<-- | --> |
Choose one of the modules in the New cascade in the File menu. Choose an input sound if a soundfile selector appears. Muck around with the graphs and other objects. Read the documentation on the chosen module in the Help menu "About this module...". Specify an sr, ksmps and number of channels in the main window. The number of channels should normally match the number of channels in the loaded soundfile. You can specify a soundfile name to write if you choose to write to disk. Select "DAC or "Disk" in the Main window. Hit Play in the main window or do the hot-keys in any window.
Let go into details with our first Tutorial.
You can open up an existing orc/sco pair. The documents will be placed in a temporary module and saved as Csound documents when you save. Do Open under File... and select the orchestra you wish to use. The score sharing the same prefix as the orchestra will automatically open as well. When you save in the editor, your orc/sco pair will be returned to two separate text documents. You can save to a single CECILIA module document by choosing Save as...
For new documents, choose Module under the New cascade in the File menu. The editor opens up. Write in a mono, stereo or quad orchestra. Use the Button-3 opcode-insert feature that lets you paste preformatted opcodes from the manual. Do *not* specify headers in your orchestra(s). In order to use your new module, you must have defined a legal orchestra. Specify a sampling rate , ksmps and number of channels in the main window. The number of channels should match the number of channels implicit in the editor "pane" you chose to program your orchestra. If you choose to write to disk, CECILIA will propose a soundfile name but you can specify your own. Select "DAC or "Disk" in the Main window. Hit Play in the main window or do the hot-keys in any window.
If you wish to save your new orc/sco pair as separate Csound documents, you can choose Export as Csound under the File menu of the editor.
Note: Any comments before the orchestra header will be discarded by CECILIA when you save as Csound documents.
The two Csound temp files used for actual computations are always computed from the current contents of the editor. Hence, changes do not need to be saved before computation. You will be surprised at how much time this saves.
The number of channels in the computation is determined by the "channels" variable in the Main window. Hence the editor offers three different window panes to edit mono, stereo or quad versions of the same module. The "channels" will instruct CECILIA on which of these versions to take. This variable will automatically change when you click into a different editor pane.
Start with the two steps above to familiarize yourself with CECILIA. Choose one of the BuiltIn modules in the cascade in the File menu. Choose Show source editor under the Windows menu. Open the tk_interface editor pane by selecting it in the Sections menu of the editor. See how it is done. Pay attention to how the variables are declared and substituted in the orchestra and/or the score. Quite simple, really. Complete description of object syntax is available under the Help menu in the editor window.
When you change something in the tk_interface, you must save and reinit (File menu) your module for the changes to show up.
The info editor panel lets you document your module. Anything entered here will appear in the "About this module" dialog in the interface Help menu.
Once you have built and tested your module, you can have it appear under the New cascade in the File menu by specifying a directory in the Preferences dialog. Any directory entered in one of the four entries will be parsed when the Update Menu command is select in the New sacade under File menu. Otherwise it will be scanned at startup time and its contents will appear in the New cascade.