EMUSIC-L Digest Volume 4, Number 3 Today's Topics: Greetings! Looking for Chroma Polaris users Granular synthesis Query about Mac serial port delays Query about Mac direct-to-disk Minimalism Alesis 1622 mixer (2 messages) Cheap Mac MIDI interface Your EMUSIC-L Digest moderator is Joe McMahon . You may subscribe to EMUSIC-L by sending mail to listserv@american.edu with the line "SUB EMUSIC-L your name" as the text. The EMUSIC-L archive is a service of SunSite (sunsite.unc.edu) at the University of North Carolina. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 18 Apr 89 08:57:31 EDT From: Eric Harnden Subject: it's that time again... well, well... things have been a little slow around here lately. time for me to generate one of my electronic welcome mats. no, ye old timers, i'm not just filling up net space... there's been a lot of subscription traffic recently, and you know i like to keep people up to date. so... welcome to the Electronic Music Discussion List and Digest. as your acknowledgement letter indicates, we try to keep this forum broad, and not restrict it to any particular topic, discipline, or echelon of expertise. nor is it necessarily meant to be simply a question/answer mechanism, but a medium for expression and exploration of ideas as well. in order for the list to function, and for these purposes to be carried out, it would be helpful and interesting if you would take some time to introduce yourself, listing your ways and means of involvement in this field. remember, *you* are the list... the source of all activity on it. let me/us know what you want out of it, what you would like to know, to discuss, to lecture about. if you're curious about where we've been before, grab the EMUSIC INFO file, which will give you more help on getting the logs of the lists. welcome home. take your shoes off. have a lemonade. pull a chair up to the warm, crackling oberheim. whatch'ya been doin' with yerself? Eric Harnden (Ronin) The American University Physics Dept. (202) 885-2758 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Apr 89 17:41 BST (GMT + 01:00) From: David Mantripp Subject: Obscure Antiques Hello everybody, this is the first contribution I've made to this august organ (hahaha), and it takes the form of a query: I own a (deep breath) "CBS Fender Chroma Polaris", usually known as a Chroma/Polaris, or "a pile of junk". Actually, I'm reasonably pleased with it, as it does offer quite a high degree of individuality, and is pretty good at "organic" sounds. However, I don't know any other owners of this device, and since it has so many obscure facilities, I'd be interested in swopping ideas. Hoping that somebody knows about it, I have some initial questions: - When did it cease to be available in the US ? - What is the mythical (in the UK) "Chroma Expander" ? - What was the final software release version number ? - How are the pins on the tape dump wired ? (Mine won't work) It is quite an unusual instrument, and in fact bought secondhand offers some wonderful, if somewhat hidden, MIDI features, such as a very comprehensive MIDI/Sync interface for running those old drum machines. Its oscillators are not particularly wonderful, sadly, and the VCA EG is very limited (ADR only). However, such things as selective note bending and glide, modulated sawtooth waveforms, and lots of sliders and switches are quite attractive. Anbody else got one ? David Mantripp @ University College London ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Apr 89 21:44:14 BST From: u87rpb@ECS.OXFORD.AC.UK Subject: Granular Synthesis and SDL Hi there guys (and gals?). I'm back off of my Easter vac. now so i can start contributing to this list again. I've just read through the last month and a halfs digests and there's some pretty good stuff there. Now for my bits:- Granular Synthesis. I am _very_ interested in this. My method of granular synthesis is a little different to that described by the orginal poster, in that my 'granule' is based on individual cycles of a sound, rather than on 20ms chunks. I came up with an (almost) complete design for a granular synth some time last year but a few (one) technical hiccough and major time limitations rather knocked it on the head. The technical problem was designing a DCO with a top octave range of about 1 MHz ( 901.120 kHz for A7 ). With this problem solved, the approx. cost for the synth would be about $150 dollars for the master controller, and about $75 dollars thereafter for each voice generator. The design was based on a 68000 master controller at the top which handles all of the sound allocation and other silly things like that. For each voice a simple (6502) processor based card with between 16 and 32k of RAM is used. When a new sound is needed, the controller card sends the sound information to whichever voice generators need it. When a 'note on' is received, the controller tells one (or more for stacks) of the sub-processors to start, and then all of the rest is handled by the sub-processor. Although this system isn't cheap, I think it has great potential, and maybe it could be relevant to my next proposal. SDL Hmm, getting tricky this. Along with quite a few other people on this list, I don't think that SDL is currently feasible. _However_, if we can get some sort of standard written down, then I think the way ahead is to try and get the synthesiser manufacturers to implement it as part of the MIDI spec, in the same way as samples now have MSDS. A fourier-space/spectrum type system seems (to me) to be the most 'scientific' and quantifable method of sound description. Along these lines, say, a Roland 'LA' synth could receive an MSDL (?) patch, and try and figure out for itself how to generate that sound from its built-in partials and so on. Any thoughts on this? (and hopefully no flames!!!) Ray Bellis (Engineering and Computing Science 2nd Year Student, Oxford University, England) JANET: BITNET/EARN: or INTER/ARPANET: ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Apr 89 1:51:35 BST From: "Patrick C.K.Tsang" Subject: Macintosh serial port Boys and Gals, Just wondering how many people out there have timing delays due to the Macintosh's inefficient serial port. I use Mark of the Unicorn Performer with Jam-box-type interface. Whenever I record more than around a dozan notes played on a beat though my multi-timbral sources there are very significant delays on the downbeat. I am positive that my modules are not responsible for the delay. I never had such problems with hardware sequencers like the MC-500. I wonder if this is a hardware on a software problem. (i.e. is the software driver or the actual port responsible.) Patrick. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Apr 89 2:03:48 BST From: "Patrick C.K.Tsang" Subject: Direct-to-disk About direct-to-disk: Does the Macintosh DTD record in stereo ? Or multi-track ? I haven't got 10 grand to throw around just yet, although I proudly own a DAT mastering machine, and know how good digital sounds. However, considering the kind of money I need to spend to set up a good quality home multi-track system, it seems to be worth looking at direct-to-disk anyway, if it can save buying the mixer and the tape reel-to-reel. I would really appreciate more info on this topic. Patrick. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Apr 89 11:36:08 EDT From: "And now for something completely different..." Subject: minimalism Hello Emusicians, I am currently working on a program to do algorithmic composition of minimalist pieces. The first program, tentatively named Reich, constructs pieces much in the style of Drumming by Steve Reich. You input a pattern onto a grid, much like on a drum pattern editor, and the program repeats the pattern, starting with only one 'hit' of the pattern, and after a couple of repeats, adds another 'hit', until eventually the whole pattern is being played. It then gradually removes 'hits' until we are back at one hit again (but not necessarily the same one as we started with). It should be interesting to hear the pattern build up slowly. The choice of 'hit' to add at each point is made randomly, and at the moment the pattern is input by the user, but I guess it could be interesting to get the computer to generate the pattern too. Output at the moment is to the percussion instruments of my Yamaha PSS680. Next step is to write a program to be called Riley, to generate pieces in the style of 'In C' by Terry Riley (Nothing to do with computer programming languages :-)). Here all the instruments play the initial pattern as many times as they like, and then play the next pattern in the series. When they get to the last pattern, they repeat it, until everyone else has reached it (since they may have repeated earlier patterns a different number of times). Coding this is a bit more complex, since several patterns have to be input, and it would be best heard on some multi-timbral synth, or several devices on different midi channels. I hope this doesn't distract you from the serious business of SDL's and Poly-Multi-HyperHarmonysynthemulators - I think it's fun! Barry S. Rowlingson Janet: BSR@Uk.ac.Lancs.ph.v1 Bitnet: BSR@v1.ph.lancs.ac.uk I've always said there's nothing an agnostic can't do if he really doesn't know whether he believes in anything or not. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Apr 89 15:13:00 EDT From: "Baltuch@Brandeis.Bitnet is Jacob Baltuch..." Subject: alesis 1622 mixer my apologies for the following contribution, totally unworthy of this list. i'm sure it doesn't belong in here but... well... i'd really like to know: has anybody out there had the opportunity to lay their hands on one of the new alesis 1622 mixers (and if yes, how are they)? or even to spot one in a store? i've had contradictory statements from dealers, like sam ash in nyc, who say they've only seen pictures of it and don't even know when they (the mixers) are gonna be shipped for real and alesis which seem to say they're already available. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Apr 89 18:39:00 CDT From: UUCJEFF@ECNCDC Subject: re> alesis mixer It was shown at a recent NAMM show.... kept under glass. Alesis has brochures out on it, but I have not seen it in any music store. Jeff Beer, UUCJEFF@ECNCDC.BITNET Chicago, Illinois... ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Apr 89 11:51:09 BST From: Nick Rothwell Subject: Mac MIDI Interface for 10 pounds. I posted comments about my Mac MIDI interface to rec.music.synth on USEnet, so I thought I might as well post to these mailing lists as well, especially as there's a request for help at the bottom... My main comment is that it's possible to build a dual port (i.e. two MIDI ins & two MIDI outs) MIDI interface for a Mac for under 10 pounds. This is a factor of 20 less than the prices in the shops, at least here in the UK. A friend of mine designed the circuit, based on Kirk Austin's schematic which appeared in MacTutor, I believe. I built the thing and put it in a rather attractive black box, complete with two monitor LEDs on the front which go green for MIDI output and red for MIDI input (and yellow for both, of course). It looks pretty good, especially when it's flashing away in two colours in response to active sensing from my pf85 piano and Performer on the Mac. But I digress... We paid L8.88 for components, including the box and connectors. The box has 9V power in, 4 MIDI sockets, and two DB9 connectors to the Mac. This *doesn't* include cables from the interface to the Mac, with those mini-DIN connectors which are incredibly hard to buy (and even harder to solder up, let me tell you...). Also, we had a number of the resistors and capacitors, and the odd inverter chip, already. Full price from scratch (barring cables & power supply) would probably be around a tenner. So: I have a MacDrawing of Kirk Austin's original design. In addition, I intend to MacDraw our version, which has the LED support; the LED circuitry uses timer chips to get decent flash times, with the result that the LED circuitry uses as much space as the MIDI interface circuitry itself! Is this overkill, I wonder? I now have a question. The interface works OK, except that it idles with the MIDI output lines high (and the LEDs on). When I switch on the Mac and run a MIDI program, the lines go low and everything works. In addition, Performer and MIDIscope leave things in this state. If I turn off or restart the Mac, the lines go high again. This is unfortunate - MIDI devices don't like their MIDI ins held high for long periods of time: it locks them up and confuses them. So, can anybody tell me the correct connections from RS432 into a MIDI unit? I suspect we're using the wrong earth or something, causing this behaviour. Thanks. Give me a shout if you want a copy of the schematic MacDrawing. The more people who shout, the faster it will be done (once the above problem is solved, that is...). Nick. -- Nick Rothwell, Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh. nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk !mcvax!ukc!lfcs!nick ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ...while the builders of the cages sleep with bullets, bars and stone, they do not see your road to freedom that you build with flesh and bone. ------------------------------ ---------------------- End of EMUSIC-L Digest **********************