EMUSIC-L Digest Volume 29, Number 3 This issue's topics: Texture sequencing software (2 messages) PC MIDI/Sequencers/Editors (2 messages) NeXT Music alias who cares what key it's in? (3 messages) Re: Apple MIDI interface (2 messages) Re: Synthesizers (3 messages) Roland Intelligent Synthesizers and TVF Filters 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: Mon, 3 Jun 91 06:43:16 PDT From: Brian Gaon Subject: Texture sequencing software Would anyone happen to know if the latest version of "Texture" sequencing software supports output to a standard MIDI file??? Also, does it support the Key Electronics interface? The version I have been evaluating is 3 years old and does not meet the above criteria I am looking for. Basically, I am looking for a piece of software that is similiar in features to "Texture". I am currently using Cakewalk which makes a great librarian, but editing is rather clumsy. The most important feature I am looking for besides the above noted are the ability to paste together individual pathes/bridges to compose a piece. Can anyone help? -- Brian Gaon Internet: brain@foghorn.sfsu.edu Systems Analyst Bitnet: SGSAAAA@CALSTATE.BITNET Finger: brian@foghorn.sfsu.edu San Francisco State University Department Of Facilities Operations 1600 Holloway Avenue San Francisco, Ca. 94132 USA. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Jun 91 19:44:36 CST From: Jason Keeler Subject: Re: Texture sequencing software Brian; Sounds like you prefer the pattern-based or drum machine style of sequencing. If this is correct, Texture is the only software I know of which works in this manner. I found Cakewalk to be close if you start using the auto shuttle and region memory yet I too found I didn't like it too much. I would suggest you take a serious look at Master Tracks Pro for Windows. This is the first non pattern based sequencing package I've ever liked; I fell in love with it within the first half hour of using it. It is just so easy to do things with this package. Besides, It's a nice break from text-based sequencers! ...Jason ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Jun 91 15:36:00 EDT From: ZMSKB@SCFMVS.BITNET Subject: PC MIDI/Sequencers/Editors I'm interested in getting a sequencer/editor and MIDI setup for my PC. I'm running a 386/33 w/4M and have Windows. I'm interested in recording directly from my M1 to the PC, editing/rearranging the composition, playing it through my stereo, and saving it on disk. Eventually, I want to get porta-studio to combine my digital tracks with analog tracks (ie: voice and guitar). I could probably spend up to $250-$300 US dollars for the MIDI hardware and PC software (maybe more). Does anyone have opinions/horror stories/advise on what is available? Scott B. It's only Rock n' Roll ................................ But I like it! ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 4 Jun 91 15:21:07 EDT From: David Van Allen Subject: Re: PC MIDI/Sequencers/Editors Of the PC world MIDI software ther are two main choices CAKEWALK either regular or PRO /or SEQUENCER + MK whatever number they are up to now.... You will need an interface card, probably MPU(Roland) compatible and there are many available, some with multiple midi in/out ports giving you multiples of 16 channels available, others with SMPTE read/write... The MIDI cards range from a no-sync mpucompatible for around $100 US to multi port with SMPTE for around $300-up US... Sequence : Cakewalk can be had for under $200, with the Pro version abaout $40 more, and offers Real Bang for the Buck; I own and use it, so I am biased, but SEQ + has many of the same features(They match each other's latest tricks with each new version release) Either will run in a DOS window, neither has a Windows version out yet. Cakewalk is character based, but has mouse support and a graphic feel with differnt screens devoted to track view, measure view,a piano roll note editing view,and event list editing... it also has a rudimentary sysex librarian feature, so you can store setups with your sequences, and can even auto-send them out to your stuff upon loading the sequence file if you want... If synch to tape is not paramount you can easily set yourself up for under $300, but if you want synch, that's gonna cost more. This is intended as a quick overview and not the diffinitive statement on PC/MI DI .... I use Cakewalk Pro,like it a lot, and I have a outmoded MPU compatible interface w/ "dumb" FSK sync made by Voyetra (They don't make this one any more but it was about $125 at my local discount music emporium) Other folks will I'm sure give you mor info and details as to what and why they like certain products... Hope you find something _you_ like and wll match your needs! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- *-----------------------------*-------------------------------------* | David Van Allen | | | American University Library | "THE DAVE-INATOR, | | Access Services Department | MAKIN' COPIES!!" | | Copy Center Manager | | *-----------------------------*-------------------------------------* | CompuServe 72627,526 | "You and I may have nothing else in | | MooseMuseMusicInternational | common...." - Ray Scott, B.A.S.S. | | MIDI/Steel Guitar/Tunesmythe| {õ/~~oõo | | | {/õ_{_() Support catch & release!