EMUSIC-L Digest Volume 30, Number 2 This issue's topics: Re: Yamaha SY77 / TG77 (2 messages) Re: Taurus and Liberation (4 messages) hysteria over hysteresis.. (7 messages) Guitar FX T3 MIDI File emusic idea (2 messages) Music From the Galaxies (4 messages) Roland MV-30 filters Re: Librarian for the Ensoniq Mirage 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, 8 Jul 91 09:47:00 EDT From: Dean Swan Subject: Re: Yamaha SY77 / TG77 Brian, The TG-77 has a few things that the SY doesn't in terms of voice programming. Programmable multi-outs, and a programmable voice allocation mode for multis, in addition to the dynamic voice allocation. Other than that, they are the same. If you don't need the keyboard, disk drive, and sequencer, get the TG. -Dean Swan dean@sun.soe.clarkson.edu dean_swan@mitel.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 8 Jul 1991 15:51:46 EDT From: ronin Subject: tg/sy again just a piddling little point here.. i thought that the sy has got a joystick (vector control?) on it, which the tg does not seem to have. have i confused something here? --------------------------< Eschew Obfuscation >------------------------- Eric Harnden (Ronin) The American University Physics Dept. Washington, D.C ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 8 Jul 91 10:49:47 EDT From: "D. Yuen" Subject: Re: Taurus Tim, Did you get any info on your question on the company that retrofits analogs to MIDI. I have the address - If you still need it let me know. What I do remember they would retrofit your minimoog or if you wanted you could buy a new (?) minimoog they had rack mounted with MIDI for around $2000.00 WHILE ON THE SUBJECT OF MOOG-I was looking at an old Moog Liberation, anyone out there familiar with what kind of voice expansion box could be plugged into the Liberation interface? Deductions from the liturature would conclude a Taurus voice module would work...um. Any Moog Dinosaur users out there know what I'm talking about? Was there a specific module made for this, or was it open to any CV box? I'm going to try my Yamaha with the stupid log CV scale...twill be interesting if nothing else. Dan Yuen ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Jul 1991 11:20:15 EDT From: Jeffrey R Kell Subject: Re: Taurus Harrumph. I used to have a Liberation. I couldn't get it to interface with *anything*. /Jeff/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Jul 1991 13:57:00 EST From: MCINTYRE@MSUPA.BITNET Subject: Moog Liberation interfacing >From: "D. Yuen" >WHILE ON THE SUBJECT OF MOOG-I was looking at an old Moog Liberation, >anyone out there familiar with what kind of voice expansion box >could be plugged into the Liberation interface? Deductions from the >liturature would conclude a Taurus voice module would work...um. >Any Moog Dinosaur users out there know what I'm talking about? Was >there a specific module made for this, or was it open to any CV box? >I'm going to try my Yamaha with the stupid log CV scale...twill be >interesting if nothing else. I took a look at my Taurus and Liberation, but did not have time to try anything. Interfacing looks like it could be complicated. The Liberation offers CV and trigger out, but the trigger out jack takes a strange kind of plug. I think they are called Schmidtt triggers. I do know that none of my other equipment has such a jack, so some kind of adapter will be needed. The Taurus has a control voltage in jack, but it is labelled "Use stereo plug only". The back panel has no explanation as to why only a stereo plug is to be used. I do not have a manual for the Taurus, perhaps the answer is there. The Liberation CV out jack is not labelled "use stereo plug only". So, can the (presumably) mono output of the Liberation appease the stereo input of the Taurus? I do not know. Yet. No promises as to when I get around to trying it, especially as I suspect I would prefer to use the Liberation as an independent voice, rather than as a controller. Then again, hard to tell until I try. John McIntyre Physics - Astronomy Dept Michigan State University ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1991 07:28:00 EDT From: "William R(ay) Brohinsky" Subject: Re: Moog Liberation interfacing John McIntyre, et. al.: Schmitt triggers are input devices. They are logic gates with hysteria, ie, their output level will go high at one level of voltage, and low at another level. For speed, they are usually inverters, but that isn't (probably) too important. The reason for the hysteria is so that an unstable input will not cause the output to `bounce'. I'd doubt that the Trigger Out is a schmitt trigger input, but the output could be the output _from_ a schmitt trigger. The connector wouldn't be one at all. Schmitt triggers are most useful