This issue of the Csound Journal brings some articles presented at last December's Sounds Electric 5 Festival/Conference, which was dedicated to Csound. The conference featured five concerts, including one solely dedicated to pieces made with Csound and the 'concert debut' of Csound 5, and a number of seminars presented by speakers from six different countries. SE 05 was an intense weekend of music and ideas, which hopefully will continue resonating with this issue of the Journal. The conference was very useful in that it provided a meeting point for some of us in the Csound community, so that we could sit together and talk about some of the questions relating to the software and where it is going. The details of the release of Csound 5, which will already have happened when this issue of the Journal is out, was one of the major points that were worked out at that weekend; by the end of December we had the release candidate packages out, a month later, Csound 5 was released.
As far as I am aware, this year marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Csound and so it appears to be an ominous year for the Csound community, as the modern, up-to-date, powerful and 'definitive' version 5 is out. It would be perhaps an interesting time to put together a full-scale Csound conference (SE 05 was effectively a 'proof-of-concept'), so that we can all meet, play, listen, discuss and share our work with this wonderful piece of software. Anyone else interested?
-- Victor Lazzarini