PWCsound is a graphical Lisp library interface allowing to create csound instruments by patching modules, something similar to modular synthesizers. The aim of this library is building a bridge between several compositional tools of Pwgl and Csound programming language. The musician can therefore generate a .csd csound file visually, simply by choosing and connecting a set of boxes.

 

PWCsound is, of course, inspired by several historical Patchwork libraries (in particular by Csound/Edit-sco for Patchwork, better know as "PW-Csound", 1993) and Open Music. The connection between the techniques of computer aided composition and sound synthesis has been explored within these software :

 

- Csound/Edit-sco (by Laurent Pottier, Mikhael Matl, 1993, this work is the first historical version of PWCsound)

- Pwcollider (by Michael Laurson, 1999 )

- Om2Csound (by Karim Haddad, Mikhail Malt, Laurent Pottier, Jean Bresson, 1999)

- OmChroma (Jean Bresson, Carlos Agon, Marco Stroppa, Serge Lemouton, 1998).

 

Pwcsound adds nothing new actually, however it offers an upgraded system to the latest Csound release, as well as integrating it into Pwgl. PwCsound would never have born without the previous work of such extraordinary musicians and programmers.

 

This library is intended both for beginners, so as they can move their first steps on the world of sound design , and for advanced Csound users who want to test their musical-programming ideas, playing with input parameters in a graphical user interface in order to generate complex and multi-layered musical textures.

 

References :

 

-Massimo Avantaggiato- "Pwgl, a score editor for csound" (2011)

  http://www.incontri.hmtm-hannover.de/fileadmin/www.incontri/Csound_Conference/Avantaggio.pdf

-Malt M., Pottier L. - CSound/Edit-sco, Library of Modules for

Generating Csound scores)-reference manual, (code de Malt M. et de POTTIER L.), Ircam, Paris,1993.

-http://www.grame.fr/jim97/proc/Pottier/romitell.html

-Pwgl book : An overview of pwgl, a visual programming environment for music

An overview of pwgl, a visual programming environment for music (Laurson, Kuuskankare, Norilo, Published in:· JournalComputer Music JournalVolume 33 Issue 1, Spring 2009 ,Pages 19-31 )

-C. Agon, J. Bresson, M. Stroppa (2011) OMChroma: Compositional Control of Sound Synthesis, Computer Music Journal, 35(2).

-C. Agon, M. Stroppa, G. Assayag (2000) High Level Musical Control of Sound Synthesis in OpenMusic, Proc. International Computer Music Conference, Berlin, Germany.

- M. Stroppa (2000) High-level musical control paradigms for Digital Signal Processing, Int. Conf. on Digital Audio Effects (DAFx-00).

-OM2Csound : http://support.ircam.fr/docs/om-libraries/main/co/OM2Csound.html

-Kyma x revealed : http://www.symbolicsound.com/cgi-bin/bin/view/Products/KymaXRevealed

 -Canonical Csound reference manual : http://www.csounds.com/manual/html/

-Pwcollider : http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/p/pod/dod-idx/pwcollider-a-visual-composition-tool-for-software-synthesis.pdf?c=icmc;idno=bbp2372.1999.328