Proceedingsof Asia
ComputerMusic2011,
ProjectTokyo
Proceedings of Asia
ComputerMusic ProjectVol.?2011,No.? pp.??

International conference reports
CONFERENCE REPORT: CSOUND CONFERENCE 2011
KITA Toshihiro
Kumamoto University
ABSTRACTThe first international Csound Conference was held from
September 30 to October 2 in 2011 in Hannover, Germany. The number of the participants is as small as about40, but all the participants are impressive and highly motivated as symbolically indicated in the long discussion
at the plenary Developer-User-Roundtable session. There
were a keynote presentation, roundtable discussion between developers and users, paper presentations, workshops, sound installations, and a concert for Csound, oneof the most widely acknowledged and long standing programs in the field of audio-programming.
1. INTRODUCTION
The first international Csound Conference[1] was held from
September 30 to October 2 in 2011 by Incontri, the electronic studio in the institute for new music at HMTM
(Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien) Hannover,in Germany. The conference was full of instructive andinformative activities and lectures for Csound[2, 3, 4] likethe keynote presentation, roundtable discussions between
developers and users, paper presentations, workshops, soundinstallations, and a concert. You can virtually experiencea part of the conference anytime because the video archiveof the keynote presentation, roundtable discussions, paper
presentations, workshops are publicly available [5].
2. KEYNOTEIn the beginning, after welcoming speech by Joachim Heintz
who hosted the conference, there was the keynote presentation ’Csound yesterday, today and tomorrow’ by Richard
Boulanger (Figure 1).

mentioned. In the meantime, Dr. Boulanger handed an
iPad running TouchOSC to the audiences and recommended
them to freely try to control a remotely running Csoundprocess with it and continued his talking. He said that
there was no user-friendly manual for Csound when hestarted using it in 1979 and there was only a technicalspecification of Csound that computer specialists wouldrefer to. He created easy-to-understand documents or tutorials for his college lecture, and that became the basis of’Csound Book’. He also mentioned about an applicationof Csound called ’Csound therapy’, where a handicapped
person enjoy performing with the aid of Csound real-timesound generation.
After the keynote, there was a concert session with’Richard Boulanger and friends’. Dr. Boulanger and hisstudents, Takahiko Tsuchiya (the only Japanese participant except the author) and John Clements, and John ffitch
played Radio Baton, Wiimotes, iPads, iPhones, p5 gloves
and other stuff.
3. PAPER SESSIONS AND WORKSHOPS
6 papers were presented in the conference: Python Scripting in QuteCsound 1 (presented by QuteCsound developer Andrés Cabrera via Skype from Belfast), Csound andObject-orientation: Designing and implementing CellularAutomata for Algorithmic Composition, A Personal Viewon Teaching Csound (an educational practice at a Russianuniversity), Circumspectral Sound Diffusion, Creating reverb effects using granular synthesis, PWGL: A Score Editor for Csound.
6 workshops were held: Writing Csound Opcodes in
Lua (by Michael Gogins), Csound - Max/MSP : Implementing a framework for Serial Composition and Frequency
Modulation in both environments (by Reza Payami), Composing with blue (by Steven Yi), quince - a modular approach to music editing (by Maximilian Marcoll), Introducing CsoundForLive (by Richard Boulanger), Developing Csound Plugins with Cabbage (by Rory Walsh).
All these paper presentations and workshops are on thewebsite[1] and on YouTube [5].
4. INSTALLATIONS

Figure 1. Keynote by Richard Boulanger [5]In the keynote, the story of introduction of Csound toOLPC as a standard software package, and the meaningfulness of Csound as having the spirit of open source wasSound installations as shown in Figure 2 were available
all through the conference. The sound installation ’Csound
Haiku’ (the top picture of Figure 2) by Iain McCurdy includes 9 pieces created in real time with very short Csound
1 A popular integrated programming environment for Csound withinteractive widgets

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Proceedingsof Asia
ComputerMusic2011,
ProjectTokyo
Proceedings of Asia
ComputerMusic ProjectVol.?2011,
No.? pp.??
files. By turning the pages of a book linked to the Csoundprogram running, you can select which one to play.
Also there was an 8-speaker sound installation (the middle picture) where you were able to listen to one of the 11
pieces submitted to the conference. Each piece was playedin rotation and was selectable on the QuteCsound-based
player (the picture at the bottom).

6. ROUNDTABLE SESSIONS
On the second and the third day, we had Developer-UserRoundtable sessions (Figure 4) where all the participantsjoined and made discussions for totally six hours.

Figure 4. Developer-User-Roundtable
Each of the core developers of Csound or Csound related tools made some speech and in response all the participants discussed various toipcs on the technological aspects, the community building, and other things.
7. REMARKS

Figure 2. Sound installations in the Foyer [5]The number of the participants of the conference is as
small as about 40, but each participant is impressive andhas the unique contribution as symbolically indicated in
the long discussion at the plenary Developer-User-Roundtablesession (and at the still continued ’unofficial session’ atthe nearby cafe every night) .
Through this conference, I was highly impressed thatCsound will be continuously developed and extended formore various applications by contributions from developers and users around the world. The next Csound Conference is planned to be held in one or two years.

5. CONCERT
8. REFERENCES

In the evening of the second day, a concert was held and 11
pieces from various countries were performed or played atKammermusiksaal (Figure 3).

[1] Csound Conference Website
http://www.cs-conf.de/[2] Csound on Sourceforge
http://csound.sourceforge.net/[3] Csounds.com http://www.csounds.com/[4] Csound at FLOSS Manuals
http://en.flossmanuals.net/csound/index/[5] Csound Conference videos on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/user/csconf2011

9. AUTHOR’S PROFILE
Figure 3. Concert hall (Kammermusiksaal)
8 speakers were located around the audiences in thevery nice hall. All the pieces were inspiring to the author,
including a piece for flute and live electronics, a piece performed with mice and many small mechanical switches
that were operated by audiences, and a tune played with
distorted electric guitar and voice being modulated in realtime.

KITA Toshihiro
Born in Nara in 1967. Withdrew from his doctoral program with certification accredited by his academic advisor, of Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University.
Currently a professor at the Institute for e-Learning Development of Kumamoto University. Ph.D. in Engineering(Nagoya University, 2005). Fields of interest: e-learning
systems, nonlinear systems, electronic music.
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