• INTRODUCTION
• PREFACE
• HOW TO USE THIS MANUAL
• ON THIS RELEASE
• CREDITS
• 01 BASICS
• A. DIGITAL AUDIO
• B. PITCH AND FREQUENCY
• C. INTENSITIES
• D. RANDOM
• 02 QUICK START
• A. MAKE CSOUND RUN
• B. CSOUND SYNTAX
• C. CONFIGURING MIDI
• D. LIVE AUDIO
• E. RENDERING TO FILE
• 03 CSOUND LANGUAGE
• A. INITIALIZATION AND PERFORMANCE PASS
• B. LOCAL AND GLOBAL VARIABLES
• C. CONTROL STRUCTURES
• D. FUNCTION TABLES
• E. ARRAYS
• F. LIVE EVENTS
• G. USER DEFINED OPCODES
• H. MACROS
• I. FUNCTIONAL SYNTAX
• 04 SOUND SYNTHESIS
• A. ADDITIVE SYNTHESIS
• B. SUBTRACTIVE SYNTHESIS
• C. AMPLITUDE AND RING MODULATION
• D. FREQUENCY MODULATION
• E. WAVESHAPING
• F. GRANULAR SYNTHESIS
• G. PHYSICAL MODELLING
• H. SCANNED SYNTHESIS
• 05 SOUND MODIFICATION
• A. ENVELOPES
• B. PANNING AND SPATIALIZATION
• C. FILTERS
• D. DELAY AND FEEDBACK
• E. REVERBERATION
• F. AM / RM / WAVESHAPING
• G. GRANULAR SYNTHESIS
• H. CONVOLUTION
• I. FOURIER ANALYSIS / SPECTRAL PROCESSING
• K. ATS RESYNTHESIS
• L. AMPLITUDE AND PITCH TRACKING
• 06 SAMPLES
• A. RECORD AND PLAY SOUNDFILES
• B. RECORD AND PLAY BUFFERS
• 07 MIDI
• A. RECEIVING EVENTS BY MIDIIN
• B. TRIGGERING INSTRUMENT INSTANCES
• C. WORKING WITH CONTROLLERS
• D. READING MIDI FILES
• E. MIDI OUTPUT
• 08 OTHER COMMUNICATION
• A. OPEN SOUND CONTROL
• B. CSOUND AND ARDUINO
• 09 CSOUND IN OTHER APPLICATIONS
• A. CSOUND IN PD
• B. CSOUND IN MAXMSP
• C. CSOUND IN ABLETON LIVE
• D. CSOUND AS A VST PLUGIN
• 10 CSOUND FRONTENDS
• CSOUNDQT
• CABBAGE
• BLUE
• WINXOUND
• CSOUND VIA TERMINAL
• WEB BASED CSOUND
• 11 CSOUND UTILITIES
• CSOUND UTILITIES
• 12 CSOUND AND OTHER PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
• A. THE CSOUND API
• B. PYTHON INSIDE CSOUND
• C. PYTHON IN CSOUNDQT
• D. LUA IN CSOUND
• E. CSOUND IN iOS
• F. CSOUND ON ANDROID
• G. CSOUND AND HASKELL
• H. CSOUND AND HTML
• 13 EXTENDING CSOUND
• EXTENDING CSOUND
• OPCODE GUIDE
• OVERVIEW
• SIGNAL PROCESSING I
• SIGNAL PROCESSING II
• DATA
• REALTIME INTERACTION
• INSTRUMENT CONTROL
• MATHS, PYTHON/SYSTEM, PLUGINS
• APPENDIX
• METHODS OF WRITING CSOUND SCORES
• GLOSSARY
• LINKS

OPCODE GUIDE: OVERVIEW

If you run Csound from the command line with the option -z, you get a list of all opcodes. Currently (Csound 5.13), the total number of all opcodes is about 1500. There are already overviews of all of Csound's opcodes in the Opcodes Overview and the Opcode Quick Reference of the Canonical Csound Manual.

This chapter is another attempt to provide some orientation within Csound's wealth of opcodes. Unlike the references mentioned above, not all opcodes are listed here, but the ones that are, are commented upon briefly. Some opcodes appear more than once and in different sections to reflect the different contexts in which they could be used. This guide intends to provide insights into the opcodes listed that the other sources do not.

BASIC SIGNAL PROCESSING

• OSCILLATORS AND PHASORS

  • Standard Oscillators

    (oscils)  poscil  poscil3  oscili  oscil3  more 

  • Dynamic Sprectrum Oscillators

    buzz  gbuzz  mpulse  vco  vco2 
    

  • Phasors

    phasor  syncphasor
    

• RANDOM AND NOISE GENERATORS

  (seed)  rand  randi  randh  rnd31  random  (randomi /randomh)  pinkish  more  
  

• ENVELOPES

  • Simple Standard Envelopes

    linen  linenr  adsr  madsr  more 
    

  • Envelopes By Linear And Exponential Generators 

    linseg  expseg  transeg  (linsegr  expsegr  transegr)  more  

  • Envelopes By Function Tables

• DELAYS

  • Audio Delays

    vdelay  vdelayx  vdelayw  

    delayr  delayw  deltap  deltapi  deltap3  deltapx  deltapxw  deltapn   
    

  • Control Signal Delays

    delk  vdel_k 
    

• FILTERS

  Compare Standard Filters and Specialized Filters overviews.
  

  • Low Pass Filters

    tone  tonex  butlp  clfilt  
    

  • High Pass Filters

    atone  atonex  buthp  clfilt  
    

  • Band Pass And Resonant Filters

    reson  resonx  resony  resonr  resonz  butbp  
    

  • Band Reject Filters

    areson  butbr  
    

  • Filters For Smoothing Control Signals

    port  portk 
    

• REVERB

   freeverb  reverbsc  reverb  nreverb  babo  (pconvolve)

• SIGNAL MEASUREMENT, DYNAMIC PROCESSING, SAMPLE LEVEL OPERATIONS

  • Amplitude Measurement and Amplitude Envelope Following

    rms  balance  follow  follow2  peak  max_k  
    

  • Pitch Estimation (Pitch Tracking)
    

    ptrack  pitch  pitchamdf  pvscent  
    

  • Tempo Estimation

    tempest  
    

  • Dynamic Processing

    compress  dam  clip 
    

  • Sample Level Operations

    limit  samphold  vaget  vaset  
    

•  SPATIALIZATION

  • Panning

    pan2  pan  
    

  • VBAP

    vbaplsinit  vbap4  vbap8  vbap16 
    

  • Ambisonics

    bformenc1  bformdec1  
    

  • Binaural / HRTF

    hrtfstat  hrtfmove  hrtfmove2  hrtfer 
    

ADVANCED SIGNAL PROCESSING

• MODULATION AND DISTORTION

  • Frequency Modulation

    foscil  foscili 
    

    crossfm  crossfmi  crosspm  crosspmi  crossfmpm  crossfmpmi 
    

  • Distortion And Wave Shaping

    distort  distort1  powershape  polynomial  chebyshevpoly  
    

  • Flanging, Phasing, Phase Shaping

    flanger  harmon  phaser1  phaser2  pdclip  pdhalf  pdhalfy 
    

  • Doppler Shift

    doppler 
    

• GRANULAR SYNTHESIS

  partikkel  sndwarp  others

• CONVOLUTION

  pconvolve  ftconv  dconv  
  

• FFT AND SPECTRAL PROCESSING

  • Real-time Analysis and Resynthesis 

    pvsanal  pvstanal  pvsynth  pvsadsyn  
    

  • Writing FFT Data to A File and Reading From it

    pvsfwrite  pvanal  pvsfread  pvsdiskin 
    

  • Writing FFT Data to a Buffer and Reading From it 

    pvsbuffer  pvsbufread  pvsftw  pvsftr  
    

  • FFT Info 

    pvsinfo  pvsbin  pvscent  
    

  • Manipulating FFT Signals 

    pvscale  pvshift  pvsbandp  pvsbandr  pvsmix  pvscross  pvsfilter  pvsvoc  pvsmorph pvsfreeze  pvsmaska  pvsblur  pvstencil  pvsarp  pvsmooth 
    

• PHYSICAL MODELS AND FM INSTRUMENTS

  • Waveguide Physical Modelling

    see here  and here 
    

  • FM Instrument Models

    see here   
    

DATA

• BUFFER / FUNCTION TABLES

  • Creating Function Tables (Buffers)

    ftgen  GEN Routines 
    

  • Writing to Tables

    tableiw  / tablew     tabw_i  / tabw 

  • Reading From Tables 

    table  / tablei  / table3     tab_i  / tab 

  • Saving Tables to Files 

    ftsave  / ftsavek    TableToSF   
    

  • Reading Tables From Files

    ftload  / ftloadk     GEN23  
    

• SIGNAL INPUT/OUTPUT, SAMPLE AND LOOP PLAYBACK, SOUNDFONTS

  • Signal Input and Output

    inch  ;  outch  out  outs  ;  monitor 
    

  • Sample Playback With Optional Looping

    flooper2  sndloop

  • Soundfonts and Fluid Opcodes

    fluidEngine  fluidSetInterpMethod  fluidLoad  fluidProgramSelect  fluidNote  fluidCCi  fluidCCk  fluidControl  fluidOut  fluidAllOut 
    

• FILE INPUT AND OUTPUT

  • Sound File Input 

    soundin  diskin  diskin2  mp3in  (GEN01) 
    

  • Sound File Queries 

    filelen  filesr  filenchnls  filepeak  filebit  
    

  • Sound File Output 

    fout 
    

  • Non-Soundfile Input And Output 

    readk   GEN23   dumpk   fprints / fprintks   ftsave  / ftsavek    ftload  / ftloadk 

• CONVERTERS OF DATA TYPES
  

  • i <- k 

    i(k) 
    

  • k <- a 

    downsamp   max_k  
    

  • a <- k

    upsamp  interp  
    

• PRINTING AND STRINGS
  

  • Simple Printing 

    print  printk  printk2  puts 
    

  • Formatted Printing 

    prints  printf_i  printks  printf  
    

  • String Variables 

    sprintf  sprintfk  strset  strget  
    

  • String Manipulation And Conversion

    see here  and here   
    

REALTIME INTERACTION

• MIDI

  • Opcodes for Use in MIDI-Triggered Instruments 

    massign  pgmassign  notnum  cpsmidi  veloc  ampmidi  midichn  pchbend  aftouch  polyaft 
    

  • Opcodes For Use In All Instruments

    ctrl7  (ctrl14/ctrl21) initc7  ctrlinit  (initc14/initc21)  midiin  midiout  
    

• OPEN SOUND CONTROL AND NETWORK

  • Open Sound Control

    OSCinit  OSClisten  OSCsend  
    

  • Remote Instruments

    remoteport  insremot  insglobal  midiremot  midiglobal  
    

  • Network Audio

    socksend  sockrecv   
    

• HUMAN INTERFACES

  • Widgets

    FLTK overview here  
    

  • Keys

    sensekey 
    

  • Mouse

    xyin 
    

  • WII

    wiiconnect  wiidata  wiirange  wiisend 
    

  • P5 Glove

    p5gconnect  p5gdata 

INSTRUMENT CONTROL

• SCORE PARAMETER ACCESS

  p(x)  pindex  pset  passign  pcount  
  

• TIME AND TEMPO

  • Time Reading

    times/timek     timeinsts/timeinstk   date/dates    setscorepos  
    

  • Tempo Reading

    tempo  miditempo  tempoval  
    

  • Duration Modifications

    ihold  xtratim  

  • Time Signal Generators

    metro  mpulse 
    

• CONDITIONS AND LOOPS

  changed  trigger  if  loop_lt/loop_le/loop_gt/loop_ge 
  

• PROGRAM FLOW

  init  igoto  kgoto  timout   reinit/rigoto/rireturn 
  

• EVENT TRIGGERING

  event_i  / event    scoreline_i  / scoreline    schedkwhen   seqtime /seqtime2   timedseq  
  

• INSTRUMENT SUPERVISION

  • Instances And Allocation

    active  maxalloc  prealloc  
    

  • Turning On And Off

    turnon    turnoff/turnoff2   mute   remove   exitnow  
    

  • Named Instruments

    nstrnum
    

• SIGNAL EXCHANGE AND MIXING

  • chn opcodes

    chn_k  / chn_a  / chn_S    chnset   chnget   chnmix   chnclear 
    

  • zak? 
    

MATHS

• MATHEMATICAL CALCULATIONS

  • Arithmetic Operations

    +    -    *    /    ^   % 
    

    exp(x)    log(x)   log10(x)   sqrt(x) 
    

    abs(x)  int(x)  frac(x) 
    

    round(x)  ceil(x)  floor(x) 
    

  • Trigonometric Functions

    sin(x)   cos(x)   tan(x) 
    

    sinh(x)   cosh(x)   tanh(x) 
    

    sininv(x)   cosinv(x)   taninv(x)   taninv2(x) 
    

  • Logic Operators

    &&    ||  
    

• CONVERTERS

  • MIDI To Frequency 

    cpsmidi  cpsmidinn   more 

  • Frequency To MIDI

    F2M   F2MC  (UDO's)
    

  • Cent Values To Frequency 

    cent  
    

  • Amplitude Converters

    ampdb  ampdbfs  dbamp  dbfsamp 
    

  • Scaling 

    Scali   Scalk   Scala  (UDO's)
    

PYTHON AND SYSTEM

• PYTHON OPCODES

  pyinit  pyrun  pyexec  pycall  pyeval  pyassign 
  

• SYSTEM OPCODES

  getcfg   system/system_i 
  

PLUGINS

• PLUGIN HOSTING

  • LADSPA

    dssiinit  dssiactivate  dssilist  dssiaudio  dssictls  
    

  • VST

    vstinit   vstaudio/vstaudiog   vstmidiout   vstparamset/vstparamget   vstnote   vstinfo  vstbankload   vstprogset   vstedit 
    

• EXPORTING CSOUND FILES TO PLUGINS