when a digital-style gate or pulse is required from an analog signal, or when a noisy digital signal is to be smoothed (can you call it smoothed when the result has sharp, almost discontinuous changes in it?). As for the CV connectors, they seem to come in two types: two contact, where one is the variable voltage and the other is ground, and three contact where one is the `sending' CV ouput's power supply, and the other two are CV and ground, just like the two-contact variety. The stereo input implies that the receiving machine doesn't have its internal supply available to the CV input. This can be a good thing: if the internal supply is 5V (positive to ground) and the CV generator's internal supply is such that it allows 0-10V CV signals, the upper half of the CV signal will not be usable by the receiving machine. If the receiving machine simply relies on the sending machine to provide the power, and then simply attenuates the CV input (so that a 0-10v signal can be used just like a 0-5v signal with more attenuation) then you will be able to connect more and different kinds of synths. Where this falls down is where the sending machine doesn't send all three lines. If this is the case, you are probably out of luck. raybro ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1991 08:39:00 EDT From: wbf@CBEMA.ATT.COM Subject: Minor Word Correction > Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1991 07:28:00 EDT > From: "William R(ay) Brohinsky" > Subject: Re: Moog Liberation interfacing > > Schmitt triggers are input devices. They are logic gates with > hysteria, ie, their output level will go high at one level of voltage, ^^^^^^^^ That's hysteresis. Hysteria is (1) a psychiatric condition characterized by emotional excitability, excessive anxiety, sensory and motor distubances, and the simulation of organic disorders like blindness or deafness: or (2) it could be any outbreak of wild, uncontrolled excitement or feeling, such as fits of laughing and crying; hysterics. I sort of like the first definition but experience the second whenever Norm Crosby, Archie Bunker, or Raybro make wierd word substitutions. Raybro's explanation of heysteresis is essentially correct. The hysteresis creates an electronic no-man's-land to debounce an incoming signal. A Schmidt trigger won't change states until its input entirely crosses that dead zone. Bill Fox Columbus, Ohio (I saw John Lennon last night.) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1991 13:45:48 EDT From: ronin Subject: hysterical schmidts actually, if you think about it, 'hysteria' might well be a valid plural of 'hysteresis', and he did say 'gates', not gate. on the other hand... i don't know what the back of a taurus pedal looks like, but those funny plugs might well be the european speaker connectors that moog used to transmit s-trigger (short-to-ground trigger) to envelope generators... i think that the schmidt is the gate conditioner that extracts the actual trigger from that negative-going waveform inside the eg. at any rate, if the plug has two parallel thin slots, one slightly larger than the other, then that's one of those puppies. and if it's male, then it is indeed a trigger (gate, actually) output, which does make as little sense as you might think. there is every reason to suppose that moog might have intended the taurus to be a viable controller, as well as a tone generator. if it's got those things and cv outs, then it can of course be plugged into most analog equipment. --------------------------< Eschew Obfuscation >------------------------- Eric Harnden (Ronin) The American University Physics Dept. Washington, D.C ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1991 15:22:00 EDT From: "William R(ay) Brohinsky" Subject: hysteria over hysteresis.. I am the victim of reading too much. As such, when I first encountered `hysteresis', it was about 5 years before the first time I heard it said. I assumed (foolish of me, I know 8^) that it was pronounced `hiss-ter'-e-siss'. I was informed that it was actually pronounced ``hiss-ter-eee'-siss'', and have had an aversion to the word ever since. Bill, thank you for catching that (I didn't even see it when I re-read my posting when it was sent back to me from EMUSIC-L!). I'm glad my weird word substitutions can bring some light into your day, and I hope the straight jacket is your size. Which reminds me of the day I was on quarterdeck duty as petty-officer- of-the-deck, and a medical officer stopped on his way off the ship. He'd forgotten his khaki jacket in Medical. I called up on the ship-board phone, and said, ``Hi, this is the POOD. We've got a guy on the quarterdeck who really needs a stray jacket from up there.'' The marine medic who showed up had something