orchsyn

Copperbox revision 2699.

New project - orchsyn - orchestra synthesizer.

This replaces FMSS, I've decided there is a case for an EDSL to generate Csound orchestras.

Previously my feeling was that generating Csound instruments was unwise - with ZSnd, the earliest prototype, descriptions were always longer than the Csound they generated and the mechanisms of the generator lost too much of power and generality of Csound (it wasn't a full embedding). ZSnd had no real benefits to counter these problems.

Still, Csound orchestras have severe modularity problems - basically there is no modularity. Instruments cannot be put in libraries to be imported by an orchestra, they have to be copy-pasted and tweaked not to name clash. An embedding can inherit the modularity features of the host language, so even if the instrument descriptions are more verbose than the corresponding Csound there is the possibility that this can be countered by introducing modularity and allowing the definition of libraries of instruments.