Let’s set the way back machine to January 2001. This is around the time I took my first steps into designing an additive synthesizer. I’m not sure when user-defined opcodes were introduced, though there is a good chance they had not existed then. And if they did, I had no idea of their existence. Same goes for the event series of opcodes. In my legacy code, each overtone, along with supporting envelopes and transfer functions, were written explicitly. I was a perl junky at the time, so I wrote scripts that would generate the instruments for me.

The example I’m posting today is the legacy code from 2001. I did not change the code, except for converting tabs to spaces and placing the orc/sco pair into a csd.

Download: add_synth_legacy.csd

In my new additive synth, I’m employing a recursive user-defined opcode technique, which I first read about in Steven Yi’s Csound Journal articles Control Flow Part I and Part II.

If you look at part 2, Steven actually demos an additive synth, which is eerily similar to the core design of the one I’m in the process of making. Which means I either independently came up with a similar design, or more likely, I’m suffering from a bout of cryptomnesia. Either way, if you haven’t studied up on these two articles, then perhaps it’s time you make a weekend project out of it; They are pure gold.