hidden behind his back, and I've regretted my penchant for misphrasing ever since... raybro *** Nieder mit den tueten! Freiheit Fuer Gummibaerchen! *** ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1991 13:33:00 N From: "OUT, OUT - YOU'LL NOT FEEL THE FALL-OUT..." Subject: 'hystereses' as plural (tho' unused) >actually, if you think about it, 'hysteria' might well be >a valid plural of 'hysteresis', and he did say 'gates', not gate. Er... don't want to be flamed - don't want to start a war, but I happen to have studied Greek in my youth, and the plural of 'hysteresis' is 'hystereses'. As a Physics graduate, anyway, I've never read about 'hysteria' in a gate... may- be when the equipment goes banana - well it might fit... OK, I shut up! I'm just joking, of course... no offense, please. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1991 09:27:52 EDT From: ronin Subject: Re: 'hystereses' and arp again no flame at all. thanks for the info. i am often thrown by those suffixes, although my thought was meant half in jest. since we're on the topic (which has nothing whatsoever to do with emusic, but what the hell... it's summer), if the cherubim is pural for cherub, then why isn't the plural of syllabus syllabim? or would that be for syllab? oh, and just to get a little relevant content in here.... i have an arp odyssey, black face with gold lettring, with no cv or gate interface on the back. go figure. --------------------------< Eschew Obfuscation >------------------------- Eric Harnden (Ronin) The American University Physics Dept. Washington, D.C ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1991 11:38:00 EDT From: "William R(ay) Brohinsky" Subject: Re: 'hystereses' and arp again Actually, you're working with three different languages here: Hysteresis is from greek, and it's plural would be Hystereses. (The hYs gives it away, in this case!) Cherub is Hebrew, and the plural masculine would be Cherubim. Likewise, they've taken the english work Student, and pluralize (masculine) it as Studentot. A gaggle of female students would be Studentot. Syllabus comes to us most recently from latin. It's plural is syllabi, because that's the way that particular set of nouns is pluralized. Latin has 5 declensions, which results in four endings (five, but two are differentiated by a diacritical mark that hasn't made it into ascii!). In some declensions (and I may be spelling declension wrong, sorry) the nominative (naming) plural and genitive (possessive) have the same ending, and other endings will have the same shape as endings for different parts of speech in different declensions. This was rumored, in my HS latin classes, as the major reason for the Decline of the Roman Empire, along with lead preservatives in their wine and lead pipes in their water systems: the latter two made keeping up with the language impossible! raybro *** Nieder mit den tueten! Freiheit Fuer Gummibaerchen! *** ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1991 08:48:00 EST From: MCINTYRE@MSUPA.BITNET Subject: re: hysterical schmidts >From: ronin >on the other hand... i don't know what the back of a taurus pedal >looks like, but those funny plugs might well be the european >speaker connectors that moog used to transmit s-trigger (short-to-ground >trigger) to envelope generators... i think that the schmidt is the gate >conditioner that extracts the actual trigger from that negative-going >waveform inside the eg. at any rate, if the plug has two parallel thin >slots, one slightly larger than the other, then that's one of those puppies. >and if it's male, then it is indeed a trigger (gate, actually) output, which >does make as little sense as you might think. there is every reason to >suppose that moog might have intended the taurus to be a viable controller, >as well as a tone generator. if it's got those things and cv outs, then it >can of course be plugged into most analog equipment. Minor clarification: the uncommon trigger output is on the Liberation, not the Taurus. I believe Eric is correct about it being an s-trigger jack. I had thought "s-trigger" meant "schmidt-trigger"; was I wrong? The trigger out jack on the Liberation is female. It is the Taurus that has its input jacks marked "use stereo plug only". John McIntyre Physics - Astronomy Dept Michigan State University ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 8 Jul 1991 14:19:14 LCL From: Norwich.School@MAC.DARTMOUTH.EDU Subject: Guitar FX Well, after checking out a number of units, I came to the conclusion that the more expensive units like the Roland GP-16 and the Peavey ProFex were overkill. I don't really need to use MIDI foot controllers live, because all i really need for my oldies band is a handful of patches that I found I can