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From: rreid@DPW.COM (r l reid )
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: Csound and synthesis books
Message-ID: <3308@esquire.dpw.com>
Date: 18 Jun 91 00:44:10 GMT
References: <1991Jun13.210000.1@cc.helsinki.fi>
Reply-To: rreid@esquire.UUCP (r l reid )
Organization: Playdoh's Republic
Lines: 32

In article <1991Jun13.210000.1@cc.helsinki.fi> jalkio@cc.helsinki.fi writes:
>Are there any books on Csound or software music synthesis and algorithms
>in general? Reading the Csound docs is a bit "experimental" if you have
>stepped to this kind of system from commercial hardware synthesizers :-)

The CSound manual is actually quite good for that - has a tutorial and
everything.  But for background, get hold of these:

	Computer Music
	Charles Dodge and Thomas Jerse
	Schirmer Books

	Elements of Computer Music
	F Richard Moore
	Prentice Hall

>Oh, and I would like to get recommendations about which
>languages/systems are good to make music with. I have a NeXTstation and
>enough hard disk space (about 700MB) to do some composition.
You have the necessary hardware.  As for language, it depends an 
awful lot on what you intend to do with it.  Most everyone I
know who does software synthesis uses a little bit of everything.

>I thought that Csound is "the best" but then I heard that it isn't so
>spectacular.
Such generalizations serve no purpose.  Csound has certain advantages
(rather complete documentation being one of them) while cmix has
total flexibility (but very little documentation).  Saying that
"CSound isn't so spectacular", tho is a real slap in the face -
would you prefer to write you wavetables by hand?

Ro