Re: [linux-audio-dev] CSound usability (was: Common synthesizer, interface...) - Linux-audio-dev

3 May 2005

Hi Toby and All,

...
 But from my (limited) experience I see that not only
does writing a
CSound instrument require knowledge of the CSound language and of its
architecture (that's obvious), but that *incorporating* an existing
CSound instrument into a new composition requires almost the same
skills.  And those are computer programmer-level skills, not average
music writer-level ones. 
I would say that most computer music people who use sequencers do not write their own
instruments either, rather opting for instruments built by someone else and using presets
and modification of parameters via GUI.  The same is possible in Csound to reuse someone
else's instruments and only explore the instrument's qualities via configuration
with text.  With blue, you can create a GUI for instruments using it's builtin UI
Builder (http://csounds.com/stevenyi/blue/blueDocs/html/blueSynthBuilder.html).  Also, you
can trade instruments--UI, instrument code, and presets--via the builtin BlueShare
community interface.  (i.e. explore the instruments on the server, download directly to
your instrument library and start working).  So, with the BlueSynthBuilder instruments and
the PianoRoll, you can really get to working with Csound with a minimal amount of Csound
knowledge.

...
 Let's make a comparison, although a simple, maybe
unworthy one: Reasonâ„¢.
Novice users don't *need* to know how the MalstrÃ¶m* works to be able to
1. load a patch 2. give it MIDI input and 3. start playing.  They only
need that kind of skill if they want to make their own patches or modify
existing ones.  (*: a small piece of soft-synth found in Reasonâ„¢)

Granted, the power of any synth lies in customization, but IMHO part of
its *usability* lies in being able to play it *without* knowing how to
program it.  That's what presets are for anyways!

I'm under the impression that CSound fails right there. 
I wouldn't quite agree. As mentioned above, one can reuse others' instruments with
Csound and do the same thing as you mention, not concerning themselves with programming
the instrument but exploring the parameters of the instrumet.  With Csound alone it would
be text as the interface versus Maelstrom's GUI interface, with blue there would be
not much difference except blue's UI is not realtime.

...
 An ORC file you say?  Most of the instruments I've
seen need both and
ORC and a SCO file to be of any use (problem #1.)  Moreover, since you
need to come up with a single ORC and a single SCO to make CSound render
your composition, you have to merge the various ORC/SCO file-pairs of
the instruments you want to use, along with the additional SCO file
containing the actual notes (problem #2) and AFAIK you need vast
knowledge of the ORC and SCO syntax to be able to do it (problem #3.) 
blue has many features for orchestra management as well as SCO handling and generation via
it's SoundObjects that generally alleviates issues as mentioned above with orc/sco
file management.

...
 I could go on, but I think you see my point.  (Unless
I'm seriously
misunderstanding how CSound works nowadays, in which case I'll apologize
to everybody and go read some CSound mailing list archives!) 
Well, I wouldn't say you've misunderstood Csound entirely, but just wanted to
offer another view of Csound via my program blue in this message that may make Csound
appear a bit differently than as you imagine.  

steven