

Long-time user of Csound, Max, and Pd (& have spent a little time with ChucK & Supercollider). Max & Pd are fantastic for incorporating sensors & other physical interfaces, real-time interactivity, routing signals, creating visualizations, & all that. Supercollider is fantastic for generative music & using control flow compositionally. Csound, on the other hand, is really, really great for creating beautiful & nuance…

> beautiful & nuanced electronic compositions. wondering if you have any favorites that you can recommend.

Not the original author, but I wrote this short piece in CSound years ago for a class on electronic music composition: https://soundcloud.com/acjohnson/wanderers

It might give you a feel for how you can create compositions that sound very remote from what most people would think of as musical. The whole piece is synthesized sound with "instruments" consisting of various types of signal generators composed together.

Re: Csound: A sound and music computing system

#72

Post by acjohnson55 » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 5:52 AM UTC

rkagerer wrote: post #9

What does it do? These hint at some neat possibilities but I still don't get it: a sound and music computing system a tool for composing electro-acoustic pieces real-time

If you've ever seen a modular synth, like a Moog, it's basically a programmatic version of that. You wire the outputs of signal generators to the inputs of others to create instruments. Then you create a score, which triggers the instruments with input parameters at specified times, simulating the performance of your instruments or conducting of your orchestra. The output is either live sound or a sound file.

Re: Csound: A sound and music computing system

#73

Post by crucialfelix » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 5:54 AM UTC

kitotik wrote: post #23

I think most have moved on to supercollider or puredata. A proprietary but much more approachable and functional offshoot is Max/MSP.

I discovered Csound in 1998 and immediately loved it. 2 days later I discovered Supercollider and immediately switched and still use it.

I think Csound didn't have a real time mode back then. Many things have improved since then.

Regardless, many people do take to it and do amazing things with it and all these music systems extend the learnings from earlier systems.

Re: Csound: A sound and music computing system

#74

Post by jcelerier » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 6:42 AM UTC

DonHopkins wrote: post #37

Here are some notes I wrote about some visual programming languages and real time performance tools for music and video that I wrote to the LEV mailing list in 2000 (and some additional notes and email I saved over the years). https://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/visual-programming/b... That link also includes some interesting discussion with Jaron Lanier about visual programming language design. Image/ine was a s…

I'd be interested to get your opinion on https://ossia.io :)

Re: Csound: A sound and music computing system

#75

Post by hnhg » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 8:02 AM UTC

Optimal_Persona wrote: post #53

hnhg wrote: post #42

How does something like sonic-pi or tidal cycles compare with this? I wanted to try those out since they look fun and accessible. http://sonic-pi.net/ https://tidalcycles.org/

Sonic Pi (IMO) is very quick to get started with because it's batteries included - you have everything needed in a single installer. Within the UI are tutorials, samples, synths, effects, a language reference, metering, 10 code buffers, and an OSC server built in - so once you config audio/MIDI devices you should be good to go. Sonic Pi is based on a subset of Ruby (though it's not clear which Ruby version, and what'…

Very helpful, thanks.

Re: Csound: A sound and music computing system

#76

Post by rorywalsh » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 9:09 AM UTC

processing wrote: post #47

Love Csound. Does anyone use Csound for Live? It's no longer working since the Ableton 10.1 update and the Developers do not respond to emails. Incredible set of audio tools. https://csoundforlive.com/ Anyone managed to fix in Max/Cabbage for Live 10.1/Max 8.1?

Latest Csound object for Max is here: https://github.com/csound/csound_tilde/releases And I've not had an reports of problems with Cabbage in Live 10. It's what I use myself for testing..

Re: Csound: A sound and music computing system

#77

Post by severak_cz » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 9:15 AM UTC

zebproj wrote: post #54

Csound is a fantastic sound design tool. It was my main composition tool for many years, before I started building my own system. The score/orchestra paradigm is incredibly powerful. It's something I miss quite often in my current system. When I was in music school, I learned how to program by writing programs in Python to generate scores that could then be played by Csound. Scores are so trivial to generate, that yo…

> Writing Csound code feels more like patching a modular synthesizer rather than writing a computer program.

I agree with this point. I am using Csound for creating VST plugins (with Cabbage framework[1]) for which is Csound extremely productive. I can have working prototype (which I can actually play on my keyboard) ready in something like 15 minutes.

Once you get over somewhat strange syntax[2] and understand difference between k-time and i-time[3] you can do any DSP processing without actually diving into hard math.

Cabbage has nice beginner documentation on Csound[4].

[1]: https://cabbageaudio.com/

[2]: output operand, paramA, paramB

[3]: k-time - on every step of audio processing, i-time - on initialization of instrument/note

[4]: https://cabbageaudio.com/docs/file_structure_and_syntax/

Re: Csound: A sound and music computing system

#78

Post by rorywalsh » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 9:21 AM UTC

benpm wrote: post #6

TheAsprngHacker wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to explain why, for someone who hasn't used this tool?

the syntax for the language is horrible and very difficult to understand, the gui is hard to use and unstable, its just generally worse than other sound programming langs like supercollider

Csound is a programming language. Whatever GUI you are referring too is a third party application. There is no doubt the syntax takes a little getting used it, after all it is a direct descendant of the Music N languages. But in recent years the language has seen many improvements and updates.

Re: Csound: A sound and music computing system

#79

Post by tomduncalf » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 9:27 AM UTC

andrewg wrote: post #67

dominotw wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> beautiful & nuanced electronic compositions. wondering if you have any favorites that you can recommend.

This one’s my favorite: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TecDlpGAhq0 Really beautiful album, especially the 5.1 surround version.

Haha this was the first track I thought of, you have good taste :)

Re: Csound: A sound and music computing system

#80

Post by phronesis » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 9:35 AM UTC

zebproj wrote: post #51

phronesis wrote: post #48

This track by BT was written entirely in Csound and is one of my favourite pieces of electronic music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve8WaGmyhfI

Yeah this piece was a huge piece of inspiration for me when I was learning Csound. I actually had a chance to ask BT about this particular piece once and if the rumors were true about it being all done in Csound. The guitar riff you hear halfway through the piece is actually sampled and played via the diskin opcode. Other than that, all Csound. Still a very impressive feat, especially considering the fact that the pi…

Nice! I'd wondered about that guitar, it sounds impossibly real to be pure Csound. Thanks for the insight. And yes, I had the opportunity to listen to the whole album on a decent 5.1 system at uni a while back and it's pretty spectacular.