Csound has been around for more than 20 years. Written by Professor Barry Vercoe at the MIT Media Laboratory, the Csound software synthesis program is a direct descendant of the "classic" Music V program written by Max Mathews at Bell Laboratories in the late 1960s - the first true software synthesizer! Csound is practically synonymous with computer music. For years now, it has been taught at major universities around the world and it has earned the reputation of being both incredibly powerful and incredibly difficult to learn and to use. Well, not any more! Over the past five years, an international effort by a group of dedicated hackers, composers, sound designers, educators and their students, has brought new life to the program, transforming it into the most full-featured and high-powered synthesis and signal processing toolkit available today. And learning Csound has never been easier. The Csound language is fully documented in a 500-page reference manual and supported by an active mailing list, dozens of online tutorials, a quarterly e-zine, several dedicated textbooks, and a growing number of graphical front-ends, tools and utilities. All the innovation and support are making Csound very attractive to a whole new generation of intelligent, experimental, and innovative PC-based electronic musicians - like you! If you gave Csound a look in the past, and thought it was way over your head, or too difficult to work with, it's time for another look. Csound today can do it all. It is easier to learn and use than it seems at first glance. There is a version of Csound for virtually every type of computer and every operating system. And most importantly... Csound - the most powerful software synthesizer in the world - is totally FREE!
