The Csound Book: Perspectives in Software Synthesis, Sound Design, Signal Processing,and Programming (Paperback)

by Richard Boulanger (Editor) "Csound is a powerful and versatile software synthesis program..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, Computer Music Journal, Englewood Cliffs (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review


"This is the most important book written in the last decade in the field of electronic music. Together with the new Csound technology, it will revolutionize electronic music."
—Max Mathews, Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, Stanford University

Product Description
"This is the most important book written in the last decade in the field of electronic music. Together with the new Csound technology, it will revolutionize electronic music." -- Max Mathews, Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, Stanford University

Created in 1985 by Barry Vercoe, Csound is one of the most widely used software sound synthesis systems. Because it is so powerful, mastering Csound can take a good deal of time and effort. But this long-awaited guide will dramatically straighten the learning curve and enable musicians to take advantage of this rich computer technology available for creating music.

Written by the world's leading educators, programmers, sound designers, and composers, this comprehensive guide covers both the basics of Csound and the theoretical and musical concepts necessary to use the program effectively. The thirty-two tutorial chapters cover: additive, subtractive, FM, AM, FOF, granular, wavetable, waveguide, vector, LA, and other hybrid methods; analysis and resynthesis using ADSYN, LP, and the Phase Vocoder; sample processing; mathematical and physical modeling; and digital signal processing, including room simulation and 3D modeling. The book comes with two CD-ROMs that include more than forty additional HTML chapters; hundreds of musical compositions; more than 3,000 working instruments; the Csound application for Macintosh, PC, and Linux; and a number of Csound audio and score-generating utilities.

Book/CD-ROM Contributors include: Bill Alves, Stephen Beck, Mike Berry, Riccardo Bianchini, Kim Cascone, Michael Clarke, Richard Dobson, Archer Endrich, John ffitch, Rajmil Fischman, Michael Goggins, Matt Ingalls, Richard Karpen, Eric Lyon, Gabriel Maldonado, Hans Mikelson, Jon Nelson, Dave Phillips, Jean Piché, Russell Pinkston, Paris Smaragdis, Erik Spjut, Barry Vercoe, Scotty Vercoe.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 782 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (March 6, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262522616
• ISBN-13: 978-0262522618
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 8 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #486,876 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Resource for Computer Music, April 18, 2000

By	Michael Gogins (New York City) - See all my reviews

First, I have to admit I'm one of the contributors to the book. However, I'll make every effort to provide an unbiased review to help you decide if the book is for you.

For those who don't know, Csound is a software synthesizer written by Barry Vercoe in the 1980s that continues to be used by mostly university-based composers of electronic music and computer music. Lately, because today's ordinary personal computers are more powerful than the mainframes used by the pioneers of computer music and come with decent sound cards, and also due to the spread of software synthesis into popular music with techno and electronica, independent composers and even some more pop-based musicians are beginning to use Csound.

I find that the book is an enormously useful resource for computer musicians, even though the material is sometimes repetitive and is of uneven quality. With about 50 contributors, sometimes more than one person covers the same ground. Probably a sizeable chunk of the people seriously using Csound contributed to the book!

Csound is one of the most powerful software synthesizer in existence (it is unquestionably the most powerful one that costs nothing!), and that makes it one of the most powerful musical instruments in history. However, it's not a physical object but a computer program, and in fact it's not even a finished program, it's a programming language. So, it's hard to use Csound, and even harder to get started.

Not surprisingly, one of the main purposes of the Csound book is to explain how to program Csound. I find that the book does a pretty good job of this for beginners, and there is not much competition, so if you want to learn Csound, you need this book. However, the book is a collection of articles and does not present a seamless progression from easy to difficult, nor are all of the chapters of high quality, so if you're a beginner, you may find it hard to discern your path through the book. It may be that the biggest gap, as far as beginners are concerned, is not technical at all, but rather the lack of a clear explanation of where computer music fits into the larger world of music. I doubt that many pop musicians realize that digital audio, hard disk recording, software synthesis, and digital audio signal processing were all invented by academic computer music people! Nor do I think many people understand how the aesthetic attitude and compositional techniques arising from avant-garde electronic and computer music have come to permeate contemporary rap, techno, and film music. A brief introductory chapter on basic history would have been most welcome.

