Rating: 
Summary: If you've met Csound and thought you liked each other...
Review: ...this book will give you the grand tour of Csound, from theoretical and practical perspectives. It's a comprehensive discussion of computer music synthesis--with pictures of how the sounds may be created and lots of code samples.Been working with this book for about a month, just looking at it once in a while. I've been really pleased so far with the clear explanations of some of the more recent aspects of Csound such as fof, granular synthesis using grain and granule, and phase coding like linear predictive encoding. From a theoretical standpoint such things as modeling early hardware synths and are discussed. Also, the section on optimizing instruments has begun to save me a lot of processing time and shown me a good look under the hood of Csound. Csound is a command line synthesis program . It's freely available, and anyone unfamiliar with Csound and its cousins should get them first and play around. Csound is open source, but I think of it especially as being open architecture. Many of the rock stars of Csound have written articles for this book. I swear these cats live in a world unique to them. My job is to learn from it and make it rock. The two CDs are great--lots of supplemental information and opinion, as well as manuals and printable tables of reference. There's audio too.
Rating: 
Summary: The definitive Csound compendium
Review: A word of warning to electronic music newbies: Be sure to learn the fundamentals of synthesis and MIDI before venturing into the realm of Csound. This book assumes a level of knowledge regarding these subjects and will present an insurmountable challenge to someone with no programming experience. However, for those that do, it will present a whole new universe of possibilities. As a composition tool, there is nothing quite as extensive or powerful as Csound, which is why there is an equally extensive learning curve for its students. I feel that this book is probably better suited as a text for a college course rather than a stand-alone guide for DIYers. But in its defense, I belong to the latter category and have fared pretty well in learning the language. While I must criticize Mr. Boulanger for not giving thorough enough explanation to some critical topics in his book, overall--this is by and far the best resource for anyone attempting Csound. You will find the contents of the included CD-Roms to be an immense supplement to the book's chapters.
Rating:
Summary: The definitive Csound compendium
Review: A word of warning to electronic music newbies: Be sure to learn the fundamentals of synthesis and MIDI before venturing into the realm of Csound. This book assumes a level of knowledge regarding these subjects and will present an insurmountable challenge to someone with no programming experience. However, for those that do, it will present a whole new universe of possibilities. As a composition tool, there is nothing quite as extensive or powerful as Csound, which is why there is an equally extensive learning curve for its students. I feel that this book is probably better suited as a text for a college course rather than a stand-alone guide for DIYers. But in its defense, I belong to the latter category and have fared pretty well in learning the language. While I must criticize Mr. Boulanger for not giving thorough enough explanation to some critical topics in his book, overall--this is by and far the best resource for anyone attempting Csound. You will find the contents of the included CD-Roms to be an immense supplement to the book's chapters.
Rating:
Summary: Nobody Does it Better
Review: Beginners be warned. This is not a book that is designed to hold your hand. For that go to www.csounds.com and check out the beginners secton. Also join the online forums. This is the site that the author, Dr. Richard Boulanger maintains for people looking to get started with Csound. It is also the place most of the really good CSound software developers and users hang out. If you have explored synthesis on another platform, then this is the book for you. If you have explored CSound a bit, and want depth then this is the book for you. Dr. B has compiled resources and brings together the best of the CSound community in a compilation that is really a collection of CSound essays. Many of the articles are regretably brief. A few sections are missing all together. (Most notably the midi section is not included, and is still not written) But what is written in this book is the best information you can get anywhere on the subject of computer synthesis in ANY LANGUAGE. I need to clarify that a bit though, two new projects are on the way which will change that. Csound 5 is in developement, and MPEG 4 also has a world class sound engine. But in both cases these new technologies are based on the stuff in this book. Yes, that is right, MPEG 4 has a csound like engine in it. Csound is first rate. Nothing beats it. I have done the plugin thing, and downloaded or bought just about everything in synthesis available from anywhere. Some tools can offer you nice canned sounds, or pretty patch chords and knobs. But for pure raw power, flexability and creative oomph nothing can equal CSound. This book will take you from the world of patch chords and knobs into the world of programming. That is where the power is baby, in programming. Where anything can plug into anything. All you need are some programming chops and any music or noise you can dream up is at your finger tips. If it happens in any synth anywhere in the world, then eventually it will happen in CSound. And mostly it already does. And what is more, in CSound you can combine ANY methods of synthesis you want AT THE SAME TIME. No other synth can do that. Period. BTW the CSound software is free. That is right, free on the PC, free in Linux, and free on the mac. So buy the book, download the software, and meet everyone who wrote the book, and most everyone who writes anything to do with the CSound software on the CSounds web site. If that is not enough to convince you, consider this: Most of the sound designers in Hollywood use CSound. I know more than a few of them. The guy who invented Trance music, BH is a CSounder. Everyone in his studio owns a copy of this book! I could keep name dropping for a long while, but you get it. CSound is one of the best kept open secrets in the world.
Rating:
Summary: The ultimate in synthesis
Review: CSound is a multiplatform *free* software synthesis program. It's hard to use at first, but is the most powerful thing around.
