Department of Computer Science of the University of Oxford by 
Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-05-09 +Created 1970-01-01
Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-05-09 +Created 1970-01-01XML file format (but with 99% of the action of interest in a domain-specific language on the
CsInstruments and CsScore elements) that can be played and the reference implementation. Offers complex effects out-of-box apparently.Allows you to easily define instruments with seemingly arbitrary mathematical functions, and then use them to play notes at given time intervals.
The instrument functions can be parametrized, and each note played can have different parameters.
The instrument definition actually defines a block diagram graph, much like a hardware synthesizer would.
Csound is so not-bloated that it contains an UI system. And it includes an interactive virtual MIDI keyboard that interacts with parameter knobs: www.csounds.com/manual/html/MidiTop.html
But hey, it's fun. And like any other good domain-specific language, debugging it is barbaric of course.
If only it had been written in Python... the array manipulation boilerplate would be likely perfect for NumPy, and this would have been exactly what Ciro Santilli wanted!
CSound states that one of its design goals is backward compatibility, and it shows. Some of the stuff is utterly arcane, e.g. you have to remember what
GEN10, GEN11, etc. mean instead of having named enums.It just worked on Ubuntu 20.04 no questions asked:which runs this file: github.com/csound/csound/blob/92409ecce053d707360a5794f5f4f6bf5ebf5d24/examples/xanadu.csd and this plays a relly cool sound demo:
sudo apt install csound
git clone https://github.com/csound/csound
cd csound
git checkout 92409ecce053d707360a5794f5f4f6bf5ebf5d24
csound examples/xanadu.csdSave to file instead of playing:or direct ogg output:or pipe to stdout to FFmpeg TODO: stackoverflow.com/questions/64970503/how-to-pipe-csound-output-to-ffmpeg-for-conversion-without-an-intermediate-file
csound -o xanadu.wav xanadu.csdcsound --ogg -o xanadu.ogg xanadu.csdTODO find the most amazing set of songs made with it on GitHub? Some examples:
- www.csounds.com/toots/index.html has a good 101 on instrument design
- Csound FLOSS manual
- iainmccurdy.org/csound.html about 100 CC BY-SA examples. Each is a minimal study showing a specific technique, not a full composition, some seem advanced. Dude's a beast.
- github.com/csound/csound/tree/f2e70825fb543a6b15011c6984371f61ab2a00dd/tests/soak in-tree minimal examples
- github.com/csound/manual/tree/4049b286493d972ff7248b5596e47e7ae97a0cf9/examples contains the examples for the manual which is rendered at: It's insane, but it's fun! Ah those newbs who separate manuals from main tree.
- linuxsynths.com/CsoundPatchesDemos/csound.html on LinuxSynths
- github.com/csound/examples/tree/ae578159328178142c1055c7f78e28b42eb29774/csd as a few dozen examples
- freaknet.org/martin/audio/csound/ 10 pieces with source
Documentation-wise, it's a bit lacking. The only dude who can explain it really well, Dr Richard Boulanger, made the "The Csound Book" closed source, so, congrats, this will forever hurt the popularity of Csound.
Examples:
- csound/sine.csd
- csound/amplitude_frequency.csd
- csound/linen.csd: simple attack/release envelope, documented at: www.csounds.com/manual/html/linen.html
- csound/chorus.csd: chorus effect
- csound/bend.csd: bend using
linseg - csound/vibrato.csd
- csound/crossfade_generators.csd
- csound/table.csd
- csound/virtual_keyboard.csd
Ciro Santilli claims to be one of them.
Pinned article: ourbigbook/introduction-to-the-ourbigbook-project
Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
Intro to OurBigBook
. Source. We have two killer features:
- topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculusArticles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
- a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
- a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
Figure 1. Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page. View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivativeVideo 2. OurBigBook Web topics demo. Source. - local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
- to OurBigBook.com to get awesome multi-user features like topics and likes
- as HTML files to a static website, which you can host yourself for free on many external providers like GitHub Pages, and remain in full control
Figure 2. You can publish local OurBigBook lightweight markup files to either OurBigBook.com or as a static website.
Figure 3. Visual Studio Code extension installation.
Figure 5. . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally. Video 3. Edit locally and publish demo. Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension. 
- Infinitely deep tables of contents:
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact