Composers Desktop Project

The Composers' Desktop Project[1] (CDP) is an international cooperative network based in the United Kingdom that has been developing software for working with sound materials since 1986. Working on a cooperative basis and motivated by user-specific compositional needs, the project has focused on the development of precise, detailed and multifaceted DSP-based sound transformation tools. Currently, CDP provides sound transformation software (named after the project itself) for Windows and Mac OS X that has been evolving for over 20 years.

Originally, after a study to determine if it was possible and/or feasible to port CMusic from UNIX mainframe systems^[1], the project released the CDP software along with corresponding SoundSTreamer hardware for the Atari ST^[2] and later ported the software to DOS. The software tool-set is designed specifically to transform sound samples mostly via offline processing (non-real time); the software is considered complementary to real-time processing and audio sequencers.

References

1. ^ Orton, R. H.; Malham, D. G., Mainframe Computer Music on Microcomputers, AES E-Library Paper 2479, March 1987 http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=4950
2. ^ CDP History http://www.composersdesktop.com/history.html

Further reading

• A. Endrich (1996), Composers' Desktop Project: a musical imperative, Organised Sound, Volume 2, Issue 01, Apr 1997, pp 29-33.
• R.W Dobson (1993), The Operation of the Phase Vocoder – a non-mathematical introduction to the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), a CDP publication, Somerset.
• Wishart T. (1994), Audible Design: A Plain and Easy Introduction to Sound Composition. Orpheus the Pantomime Ltd. (ISBN 978-0951031315).