here is a link to dr. boulanger's csound manual. i would download qute csound for a front end, and study these tutorials and etudes. there are links to all the opcodes used in the etudes (the highlighted words). don't forget, when you're using qute csound, you can right ctrl click any place in the window for an organized list of all the opcodes. the elements of all the opcodes are displayed at the bottom of the window.

http://www.csounds.com/chapter1/index.html

robert reynolds
rreynolds1@berklee.net

"this is not a standard signature block. this does not contain ay poetry, philosophy, or religious text. there is no wit here whatsoever, no kernel of advice, no seeds of wisdom, no grains of truth, and no symbolic anything whatsoever."

Sorry that this reply is late ...

The Csound orchestra is just a text file that you type in any ordinary text editor. (By text editor, I mean something like NotePad on Windows or TextEdit on a Mac -- i.e. not Microsoft Word). The headers are just a part of the orchestra that you type before the first instrument definition.

Thus a typical Csound orchestra has an outline that looks like this:

; comments begin with a semi-colon
; header statements
sr = 44100 ; define the sample rate
kr = 4410 ; define the kontrol rate
nchnls = 2 ; define the number of channels

; after the headers come your instruments
instr 1
; your instrument code goes here
endin

instr 2
; ...
endin

You would save the above text to a file and then run Csound, specifying the name of your orchestra file and a corresponding score file. How you do that is a whole 'nother subject!

Hope that this answers your question.

Anthony