Almost every synthesis technique you've ever heard of is implemented in a very flexible fashion. The first version came out in 1985, and it has been developing steadily since. This book contains separate articles by many authors, so there is something of a lack of overall coherence to the work. It comes with 2 CD-ROMs containing software for Mac, Linux and PC, hundreds of musical compositions, more than 3000 working instruments, and much more. There is a third CD-ROM available separately. This CD-ROM contains over 2000 orchestra and score text files, and the corresponding audio files in mp3 format. It is also possible to order separately an updated version of the 2 CD-ROMs that came with the book, from the same web site, whether or not you own the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for beginners
Review: Csound is probably the most powerful digital synthesizer software available. And it is essentially free. But writing code to produce music can feel like creating your own custom draw program from scratch to create a painting. There is no noodling with a keyboard or twisting knobs and listening to instant results. No, you create an .orc and a .sco file, one for the instruments and the other for the "notes"(though the language can be used to create filters and process sound). This gives you unlimited control, but you pay the price of programming headaches e.g. debugging, crashes, etc. There is also a very steep learning curve. Csound is a work in progress, though. Matt Ingalls's (and others) tireless work has made Csound easier to use, and has even updated it to Mac OS 10. He has also created an extension that allows Csound to interface with Max/MSP, perhaps simplifying the composers task. Nevertheless, Csound has a long legacy as a musicN language, and it has its roots in computer science. If you are getting started in electronic or computer music and have little background in the field, this book may ultimately prove frustrating. Chapter one provides a perfect example. It opens with an .orc file and uses terms like control rate and sampling rate, but it isn't until much later that we find out what these things mean. Much of the first section is difficult to work through because of this approach. I think that the book would benefit from a rewrite, and I mean truly rewriting section one from scratch so the foundation is Basics of Synthesis. A section written like a "Dummies" book would be helpful for beginners like me, while the Csound mavens could simply flip to chapter X,Y, or Z and read at their level. Otherwise, the author should dispense with the basics and focus on making this a book for those already familiar with Csound. Obviously, the author/editor put tremendous effort into this book, so it seems a pity that it is kind of poorly organized. Finally, The Csound Book would benefit from careful spell checking (the author refers to GEN21 creating "Poison" distributions).
After having spent a year with the Csound book, I can make some recommendations for someone wanting to start electronic composition. You must read Curtis Roads's Computer Music Tutorial, probably the best electronic music book written. Don't let the dry title fool you, it is great reading. It will teach you the fundamentals and will serve as a reference if you decide to tackle Csound. Or, consider using Max/MSP instead of Csound. It isn't free, but it does have a graphical interface, yet it does not sacrifice flexibility. And you can now use Csound as a sort of "plug in" for Max/MSP. If you want to make popular music, Csound will probably only prove useful if your current software can't make a sound that you want. As I said, Csound is a work in progress. A new book called "Virtual Sound" by Riccardo Bianchini and Alessandro Cipriani, reviewed in the Spring 2002 Computer Music Journal may be a better resource.
Rating:
Summary: Great Resource for Computer Music
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: The definitive guide to Csound
Review: First, I must say that I contributed to the CD-ROM included with the book, so my review is not unbiased. That said, I must also say that I find this book to be the definitive source of information for anyone wanting to learn about Csound. Yes, the writing can be technical, as is in the nature of the thing discussed, but the authors have everywhere endeavored to be clear and helpful. There's so much valuable material here, it's going to take me quite a while to get through it all. Btw, the CDs are organized into HTML docs on the one, Data/Apps on the other. And Csound itself is most definitely included: versions are available (on the Data/Apps CD) for DOS/Windows, DirectX, PPC, SGI, Linux, and ActiveX. All in all, a great companion to another MIT Press book, Curtis Roads' "Computer Music Tutorial".
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Summary: The Csound Book - The Definitive Csound Text
Review: I did not go to college. I have studied compositon, midi, digital synthesis, recording and computer technology on my own for many years. When I discovered Csound I knew immediately that I had found what I had been looking for my whole life. The problem was there were only scattered documents that could help me through the learning curve. Now, thanks to Dr. Boulanger and all involved with the Csound book, the definitive, soon to be historic, text on the Csound programming language is available. Many people labored long and at high personal cost to bring this text to the world and I for one will be forever grateful. If you want to learn to compose computer music in the 21st century, the Csound book is a must have.
Rating: 
Summary: Too long a wait? too many expectation?
Review: I have been subscribed to the csound mailing (on and off) list for 4 years now. All the topic of the book have been discussed at full length and sometimes even more thouroghly on the mailing list. This book was awaited for 2 years now and most of us thought it would never see the light. I am not impressed, Boulanger chapter, the main tutorial, is all over the place, it might waste time explaining what an envelope is and just fly over the FOSCIL oscillator, i.e. you cannot read this book away from your computer (you will need the reference to CSOUND which is not included in the book). The other chapters do a better job, even if there is a lot of crosstalk across chapters (granular synthesis is presented in several chapters, and some repeat the same material over and over). I find remarkably clear the chapters of Ffitch about the internal workings of CSOUND. The CD ROM. Never seen content so badly organized, half of it is a download of the CSOUND page at MIT press... the main cdrom has even the ad page for the imminent release of the book (which supposedly you are already reading). The content is layed out very badly, the navigation is atrocious. It is nice to have most of the scores rendered as audio file, however the choice of the format is unfortunate (quick time MOV) and you can hear compression artifacts in the audio samples (why not use a more down to earth MP3 which is not proprietary and it is still cross platform?) To wrap up, this is an "advanced topics in CSOUND" and not a book for everybody. CSOUND culture is for hackers, if you're one of them you'll benefit immensely from this book.
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