[chuck-users] Reading materials.

[Kassen]

On 9/12/06, babiakb at bellsouth.net <babiakb at bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> people might disagree with me, but i don't think most of what you said
> will help you.  for example, the csound book would help on all the above
> areas in depth, but i don't think you chuck music would be better.  i think
> roads computer music tutorial is the only thing anyone needs to start in
> computer music.  it's a great book.


I like the Csound handbook. It has a lot of ideas that can be applied in
many places; not just csound. I realy like how everything is "illustrated"
in code. Not only can you try what would happens aftermodification, the code
is often also another way of non-ambiguously re-wording what was said which
-at least to me- helps understanding.

I own both and while Roads gives a very solid intro into many things, the
Csound book takes the time to also go into less obvious areas, many of the
chapters are basically a introduction into somebody's pet field, illustrated
by code. I like that but it's not for everybody.



also, chuck is not really the most musical tool in it's current incarnation.


Well, that's a good topic for debate. I experience it as quite musical
myself.


  it's a lot like csound or supercollider.  it;s more for experimental
> synthesis, understanding sound, etc.


Realy? I thought it was for making one's own sequencer. I heard some people
use it for livecoding and some of those crazy Princeton people aparently
wrote a fun looking 3d game in it.

I've been thinking about making a coo-coo clock in it as well, if only I
could steal the time from the dos prompt....

In case of dire emergency I suppose you could use it as a teaching tool as
well ;¬)


 if you are just trying to make good new electronic music of any genre,
> ableton is the simplest path from brain to speaker, whether glitch, electro,
> classical, indie pop, trance, you name it.  the stars of music either use
> cubase/ableton/protools, or hardware.  mostly hardware.  for example,
> everyone says autechre uses maxmsp, but they don't  on envane and the
> previous album, they use max to control their hardware, and the max
> interface was self-designed.  albeton now does the same thing right out of
> the box.


Well, that's a nice topic that I'd love to debate. In fact I was using
Ableton since version2 and I started getting unhappy with it. Not enough
direct interaction, too hard torwrite pieces on stage, etc. So; I tried
trackers and hardware and in the end decided I didn't like any of them but
did like bits of all of them so I sat down and just started writing.

This "brain to speaker" thing is a big deal to me. Ableton does lots of
things out of the box, and they are great things but I found that they
weren't always my things and so not the sort of box (if I can abuse the
analogy) that I wanted to be in. for sure; now I'm in a smaller box (because
my own sequencer is quite primitive insome ways) and right now I have a
problem with note-off messages that cause hanging notes in a way I can't
trace yet but it's *my* box and I feel way more comfortable in it. This also
isn't some obscure "experimental" genre that couldn't be done otherwise, I
just wanted to do acid in away I felt ok with.



chuck for me is like supercollider, to make experimental sounds, learn about
> sound synthesis and algorithmic music.



Wonderfull! I heard it can do that as well. In fact I think it can do all of
the above things at the same time, sample accurately.


all these topics are covered beautifully in roads' book.


Indeed they are. It's a great book though I also have to add I was once
forced to check it in at a wardrobe because it could be used as a weapon
(true story).


  to just make a good tune, grab a damn guitar.


That's cool too, I like it but I realy couldn't make people pay to hear me
play it. Probably I couldn't even pay them for that.



  you don't chuck sine oscillators to dacs and then construct an lpf out of
> biquads to make music easily ;)  all that would be like two clicks in fl
> studio or ableton, and sound the damn same.  you do this to hold sound in
> your hands and learn.



Ableton has no biquads though and I wanted to get away from relying on the
mouse and the schreen during performance. I admit that you can go a long way
with two clicks; for a DAW it's a good program, I like it for some things
and happily paid for it up to version 4 (5 didn't bring that much extra for
me), it was a good investment.

probably going to get flamed for this pov, but that's my 2c.



No, not flamed, you are right... For your case. For my case I am right, the
good bit is that we can now write different programs depending on our
different needs. That's what I like about ChucK; aside from the occasional
explosion it's quite easy to make your own tools.
 I don't want to make music in ChucK (yet) I want to make music with my own
instruments which I make in ChucK. ChucK might have a fairly long
brain-speaker path for many people and many sounds but my own instruments,
once finished and hooked up to the right interface have a very, very short
path indeed. For me.... But I don't have to appoligise for that; they are
mine, other people can stick their own stickers on their own keyboard :¬).

I hope that adresses your post and I hope it wasn't seen as flaming; ableton
is great for working with weird samples and ChucK is great for making those
so you're quite well off. No need to read the Csound book if you don't want
to either.

Yours,
Kas.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.cs.princeton.edu/pipermail/chuck-users/attachments/20060913/a1ca74c8/attachment-0001.htm