| *-----------------------------*-------------------------------------* ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Jun 91 12:40:17 PDT From: Conrad_Geiger@NEXT.COM Subject: NeXT Music alias fyi, Here is a recent NeXTmusic alias posting on Real Time Mixing. To subscribe to this music alias, send email to... nextmusic-request@silvertone.princeton.edu conrad P.S. Paul Lansky will be the keynote speaker at next week's USENIX Multimedia Conference in Nashville, Tennessee. >From: Paul Lansky >Date: Sun, 2 Jun 91 11:41:09 EDT >To: nextmusic@silvertone.Princeton.EDU >Subject: real time mixing Much to our delight we have discovered that the 040 NeXT is fast enough to play several soundfiles simultaneously with envelope control on each. The limit seems to be two 44k stereo files (or 8 22k mono files,etc). Disk speed is the main constraint. With system overhead you need about 400k bytes per second for 2 44k stereo files. (the new 400 meg disks seem to be able to sustain 1.1 meg per second!). So, I've written a cmix application called rtmix, which allows you to align two files, draw envelopes and play them, all in real time, as long as long as you are playing from a local disk. It does not work well across a network or from an optical disk. A student of mine, Kent Dickey, has written a much better program, which I'll post as soon as it is ready, which allows you much more arbitrary control over the number of files. Kent's program will even allow you to change the apparent sampling rate in real time (create glissandi etc). I've put the source and binary in pub/music at princeton.edu. Thanks to Kent for teaching me how to optimize overhead, and to Rob Poor for his DACPlayer object. Paul Lansky Music Department Princeton Univ. paul@princeton.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 4 Jun 91 15:36:35 EDT From: ronin Subject: who cares what key it's in? there is a thing called the 'ethos doctrine' that, among other things, specifies the appropriate mood or purpose of a key. the fact is that c major sounds different from d sharp minor, and has a different psychological effect. to avoid this is to be trapped in the even more restrictive doctrines of the serialists, who, in trying to 'free' music from its conventional modes of expression, discovered a vast, flat cul-de-sac of meaninglessness. imho. --------------------------< Eschew Obfuscation >------------------------- Eric Harnden (Ronin) The American University Physics Dept. Washington, D.C ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 4 Jun 91 15:54:37 -0500 From: UUCJEFF@BOGECNVE.BITNET Subject: Reply to who cares what key it's in? >there is a thing called the 'ethos doctrine' that, among other >things, specifies the appropriate mood or purpose of a key. >the fact is that c major sounds different from d sharp minor, and >has a different psychological effect. to avoid this is to be trapped >in the even more restrictive doctrines of the serialists, who, in trying >to 'free' music from its conventional modes of expression, discovered >a vast, flat cul-de-sac of meaninglessness. >imho. > eh, you don't think Webern kicks ass? But you are right, D-flat blues is really special. (doesn't this belong in Allmusic?) Jeff ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 5 Jun 91 09:14:00 EDT From: "William R(ay) Brohinsky" Subject: Re: who cares what key it's in? The `ethos doctrine', as described, has little or no basis in fact in the ET12 system, especially since most people who listen to music can't tell how out of tune (but CONSISTANTLY out of tune 8^) ET12 is to start with. On the other hand, prior to ET12's realization in synthesizers to an approximation far beyond most of our abilities to calculate, fixed-pitch instruments were either really mutable-pitch instruments or were tuned in nonET temperaments (note that `tuned' is used here in the common form of having their pitch set) or really tuned in just intonation. The interesting thing about any pitch system other than ET is that they all DO sound different from key to key. The pure systems, like Pythagoras and Just simply don't have different keys: you must retune to a new pitch center. Mean-tone temperaments (where the third is preserved at least somewhat, at the expense of the fifth) have decided differences in emotional response, with some chords being so `bad' as to make them desireable as dissonances. (Baroque composers sometimes took wild tonal tangents to arrive at these chords, simply because resolving them to chords that were more amicable to the mean-tone temperament in use was SO rewarding!) Even the attempts at equal temperaments (and Whole-temperament is only another variant of non-equal temperaments, regardless of how much Bach liked it!) that took place through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been mere approximations, predicated on beat narrowing. When you have to set an interval so that it beats once every six seconds, you may get to where you can set it repeatably, but your accuracy may be consistantly off. (I say this as a piano tuner, mind you, not just as a pedantic microtonalist!) raybro ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Jun 91 12:42:00 BST From: Nick Rothwell Subject: Re: Apple MIDI interface > Is anybody currently making use of the Apple MIDI > interface? I am considering purchasing this device; > however, I don't know how well it is supported. This question (or related ones) crops up quite regularly. A Macintosh MIDI interface is $10 worth of electronics. They're all pretty much the same unless you get into the higher realms of smart routers and things which speak timecode like MOTU's MIDI Time Piece. The Apple interface is no better or worse than an Opcode interface or anything else. You may wish for more physical MIDI out connections, but they all carry the same signal so it's not essential. Assuming physical construction is OK (and the Apple interface I've seen seemed fine) there's no reason not to use one, although I'd probably go for one with activity LED's (especially for programming). You don't need "support" unless something comes loose inside it. We aren't talking nasty complex shoddy incompatible PC-world stuff here. Nick. