EMUSIC-L Digest Volume 33, Number 4 This issue's topics: NeXT: score language NeXT: unit generators Atari / DX 10 bank manager Captain Waldorf goes to Super LA [LONG] (2 messages) the faq's EPS 16+ OS (latest version #?) Music Chit chat... A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum Yamaha V-50 Footswitch to order 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: Wed, 16 Oct 1991 10:35:34 EDT From: ronin Subject: next:score language query re music on the next: does the 'ensemble' sequencer/editor generate 'score' commandlines which are then interpreted in real time by a 'score' player? or does it undercut that level of processing and refer directly to synthpatch objects? on a more general level, is the 'score' player a compiler or an interpreter? is it a shell which will immediately act upon 'score' commands passed up to it? can i run it in background and pass it 'score' command strings from a custom front end? -------------< Extremism in the Pursuit of Good Noise is no Vice >------- Eric Harnden (Ronin) or The American University Physics Dept. Washington, D.C ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1991 10:42:30 EDT From: ronin Subject: next:unit generators on exactly what level do the next's dsp-controlling unit generators operate? do they refer to a lower-level library of dsp routines? or does each one link to a custom bit of dsp code? on the more general level... can i write my own unit generators? can i, for instance, construct my own filter object without having to actually produce 56001 assembly code? what is the lowest level of functionality that is provided by the resident libraries and tools? -------------< Extremism in the Pursuit of Good Noise is no Vice >------- Eric Harnden (Ronin) or The American University Physics Dept. Washington, D.C ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1991 21:52:15 GMT From: Erik Meinders Subject: Atari / DX 10 bank manager A friend without a news connection asked me to post the following message: 1) Is there anyone outthere who knows about a program for the Atari 1040 to load and save the banks from a DX 10 Sythesizer ? 2) Anyone who knows about a prgram to edit video and add music to pictures using an Atari 1040, Please respond by e-mail, as I do not read all news-groups this mesage was posted to. -- Erik Meinders Individual SoftCare phone: +31 3240 46326 Schoutstraat 23 email: erik@isc.nl 1315 EV Almere Stad ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1991 11:05:48 +0000 From: Nick Rothwell Subject: Captain Waldorf goes to Super LA [LONG] HEY I JUST GOT A REAL NICE BOARD!!! A rOLAND d-70 IT HAS SOME GREAT SOUNDS AN YWAY I PAID 1000 QUID!! IS THIS ThE GOING RATE OR WAS I RIPED OFF LET ME KNOW ANYWAY ALSO hAS ANYBODY GOT sOME PATCHES FOR THIs KBD PLEAS EMAIL THEM TO ME THANKS!!!! Parody aside, this has been a good weekend hardware-wise, I think. I was walking past Scayles Music last week and... ...hmm? Oh yeah, let me tell you about Scayles. They used to deal in 2nd-hand fishing tackle and musical instruments ("Scales." get it?), before dumping the fishing tackle and concentrating on musical instruments. So, there's this shoebox-sized shop full of guitar amps, drums, accordions, and old keyboards. You remember the Jawas from Star Wars, with all the old battered 'droids being sold and haggled over? Scayles is the same for musical instruments, right down to the portable Yamaha keyboard suspended upside-down and having its feet burned. [I know. That wasn't the Jawas. That's not important right now.] I tend not to pay much attention to Scayles. They make a living from 2nd-hand gear, which means they pay peanuts for items they take and ramp the prices when selling (I mean, $500 for a used TX81Z?). I tend to shift old gear by trading in against cut-price new gear, or if I'm not in a hurry I'll sell privately for a better price. But, I look into Scayles' window a couple of times a month, just in case something interesting turns up. Recently they had a Sequential Drumtrax and Oberheim Prommer being sold as a matching pair [Huh?], a healthy-looking MicroMoog ("Look Mummy, a ribbon controller..."), a JX3P, Poly 61, DW8000 (I would definitely have made them an offer on a rack of same), an old Mirage, and a D-70. Huh? [Double-take.] Oh. A D-70. The Mega Roland Flagship, sitting in Scayles on top of a couple of amps and a bongo set, just behind the violin and accordions, and looking like yer average cute home-loving labrador caged up in a dogs' home. Hmm, how much do they want for it? Thousand quid, huh? Shame I don't have 1000 quid, otherwise I'd be tempted, besides I've got too many keyboard units already and.... [FX: Lightbulb] OK, so I'm back at Scayles at the crack of dawn and seeing if they'll give me the D-70 in exchange for the D-50 and pf85. They weren't that keen after doing the sums, and were after another 200 quid, but we agreed on an extra 100 and that was that. I should explain that the D-70 lists for something like L1895 (approaching $3500), with a street price of around L1600, so I was surprised that Scayles had one for L999. My only conclusion was that the owner had fallen on hard times and was wanting to free up some cash quickly. Shame really (for him, that is) since the machine was in practically mint condition apart from some scratches to the underside - even the perspex windshield covering the display was fine - so he could have gotten L1400 or so privately, I reckon. I would guess Scayles gave him around L800 for it, which I reckoned translated into a very reasonable deal for the buyer. (Me.) Anyway, I walked off with the manual for a couple of days (a procedure I recommend for all purchases, btw) and came back to give the machine a quick medical in the store with a torch and the Lexicon MRC to check all the sliders, pots, keys, buttons and rear connectors. Seemed fine. Checked the display for dropped pixels. Seemed fine. So I'm off home with it over my shoulder. (Together with a drummers' stool. Here's me, been searching for a decent solid adjustable keyboard stool for *years*, not been able to find one anywhere, and then realising that what I was after was a drummers' stool all along. Shame I had to buy a drum key for it as well...) So, I've had this machine at home a day (the D-70, not the drummers' stool), and I'm slowly finding my way around the user interface. I thought I'd give you my first impressions. PHYSICALLY: very nice. The 76-note keyboard is a *big* point in its favour. (I was after a partial replacement for the pf85, after all, and 5 octaves isn't really enough for a controller.) It's not very deep (front-to-back) so I'll have to get some longer Apex arms to bring it out so I can see the display when I'm using it live below the Wavestation. The D-70 has a very small cross-section, and looks a little strange alongside a Wavestation. The controllers feel much nicer than the D-50 - less spongy. The keyboard is better (but, it could not have been worse), and passable for piano solos (I couldn't possibly play a piano part on the D-50). The front panel buttons are so-so. Most are fine, but the function keys are shallow travel, creak a little, and feel a little flimsy. I have a phobia about broken microswitches after having a Mac mouse die on me and a fault develop in my replacement trackball, so I have a feeling I might get a failure here sometime. SOUND: Sounds like $1,000,000. Well, sounds like $3500 which is what it lists for. Well, sounds like a D-50 but with a *lot* more punch and clarity, a smoother and more blended sound (since it's applying multimode filtering to the sample data rather than layering synth and unfiltered sample partials), a superb bottom end compared to the D-50, with the choir and bell samples transposing down well to the bottom of its 76-note board (I don't know yet whether it challenges the VFX as digital-synth-with-the-biggest-bottom until I get into programming it) - I can make sounds like on T. Dream's LEGEND soundtrack. The high-end is different to the D-50, mainly because it's using highpass resonant filtering for animation rather than lots of LFO mod. This is really where the D-50 and D-70 diverge in terms of capabilities. The '70 seems to have more warmth and character than the WS, and out-basses it as far as I can tell. VOICE ARCHITECTURE: Quite respectable. Less LFO modulation than the D-50, simpler envelopes, no synth features like PWM. No ring-mod (Differential Phase Thingummy instead). But, of course, the thing which sold me on it when I heard it last year is the filtering. It's mistakable for analog resonant filtering unless you listen closely. How closely is a matter I have to investigate. Doing multimode resonant filtering on sample data is sweet. Very very sweet. I like it a lot. It suits the way I work, which involves putting sound elements into specific parts of the frequency spectrum. I enjoyed this on the VFX, and find it's lack to be my single biggest cause of frustration with the WS. Oh, the D-70's filter resonance can be overdriven in an interesting way, I