I taught myself how to use Csound, I have no special
background in
mathematics or computer programming.
But you're on the LAD list! Just subscribing to a list is a harder
technical task than some musicians I know are capable of ;)
I think by the time you're done learning how to
write your
sequencer/synthesizer you'll have spent considerably more time learning
how to do that than you would have spent learning how to use Csound. ;-)
Yeah but not the point - the programmer does the work so the users
don't have to.
The sco file
supplies the instrument (s) with parameter values and event times
(start/duration). Contemporary Csounders usually use the CSD unified
file format to define both instrument and score within a single file.
In my experience (correct me if I'm wrong), many instruments don't
work unless you set up (eg) the right wavetables in the .sco file. I
don't know how much the .csd format helps this.
But it's certainly true that if you put all the right bits of CSound
add-ons together, you can get a nice and usable system. Modularity is
nice, but the lists of add-ons at
www.csounds.com is pretty
frightening.
My 2 cents