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 5 Jun 91 14:08:00 EST From: Chris Iverson Subject: Re: Apple MIDI interface I use the Apple MIDI interface, and it suits me just fine for what I do now. Eventually I will need more in/out ports and I'll have to get something more versatile, but it handles my present load satisfactorily. The Apple interface is a well-made bare bones interface. It does one thing (converting MIDI signals to RS-422 standard), and does it well. Most other MIDI interfaces either have more in/out ports, or do some other processing such as merging or SMPTE synch. For what the Apple interface does, it's fairly expensive, but it is one of the cheapest interfaces available because it does so little :-) One advantage to using the Apple interface is that it draws its power from the Mac, so you don't have yet another power cord to deal with. -chris ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Jun 91 12:41:54 BST From: Nick Rothwell Subject: Re: Synthesizers >I think the entire D series of synths >are among the best machines built in the 80's. Seriously? In which case, I (generally) disagree. The D-50 is very nice indeed, I grant you that. Nice chorus and EQ, and lots of LFO and modulation facilities - strange for Roland, in fact, but it's these, rather than the silly PCM samples, which make the D-50 so good. But, the other D-series machines (D-10, D-20, etc.) are a lot less powerful - one LFO for pitch modulation and that's it. I have a D-110 which is versatile in its multitimbral and rhythm setups, but the actual sounds are pretty weak. I use it as a sequencing/rhythm engine for which it's well suited, rather than for leads or pads which it's not much good for. The last good synths Roland made were the JX-10 and the D-50. Everything since has been pretty weak. The best machines built in the 80's were the PPG and the Waldorf. Of course. Nick. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 5 Jun 91 15:29:59 EDT From: Keith Subject: Re: Synthesizers Nick writes... >...but, the other D-series machines (D-10, D-20, etc) are a lot less powerful- one LFO for pitch modulation and that's it. and >I have a D-110 which is versatile in its multitimbral and rhythm setups, but the actual sounds are pretty weak. Perhaps I was too vague in my statement, when I was referring to these synths. I was refering to non-sample-playback machines, not synths in general. Also, Nick, if you are going to make comparison you must make them relative to the time period they appeared in. Of coarse the D series sounds are going to be "weak" if you compare them to what is out there today. However, for the time period they were presented in the sounds were not weak. It is all realative. Even your beloved Waldorf will have "weak" sound in the future. What can I tell, you I love my D-110 (one LFO and all), just as much as you love your Waldorf. It's a matter of opinion; nothing is absolute just as >The best machines built in the 80's were the PPG and the Waldorf. Of course. ||||||||| is also a matter of opinion --Keith ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 6 Jun 91 11:23:43 BST From: Nick Rothwell Subject: D-series and classics >Of coarse the D series sounds are going to be >"weak" if you compare them to what is out there today. I didn't only mean "weak" in terms of the quality and clarity of the sound - the D-machines are a little weak in this respect, but I don't particularly mind that - what I meant was weak in terms of what the machines can be programmed to do. The D-50 is a classic machine because of the modulation options which Roland built into it and the way they interact with the onboard effects. The sound is "weak" in that it's rather dull and hissy compared with a modern machine, but I still consider the D-50 a fairly strong machine because of its character. The lower D machines don't have this appeal - what they have instead is multitimbral versatility and a large PCM sample bank. >Even your beloved Waldorf will have "weak" sound in the future. Perhaps. Consider, though, that the PPG sound is ten years old and still runs rings round things in the shops today. Like I was saying about "classic"... >>The best machines built in the 80's were the PPG and the Waldorf. Of course. > ||||||||| >is also a matter of opinion Excuse me a second: i/:-)/ Nick. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 4 Jun 91 15:16:58 GMT From: Piet van Oostrum Subject: Roland Intelligent Synthesizers and TVF Filters Does anybody have experience with the Roland Intelligent Synthesizers series (E series)? They are saying they use TVF filters. What are these? Please (also) mail the answers to me, as we seem occasionally be missing articles. -- Piet* van Oostrum, Dept of Computer Science, Utrecht University, Padualaan 14, P.O. Box 80.089, 3508 TB Utrecht, The Netherlands. Telephone: +31 30 531806 Uucp: uunet!mcsun!ruuinf!piet Telefax: +31 30 513791 Internet: piet@cs.ruu.nl (*`Pete') ------------------------------ End of the EMUSIC-L Digest ******************************