cycle through with a simple hold pedal. I ordered the Boss SE-50 today. $450 I was at Wurlitzer's in Boston on Friday where they were selling the GP 16 for under 700. Thanks for all you help. I'll let you know how it goes with the SE 50 Cam ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1991 08:32:23 ADT From: Alan Edwards Subject: T3 MIDI File A Student has some to me with a question that I hope someone out there has experience with. He wants to take a sequencer file from his T3 into a DOS-type machine. According to the specs, the T3 can put the data out through sysex, which would be much quicker that just playing it, and all Korg has been able to tell him about the format is that it is "standard MIDI file format". The ultimate plan is to take the data into something like Songwright V and print out the notation. This program apparently understands type I MIDI files. I have used MIDI file types to transfer between my Atari and DOS machines, but have not seen a way of sending them through sysex. Is this a Korg thing? Thanks in advance for any suggestions. Alan Edwards UNB Canada ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Jul 1991 13:23:29 EDT From: ronin Subject: emusic idea i was having a talk with a friend/student of mine today, and brought something up that until now has remained only a vague notion (reminds me of a title by ken kesey... 'sometimes a vague notion')... anyway, i've been working for a while with a programming language called DYNAMO. it's basically a math language developed for implementing systems dynamics models. it uses various forms of numerical soution to simulate the behavior of complex systems over time. quite nifty. while playing with it, it occurred to me to use it as a sound modeling tool. i've written synthesis doohickeys before (fm, karplus/strong, etc), but they've all been sort of 'hard-wired'... the code was very specific. DYNAMO seems to be an interesting way to prototype algorithms, or perhaps even to build a tutorial system. the functions are easy to call and link together in fairly complex ways, and of course the whole thing is pretty generalized. it may not be a replacement for CSOUND, or MUSIC V, or anything like that, but it may have its idiosyncratic points. an attraction of the idea is the continuance of what i always saw as one of the ideas of emusic to begin with... the corruption of engineering tools in the service of weird art. --------------------------< Eschew Obfuscation >------------------------- Eric Harnden (Ronin) The American University Physics Dept. Washington, D.C ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1991 09:36:49 EDT From: Joe McMahon Subject: Re: emusic idea On Wed, 10 Jul 1991 13:23:29 EDT ronin said: > ... i've been working for a while with a programming language >called DYNAMO. it's basically a math language developed for implementing >systems dynamics models. it uses various forms of numerical soution to >simulate the behavior of complex systems over time. quite nifty. while playing >with it, it occurred to me to use it as a sound modeling tool. i've written >synthesis doohickeys before (fm, karplus/strong, etc), but they've all >been sort of 'hard-wired'... the code was very specific. DYNAMO seems to be >an interesting way to prototype algorithms, or perhaps even to build >a tutorial system... >an attraction of the idea is the continuance of what i always saw as >one of the ideas of emusic to begin with... the corruption of >engineering tools in the service of weird art. This reminds me of something that was brought up quite a while ago. Someone had mentioned that all kinds of interesting digital filter algorithms existed, including resonant ones, but that they were "unpredictable". Has anyone ever tried more exotic filtering using a DSP or suchlike? Frankly, I thnk a filter based on a chaotic algorithm or an unpredictable one could go a long way toward making "boring" digital sounds a lot better. --- Joe M. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1991 16:36:00 EST From: MCINTYRE@MSUPA.BITNET Subject: Music From the Galaxies Picked up an interesting CD: "Music From The Galaxies" by Dr. Fiorella Terenzi. The disc is made from radio telescope data of galaxy UGC 6697 input to the cmusic computer program. And that is about all the liner notes tell you. The resulting music is very reminescent of "classical" electronic music back in the old patch cord days, before polyphony, before sequencers. The final cut on the disc adds some fairly generic new age music by Gordon Bahary to the cmusic output. To my ears, the blending experiment doesn't work. But then "Electronic Meditation" is my favorite Tangerine Dream album. 