A few weeks ago, I found something amazing: the Bohlen-Pierce Scale. To simplify my life, I designed a pitch class converter to allow scorefile input in the form T.pc (tritave, dot, pitchclass). It can handle two forms of the scale, in equal temperament and just intonation. And just to make things a bit more interesting, I created a demo -- complete with an announcer ;-)

The BP Scale

I think it's about time I posted this, as it's been sitting around here for some time, and sees quite a bit of use.
[Updated 3 Dec 2008 -- see end of full posting.]

A year or so back, I was getting all frustrated because I couldn't find anything that I could play from keyboard that really sounded like the Hammond organs I was hearing on record. The one on my new digital piano was particularly awful. Then I came across Hans Mikelson's "Rotor Organ" here, and a lot of my frustration disappeared.

One of the best uses I've found for Csound is experimenting with music in different tuning systems. About a year ago, I got into Pitch Class Sets (even writing a Python module called pcsets). Long before that point, however, I was into jazz, and the traditional chord-scale theory.

All three now collide.

(Continued from part 1, part 2.)

I decided to voice the melody using the vibes opcode. Here's where I met my first major problem ... and made a major discovery.

(Continued from part 1.)

For the sparse chordal accompaniment, I tried to get an effect like a chorus of strings. Instead, what I have sounds similar to an accordion, or some other reed instrument. I used wgbow as the basis for the instrument, but the sound was a bit harsh -- I rolled off the highs a bit with a tone control.

I've been a musician for many years. However, I'm always trying to learn something new; that's how I came to play bass, guitar, keys, and drums. But now, I'm exploring the area just beyond the horizon -- software synthesis and composition. For the past few months, I've been learning Csound.

It all began innocently enough, with me exploring the patches on my Nord Lead 2X. As I worked through them, I began to see the patterns, and think of other ways the sounds could be combined. Well, a hardware synth is very convenient, but not exactly trainable ;-)

As detailed in my previous entry, I endeavored to create a song in Csound using only a very basic oscil/linen instrument and a simple sine wave ftable. Attached is the mp3. I certainly learned a lot going through this process, and I’m eager to begin work on next month’s track.

Dear Csound People,

I'm William. I am a student who has moderate interest in csounds. I have only compiled and listened to the simplest of sounds, like a three tone song.

I am interested in csounds because I am interested in making creative algorithms.

I am not so interested in using prefabricated modules or typing scores out by line. For those things, I think a sequencer host program like FL studio, Logic etc. would be more productive.

I have just downloaded Csound but unlike other downloaded software where you are led through the installation process there is none as far as I can see with Csound.

Although I am a musician I hope I do not have learn any programming to use Csound ? Is there a user friendly graphic form of Csound to make composition intuitive ?

I have seen on Amazon a book on Csound written I believe by one of the guys who wrote the programme. Would my above questions be answered by the book.

Please reply to jackgorelick26@hotmail.com

thanx to university of piraeus libre software society i am going to make a presentation of csound this friday on a computer department lab.

it's going to be an introductory presentation with emphasis on orchestra and score syntax and some demonstrative examples.

I've been wondering about this for years. When I try to use the sine opcode to create waveforms, I run into two glitches. The basic csd (complete csd attached) below should generate a nice, 200 seconds long, sinewave with a frequency of 4000/(2pi)=636.619... hz.

This works for the first 4 seconds of the output file. Then the pitch rises about 1% and remains there until 126 seconds in, at which point the pitch drops drastically to about 430 hz ( two-thirds?).

Anyone have any idea what's going on?

First off... special thank you to: [www.crow-crow.com] and [www.skwrk.net] for checking out my earlier work.

I have fixed the old bugs and Added some new process and GUI features.
Operates with or without Midi.
There is even a Circuit Bending feature!!!

Download at:
http://mezcel.googlepages.com/csound_ghostwriter

Homepage at:
http://mezcel.googlepages.com/

If you pass through this way... Tell me what you think.

Background Note:
Csound Ghost_Writer evolved as an .orc generator for testing different opcodes. I eventually streamlined it for key opcodes for IDM musicians.

The jEdit Syntax Highlighter Mode for Csound 5.08 is now available. You can pick it up here:

http://www.thumbuki.com/csound/jedit/

Hi -- I'm new here, but I hope this might be of interest to some people. One thing I've never been particularly good at is creating interesting Score files to test Orchestras with, and it struck me that existing standard midifiles might be a good starting point.

I figured something for this ought to exist already, and searching the web turned up a link or two, but they all arrived at dead ends, so I wrote my own. The Ruby language seemed to be a natural medium for this (especially as I'd already written a midifile handling module).

This is a collection of various Autotune patches. "autotune" is an effect that pitch-shifts a monophonous input to the nearest halftone.

The code is not ready yet, more in a beta stage, and may contain bugs. I'd be glad about any feedback.