ï~~2 Who should use the book?
The designs are very efficient, providing real-time composers with a collection of source sounds for
their DSPs that require only a minimal amount of precious on-board wavetable memory and
computation. The books gives synthesizer, sound card and music workstation designers a set of
instrument designs that can run on simple and cheap wavetable synthesis hardware. Wavetable
synthesis is more powerful than most people currently realize!
For instrument design researchers, the book provides a solid model to build upon. For example, the
wavetable model is an excellent base harmonic model for testing noise models, which gives
psychoacoustic researchers a set of complex sources more interesting than static waveforms, and less
data- and computation-intensive than additive synthesis. The instrument designs can be used to test
the effects of attack and decay times, brightness, envelope shapes, frequency deviations and vibrato.
The book also provides computer music novices with a way to bootstrap their knowledge by learning
from the examples. For MIDI users wishing to branch into synthesis, the book is a good way to bridge
the gap. It gives a complete set of working designs which you can modify as you gradually become
more proficient in Csound and synthesis.
3 Additional Features
We have also designed some effects to use with our instrument designs including echo, chorus,
flanging, custom comb filtering, ring modulation and a multi-effect processor. We will play some of
the highlights of the sound examples during our demo.
The book also includes a chapter on alternate pitch representation. The demonstration will show how
these work, and give examples where each representation is especially useful. Examples include
excerpts using just and 1/4-comma meantone tunings, and 26-tone-per-octave equal temperament.
Finally, we have composed several short musical examples using the instruments and effects from our
book. We will play these examples and show how they use the various effects and other tricks for
making the synthetic performance more expressive. Appetizer is a one-minute piece in the Indonesian
slendro tuning system using multiple effects on the flute; Ginger Gypsy Soup simmers some of the
example fragments using the woodwind and brass designs so that their flavors begin to merge in
unexpected ways; Brassoufflef bakes a brass chorale in a utonality of 19; and Porcini Tortellini uses
most of the wind instrument designs in orchestrating cyclic patterns that bubble up from the texture.
4 Conclusion
Current instrument design is an art of trial and error as composers and researchers create new sounds
and compositions. Cooking with Csound explains some of the mystery, and gives a collection of
designs as a departure point. The synthetic designs allow them to be used without regard for physical
and economic limitations of acoustic instruments, such as range breaks and fingerings. You can also
combine features of separate instrument designs to create hybrid instruments.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported in part by the Hong Kong Research Grant Council's Project
HKUST597/94E.
References
Homer, A., Beauchamp, J., and Haken, L. 1993. "Methods for Multiple Wavetable
Synthesis," Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, 41(5), 336-356.
Homer, A. and Ayers, L. 1996. "Cooking with Csound: Wavetable Synthesis Recipes
for Woodwind and Brass Instruments," (to appear).
ICMC Proceedings 1996
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