8-) In summation, not for everyone, certainly not for the dancers. But for those of you who remember Otto Luening and Todd Dockstader, "Music From The Galaxies" will be a real treat. John McIntyre Physics - Astronomy Dept Michigan State University ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1991 11:49:00 BST From: Nick Rothwell Subject: Re: Music From the Galaxies In this vein, let me recommend Robert Schroeder's "Galaxie Cygnus-A" album. It was music commissioned for a slide show at some German festival, and starts out (and finishes) with the noise emanations from the Galaxy. The rest of the music is fairly slow and meditative, but well constructed and produced, Berlin-school emusic. Nice synthesis in it - it's got a =metallic, plate-reverb kind of feel to it, and is claimed to be all PPG but there's a fair amount of VCS3-style bending of sounds and timbres as well, however that's done. Nick. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1991 10:13:24 TZONE From: David Mantripp Subject: Re: Music From the Galaxies There's a coincidence - I've just selected "Galaxie Cygnus-A" as one of the LPs I've decided to dispose of. It's really quite disposable, and nowhere near as good as Schroeder's "Paradise". I saw him live once, and he was dreadfully disapointing. Still, he beats the pants of Schulze, TD, etc. Just an opinion, mind. Dave/. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1991 15:46:35 BST From: Nick Rothwell Subject: Re: Music From the Galaxies >There's a coincidence - I've just selected "Galaxie Cygnus-A" as one >of the LPs I've decided to dispose of. It's really quite disposable, >and nowhere near as good as Schroeder's "Paradise". PARADISE stinks in my opinion, although the PPG work on Skywalker (or whatever it's called) is OK. I still think GALAXIE is amongst his finest work, with HARMONIC ASCENDANT being pretty good as well. >I saw him live >once, and he was dreadfully disapointing. True. Electronica '83 is where I saw him. Nick. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1991 09:46:21 EDT From: Annie Lamonde Subject: Roland MV-30 Hi! I was wondering if some of you had any experience with the Roland MV-30 Mucis Production System. It has all the sounds of the Roland D-70, plus acts as a sequencer. I say it for 2095$ Canadian. I was wondering if some of you could give me their opinion on the sound module (please answer privatly since I am no longer on the list). It would running with a Yamaha DX-7. Thankx in advance for your help. Annie Lamonde Computing Advisor E-mail: agl8chc@acadvm1.uottawa.ca ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1991 11:03:01 EDT From: ronin Subject: filters was just poking 'round rec.music.synth, and came upon a discussion of filters that brought to min a question i've always had. the writer was talking about the subjective differences between moog, roland, korg, etc. filters. he characterized moog filters as having 'power', roland as having 'sheen', and seemed to like sequential circuits stuff. now, of course, these terms are super-vague and subject to a great deal of debate, but we all know what he's talking about. i, for instance, don't actually like the sci sound all that much... it is 'flat' to my ears. as a roland is 'round', and a moog is, yes, 'powerful'. but what is the relation between actual filter characteristics and the way we hear them? is a moog 'powerful' simply because of it's specific db/octave curve? has that curve got any particular qualities that deviate from the 'normal' curve, that have been designed in specifically by moog? do we attribute sonic 'roundness' to response patterms that are in fact 'rounder', or to sharper cutoffs, narrower q's... is there a substantive, relevant, and readable literature on this? or does anyone have any insight here? --------------------------< Eschew Obfuscation >------------------------- Eric Harnden (Ronin) The American University Physics Dept. Washington, D.C ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Jul 1991 20:45:07 GMT From: "Bruce D. Becker" Subject: Re: Librarian for the Ensoniq Mirage In article <5143@batman.moravian.EDU> music@batman.moravian.EDU (The Phoenix) writes: |HELP! We're looking for a good (actually ANY) librarian for the |Ensoniq Mirage. Can anyone suggest where to turn? And a good Amiga program to talk to the Ensoniq EPS would also be most welcome. Not only the sequencer, but the whole user interface would be vastly improved by having keyboard/mouse interaction... Thanks, -- ,u, Bruce Becker Toronto, Ontario a /i/ Internet: bdb@becker.UUCP, bruce@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu `\o\-e UUCP: ...!utai!mnetor!becker!bdb _< /_ "Elvis sighted wearing Stevie Ray Vaughan mask" - Notional Enchorier ------------------------------ End of the EMUSIC-L Digest ******************************