It's been a while since I last posted. I learned a new programming language (Haskell). Today I completed my first Haskell project, an arpeggiator for Csound score files. It does more than just arpeggios -- it calculates any number of arbitrary parameters and outputs them to the score.

Objective

As you may have inferred from my path so far, I'm learning each opcode one by one. I read the documentation, set up a test system, and then try different variations to see if I can generate a sound that I like. Today I'm working with hsboscil.

I'm almost back to Csounding.

I got distracted this week. For various reasons, mostly related to hardware, I've been having a lot of audio problems. I finally got sick of it and decided to start over, with a clean slate, in a new Linux distro, using the sensible and varied packages at Planet CCRMA.

Objective

To create a richly textured, bell- or chime-like sound using additive synthesis.

Strategy

The opcode I chose for this experiment was adsynt.

Objective

To create a (stereo) synthesized pad similar to a flute -- yet strange -- using granular synthesis.

Strategy

Again I'm using diskgrain for the synthesis, this time with a new idea: to create a stereo pad by slight variation of the grain size of the right and left channels. This should smooth out the 'bumps' and create an interesting stereo texture.

Objective

To develop a prototype strategy for (highly flexible) sound morphing using granular synthesis.

Strategy

My first attempt makes use of diskgrain. Ideally, there is a smoother way to transition between the sounds than I have chosen here (probably by altering the density of the grains). However, I spent most of the evening learning to make the opcode work and how to set the parameters properly.

Greetings, everyone. I've been away from Csound for a while.

I'd like to say I'm returning; but to return, I'd have to be back where I started.

Impossible.

Here's what happened.

I've been working with realtime Csound as a side project for a while, now. I decided to write up a short list of some of the tips and tricks I've discovered.

J. Knapka has been hard at work developing abcsound. I have actually taken it for more than one test drive. However, today, I completed a small scale compositional project using it. Not bad for an alpha stage module!

Now I understand. Realtime MIDI has my full attention.

For once, this will be a short article. Below, I've posted four simple bass instruments. I've been generating samples to use in Renoise (which, by the way, is available for Linux); I wanted a set of simple, but powerful bass sounds -- completely clean, and hugging the 16 bit maximum.

Around nine months ago, I wrote a module called pcsets: Pitch Class Sets for Python. Since then, I've tried to improve it, but found it difficult to do so -- it seems like I actually got it right the first time. However, pcsets now has a derivative: I've adapted it to handle the base-13 Bohlen-Pierce scale.

I have revised my original Python converters for the Bohlen-Pierce scale. After reading more about the scale on The Bohlen-Pierce Site, I discovered there was already an existing tuning system standard.