CSound Features - Tune Smithy

Explore the capabilities of CSound with ease. Select the CSound instruments you want to use from a list, and just as for ordinary midi instruments, you can set them in any pan position to build up your orchestra. Then you can use your orchstra to render any midi clip directly to CSound.

Once you have CSoundAV installed, you can even play your CSound orchestra in real time via midi, from your music notation software or PC keyboard.

A selection of example CSound instruments are included, and veteran CSound coders can easily add their own or other instruments to the list.

CSound is a music synthesis system that normally requires some programming skills to use. But there is no need to do any programming to use the example CSound instruments included in FTS.

A bit of work is needed to port new CSound instruments so that they can be used with FTS,- if they are in the unified CSD format, then you just need to add an extra section to specify what parameters the instrument expects, and to give preset values for them all, and decide which of them you want the user to be able to specify.

Example recording

Here is a recording of a couple of the Tune Smithy fractal tunes, played on CSound five fold resonated noise, a sound somewhere between the sound of the wind and a whistle. The tuning is one used by Pygmies, from the SCALA archive.

What is CSound?

CSound is free open source software for musical sound synthesis, developed as a collaborative project by many experts in the field since 1985 when it was first created by Barry Vercoe. Many interesting and unusual sounds have been created for it. Unfortunately though it is a versatile tool for those with some programming experience, it has a reputation of being hard to use, which has often been something of a barrier for non techy users.

The automatic CSound orchestra maker in FTS makes CSound instruments available to complete newbies to CSound, with no programming background or experience.

Record your playing directly to CSound as you play.

If you haven't installed CSound then you have to do that first of course. This is very easy with the latest CSound installers. Then select CSound as the recording type in the Record to File window, and you are all set to go.

When the recording is finished then the CSound file gets rendered automatically into an audio file using your selection of CSound instruments.

Play on several CSound instruments at once.

Here is where you select the instruments for each part

To change the instrument for any of the sixteen parts, just highlight the part and select any CSound instrument you like from the drop list at the bottom. You can then use these sixteen parts for the sixteen midi channels of a midi file or for the midi channels routed to FTS from any music notation software using a virtual midi cable.

Auto converted DX7 patches

The DX7 instruments in the list are auto converted from DX7 patches - the Yamaha DX7 (1983-6) was the first commercially successful synthesizer, and is regaraded with affection by musicians and composers because of the wide range of interesting sounds that have been made for it. Jeff Harrington has written a program to auto convert DX7 patches to CSound instruments, and I have updated it to make the output compatible with the FTS orchestra builder.

There are large freely available libraries of DX7 patches which you can convert to CSound in this way and then immediately use them in your CSound recordings in FTS.

Play in real time using C-SoundAV

You can also play the CSound instruments in real time using the option "Play highlight in C-SoundAV" - if you have CSound AV installed.

You can auto select which midi device to use to relay to CSoundAV, and which audio device CSoundAV should use to play the sounds, and you can also use pitch polyphony with your CSound instruments (this lets you have several pitch bends at once in the same midi channel - a rarely used alternative interpretation of the Midi Spec for pitch bends which is easy to implement with CSound)

Tweaking parameters for individual instruments

In the More version of this window you can tweak the individual instruments using the parameters assigned to it by the CSound developer:

You will notice that each instrument has a set of parameters in the Params list opposite it. When you select a new CSound instrument then the params for that part get automatically updated to suitable numbers for your instrument.

As you learn more about CSound you may want to experiment with varying the parameters to tweak the individual instruments. If it doesn't work out, just reselect the original instrument from the drop list, to set the parameters back to the preset values guaranteed to work for that instrument.

Advanced techy users can also edit the CSound code for individual instruments. For instance it would be an easy change to edit the five fold resonated noise to make a six fold resonated noise instrument, or four fold resonated noise etc, and compare them.

At no time do you ever need to edit the CSound code for a complete orchestra with this way of working. Instead you work with individual instruments.

FTS automatically makes the CSound score for your notes as you play, using your chosen parameters for each instrument. It also makes a complete CSound orchestra for you consisting of all the instruments you need for the recording, in the desired stereo pan position for each one.

This is normally an intricate techy thing to do for CSound, requiring some programming capabilities on the part of the user. But you don't need to concern yourself with any of that. FTS automatically renumbers any tables, score initialisation statements, and instrument numbers in order to construct the orchestra and score needed for your music.

Adding your own CSound instruments

Techy users who want to can edit the code for each of the example instruments, and also use them as a basis to make new CSound instruments.

You can convert existing CSound instruments to make them compatible with the FTS orchestra builder - this is a fairly easy task, involving adding a couple of extra sections to the unified CSound file for your instrument (a section describing the parameters, and a section with any initial score statements, e.g. tables required by the instrument).

Often CSound instruments consist of one "master" instrument that receives the score instructions, and other instruments that don't play notes directly, but are needed by the main instrument in order to function. That's also no problem, just include all the instruments you need in the one file and make sure that all the numbers of the instruments in your file are less than 100 (they normally are anyway).

FTS will automatically group the instruments together appropriately when it combines all your individual instrument "orchestras" together to make the complete Csound orchestra. It does that by renumbering the instruments and assigning unique numbers to them all, so that there is no confusion. For instance the instrument assigned to channel 1 will be given the number 100, and any extra instruments it requires will be given numbers in the range 100 to 200. The instrument assigned to channel 2 is given the number 200, with its extra instruments in range 200 to 300, and so on.

To make a new instrument from scratch, then edit one of the existing ones, or just enter the desired name into the CSound Instruments for Parts window (Ctrl + 169) and click Edit to make an example csd file with further instructions.

You only need to do this once - once you have converted your CSound instrument by adding this extra information then it is available for use by the orchestra builder just like the other instruments.

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You can use the CSound features with many of the Tasks - show the Record to File window (Ctrl + 11) and the CSound Instruments for Parts window (Ctrl + 169)

CSound Features - Overview
One of the many features that come as part of Fractal Tune Smithy

Intro

Example recording

What is CSound?

Record your playing directly to CSound as you play.

Play on several CSound instruments at once.

Auto converted DX7 patches

Play in real time using C-SoundAV

Tweaking parameters for individual instruments

Adding your own CSound instruments

Where to find this feature

CSound Features - Overview One of the many features that come as part of Fractal Tune Smithy

Intro

Example recording

What is CSound?

Record your playing directly to CSound as you play.

Play on several CSound instruments at once.

Auto converted DX7 patches

Play in real time using C-SoundAV

Tweaking parameters for individual instruments

Adding your own CSound instruments

Where to find this feature

CSound Features - Overview
One of the many features that come as part of Fractal Tune Smithy