This reminds me to ask, is anyone aware of any beginner-friendly books on audio synthesis? Be it using csound, supercollider, or chuck, just something that explains concepts reasonably well.
You can try to send an email to one of the authors: http://www.music.utah.edu/faculty/faculty_a-z/david_michael_...
He used to send a pdf of the draft version if you asked him, but since the printed book is due soon (by MIT press) I don't know if this is still true.
There's also 'The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music' by Miller Puckette (the author of Pure Data):
http://crca.ucsd.edu/~msp/techniques.htm
The examples are, obviously, in Pure Data. But it is an excellent book and all the concepts can be applied to any synthesis language/tool.
For Csound there's 'The Csound Book' by Richard Boulanger (MIT Press):
http://csounds.com/shop/csound-book
This is also excellent. Disclaimer: the author is a friend.
IIRC it would have been the first supercollider book.
http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Music-Tutorial-Curtis-Roads/d...
book to be an excellent tour of the standard concepts and techniques of computer music (not just synthesis). It is both technical and accessible. Makes an excellent companion to whatever specific tools you choose to use.