notice. Here's where the D-70 has its only serious weakness. It only has 30 voices. Without more LFO modulation facilities, I'll probably be wanting to do more layering of tones to add animation, and I'll be running out of voices pretty quickly, especially with multi-channel input. How much of a problem this is, remains to be seen. PERFORMANCE HEIRARCHY: Despite KEYBOARD's slamming, I find this to be rather good. The Tone Pallette sliders make incremental changes at the patch level (I think) to already-programmed tones, so that sounds can be modified in most major respects very quickly. (The LFO's aren't here, which is a bit of a shame - they're lower down.) All four tones are available for these changes, with graphical feedback, in parallel. This is very nice. KEYBOARD slammed the machine for not having cross-referencing tools for the tones. In fact, the Wavestation has the same problem, but has a clearer user interface for seeing what's where, which is why it's not a problem so much on the WS. The multitimbral operation looks fairly sensible, although the user interface for walking around the MIDI parameters is hellish at times. I'll investigate this further, but so far all I've done with it MIDI-wise is checked controller transmission and SysEx'ed off all the internal memory. Hey, the word 'SysEx' verbs quite well. USER INTERFACE: A combination of superb and frustrating. The performance-level stuff (Tone Pallette, dedicated editing buttons) is superb, making sound design and modification quick, intuitive, painless, etc. Getting around the lower levels of the interface heirarchy is like having teeth pulled. It's not possible to jump around between tones as you'd like. Some parameters appear in several pages. Some pages appear more than once on separate programmer buttons, with different page titles (Gnnnh!). So, it'll take some getting used to. Like I say, a nice performance interface with some sh*tty interfacing below ground level... The manual is fair. Nothing more. But then, it would have to be a very good manual to explain how the user interface heirarchy works - and it doesn't explain this very well at all. It took me a few hours and several cups of tea to figure it out; the most helpful part of the manual was the SysEx memory maps in the appendix. MIDI CONTROL: Surprisingly good, given Roland's usual reputation here. The standard controllers can all be remapped at the performance (or is it patch?) level for the incoming reception parts. In addition, a performance has a transmission MIDI pallette which maps all the outgoing controllers. Zones can be layered for MIDI (although local patches can't be layered in ways you might expect) and send volume and patch changes. Notes aren't held under performance changes, which is a shame but not surprising. Oh: solo and portamento are supported, and the D-70 has *fingered portamento without retriggering*! Hooray, the feature that until now only Yamaha keyboards have gotten right. Now I have no excuse to buy a TX81Z. (But, who needs an excuse?) SOFTWARE: Yes. It's true. The LFO's slow down when you play chords. I have to tell you, there's nothing more discouraging than powering up a $3500 synthesiser and having it announce "Software Version 1.00" at you. But then, I've been burned by Ensoniq. So, there's the LFO performance problem and a couple of the interface shortcuts seem not to work. According to Roland UK, I can just install the 1.17 ROMs into it; there's some confusion about whether there's a faster CPU upgrade as well. Roland tell me that I can just put 1.17 into this machine without a fast CPU, but wouldn't deny the existence of a fast CPU upgrade. I'll take the machine to 1.17 and see how well it performs. If it's too sluggish, I'll call Roland again and see what a new CPU will cost me. FACTORY PATCHES: Usual assortment of Roland Rubbish with silly names. The previous owner had made an attempt at programming with about half a dozen patches called PIANO, CHOIR, SYNTH but otherwise the factory patches were intact. The worst thing is the bl**dy demo sequence. I don't want bl**dy Eric Persing playing sappy New Age fusion music on my synthesiser. I object to the legend "PCM Play" being inscribed on the front panel and the potted biography of Mr. Persing, one of L.A.'s hottest session players with TV commercials to his name. I mean, well, *yawn*. STUPIDITIES: The D-70 doesn't have an IEC/Euro connector on the back. The mains cable is grommetted directly into the case. STOOPID for a live keyboard. This will be coming off in exchange for an IEC as soon as I can find my wire cutters... -- Nick Rothwell | "That's the Waldorf MicroWave set for General MIDI." LFCS | "EEEEEIIIIAAAAAOOOOOOUUUUMMMM ZUMZUPZUMZUPZUMZUP..." Edinburgh University | "Is that `STRINGS 1'?" nick@dcs.ed.ac.uk | "Yeah. You got a problem with that?" ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1991 11:05:41 +0000 From: Nick Rothwell Subject: D-70 >Date: Mon, 25 Mar 91 15:08:57 CET >From: Karl Keyte >Subject: Roland D-70 & A-50/80 Post a message hot, post a message cold, post a message to this list, seven months old... >What's the difference between a D-70 and an A-50 with, say, a U-220? Predominantly, the D-70's resonant multimode filters which are a *big* win. I'm not too familiar with the A-50 and U-220 so I can't comment further. >PS: Anyone got a phone number for Roland in the UK? 0252 816181. Ah. I posted a long message about my new D-70 to rec.music.synth a few days ago, but forgot to post it here. Well, you lot ain't getting off that lightly. I'll dig it out and post it. Nick. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1991 08:40:57 EDT From: ronin Subject: the faq's ok, ok, we've got to get organized here... a new, and valid, suggestion has been put forward here for an faq addendum... a list of industry resources and contects. most of these lists of course will just be cuts from EM, of course, but it still would actually be useful to have them collated. so... who's going to do what? we've got four or more distinct listings to compile. maybe we can get some of this automatically. i guess someone should call EM and see whether they'd be willing to release any of their old data in electronic form. anyway, i think we're not starting because none of us wants to duplicate work. so, we need to structure this. joe? do you want to list tasks, get names, and assign? someone else? i will, if no-one else cares to. -------------< Extremism in the Pursuit of Good Noise is no Vice >------- Eric Harnden (Ronin) or The American University Physics Dept. Washington, D.C ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1991 14:55:09 EDT From: Brian Adamson Subject: EPS 16+ OS (latest version #?) Hi all, I just picked up a used Ensoniq EPS 16+, What is the latest operating system version. It has Version 1.1, but I thought I read something about Version 2.2. If someone out there in emusic-land knows, drop me a line. Thanks, -- R. Brian Adamson NRL Code 5523 adamson@itd.nrl.navy.mil ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1991 09:35:36 EDT From: HAGEMEPP@DUVM.BITNET Subject: Music Chit chat... Dear fellow Synthers, Here is some music we can talk about. I'm really in Yes, King Krimson, and Emerson, Lake,and Palmer, and idolize Kieth Emerson and Rick Wakeman. Of course my music reflects theirs, odd meters with screwed up chording which is very much like the British Band King Krimson. So What do call all these styles when thrown together....Progressive Rock of course. Right now I'm not MIDId but am shopping around for a nice editing sequencing piece of software for the mac. Send me info soon My address is hagemepp@dupr.ocs.drexel.edu ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1991 02:50:35 GMT From: Eric Choi Subject: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum If anyone has any MIDI sequences or files for any of the numbers from "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," please e-mail me. I'm especially interested in finding a sequence of "Comedy Tonight." Thanks, Eric -- =============================================================================== __ __ | | / ` / ) / | echoi@panix.com | This space /-- __ o _. / /_ ____o | echoi@gnh-applesauce.cts.com | intentionally ========================================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1991 18:59:19 EDT From: HAGEMEPP@DUVM.BITNET Subject: Yamaha V-50 Are there any Yamaha users out there?? I am in dire need of a manuel Any Yamaha phone numbers, E-mail addresses, and replys would be helpful. You can send directly to me at Hagemepp@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu Stay in tune.... ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1991 19:46:51 EDT From: HAGEMEPP@DUVM.BITNET Subject: Footswitch to order Hello fellow keymen.... Is anyone familliar with footswitch construction? I need one badly for my Prophet 600. Do they all work alike, can I build one, will someone sell me one. ------------------------------ End of the EMUSIC-L Digest ******************************