If you already have experience with Csound, or with other software synthesizers such as Reaktor or Buzz, or with analog synthesizers or virtual analog synthesizers such as the Nord Virus, then you may find the book quite useful because it explains the principles of digital signal processing and software sound synthesis very clearly with numerous examples and articles. Best of all, each example comes with a working Csound orchestra and score, and on the CD ROMs that accompany the book, there are sound examples that you can play right away to hear how the orchestras work. If you then start modifying the example orchestras and listening to the results, you are on your way to becoming a Csound composer.

In fact, I am sure the book would make an excellent textbook for a conservatory course in electronic music or computer music, because the CD ROMs contain the Csound program (which is freeware!) and other auxiliary programs, which in themselves are a rich resource, as well as the many examples and a variety of actual compositions created with Csound. Unfortunately, the compositions are not often up to the usually high standard of the technical material. This is a pity, because there are some wonderful pieces of music done, in whole or in part, using Csound. Sill, no other computer music textbook (and I have them all, as far as I know) has so many working examples of instruments all ready to run, or even has any real sample pieces at all. So if you're a composition or synthesis teacher, you need to check it out.

Finally, if you're a composer of electronic music or computer music, you cannot find anything this useful anywhere! The only comparison I can think of is the tracker resources on the Web, but they do not cover nearly as much ground. The vast library of sample instruments and compositions is a bleeping treasure trove waiting to be plundered. And thanks probably to the fact that the book's editor, Richard Boulanger, teaches at Berklee College where many jazzers and session players go, the examples are not limited to academic styles of music but also cross over into techno and pop. The CD ROM chapters, many of them by composers, discuss not only Csound, but also issues in music theory and composition that are relevant to computer music and indeed to music in general.

36 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A review from a different perspective, July 9, 2000

By	Daniel Mauck (Fairport, NY United States) - See all my reviews

I suppose that since I was confused just by the description of this book on the back, I probably shouldn't have bought it. But I did. I have a limited background in computer music, and had heard all about Csound and how great it was, and wanted to give it a shot. I had the Csound Reference Manual, which was not helpful at all, so I thought a book like this would be good to buy.

I would like to warn people that if you are looking to learn computer music on your own, this is not the book to start with. To really be able to use the book, you need to be very familiar with how computer music works, and with the major sound synthesis methods. I should add, too, that if you don't know much about computer music in the first place, Csound probably isn't the best choice for a program to learn it on. I was hoping for an organized introduction to Csound that would take me step by step through learning it, and that is not what this book is. To me, as a beginner, it's just a bunch of scattered information. And the CD's are confusing, as well. I had a hard time just finding the files to use for the first tutorial. Several of the example instruments require sound files that aren't even included in the same folder as the instrument's score and orchestra files.

Overall, to me, the book is a confusing, overwhelming mish-most of information that I mostly don't understand. Unfortunately, I can't return it because I opened the CD. If you are an experienced computer musician with some experience in Csound, or if you have a teacher to help you, this book would be great as it is full of excellent resources. But it's NOT for the novice computer musician! I should have gone through it more carefully before blowing my $55, so don't make the same mistake I did!

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's Come A Long Way Baby, December 29, 2000

By A Customer

While the price of the book is substantial, compare it to a college course in designing and manufacturing computer sounds... if there's one in your area. It must be said, CSOUND IS NOT AN EASY STUDY. I suspect that for most people, gaining fluency is a matter of YEARS, at least if you're not a dedicated sound hacker. But if you're determined and have some background in audio (if you don't... STOP HERE!), this book will help you to use Csound to make some interesting sounds quickly. The (literally) thousands of pre-designed instruments are ready to use... you only have to create the scores (or modify those provided). Creating scores is NOT a joy. Basically it means typing in long columns of numbers.... because every instrument "call" has to have n parameters sent to it. If that sounds like gobbledygook, you might want to pass on Csound for now. Would that there were a sophisticated tool to assist in the job. If it's here I haven't found it yet. My major nitpick with the book (which, if you're inclined, is full of intriguing concepts and tricks) is the disorganization of the CD-ROMs. Yeah it was a big job, and I guess nobody really wanted to tackle it properly. On the other hand, by creating your own organization, you'll more quickly grasp the scope of the wealth of material here. If you don't like technology and haven't the time to specify controls in detail, look elsewhere. Csound gives you the freedom to design sounds that have never been heard before... but you hafta be willing to part with some blood, sweat and tears.