# Cabbage User Manual

Cabbage is a software for prototyping and developing audio instruments with the Csound audio synthesis language. Instrument development and prototyping is carried out with the main Cabbage IDE. Users write and compile Csound code in a code editor. If one wishes one can also create a graphical frontend, although this is no longer a requirement for Cabbage. Any Csound file can be run with Cabbage, regardless of whether or not it has a graphical interface. Cabbage is designed for realtime processing in mind. It is possible to use Cabbage to run Csound in the more traditional score-driven way, but your success may vary.

##Using these docs
The following pages will take you through the basic usage of Csound and Cabbage. If you have some knowledge of Csound and wish to start making sounds straight away, navigate to the [First synth](first_synth.html) page and start there. If you wish to learn more about Cabbage and its features, visit the [Using Cabbage](../using_cabbage.html) page. If you are curious about Csound and wish to learn more go straight to the [Beginners](../beginners.html) section.  

A reference section for all the available GUI widgets is available from the mune on the right. This reference manual can be launched directly from the Cabbage code editor.  
![Button](images/screens/ConvolutionReverbScreen.png "Convolution Reverb plugins included with Cabbage examples")

