EMUSIC-L Digest Volume 50, Issue 14 This issue's topics: best music software (3 messages) Ed/Libs (2 messages) midi files (2 messages) MIDI note number --> Hz (3 messages) PD patch lib.... PD patch librarian wanted for ST. pink toons (3 messages) Shareware Sequencers Solaris OS (2 messages) 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: Sun, 14 Mar 1993 11:39:46 IST From: F41418@BARILVM.BITNET Subject: best music software A friend is on the verge of buying a new computer system for music compositi on. He has been working on an atari machine for a number of years now. The ques tion is which would be the best computer/software setup for such a midi composi tion center. He works with a serious sampler, dat, tape, mixer, effects etc. He write music for theatre and cinema. If anyone has on answer- please reply straight to me. Thank you. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1993 11:58:20 EET From: Jartsu Subject: Re: best music software He should definitely check out Cubase (by Steinberg software). It is available for all the major MIDI-platforms, that is Atari, Mac and PC-Clones running Windows. And at least with Atari he can plug in a nice extra module and have 64 MIDI-channels and SMPTE-sync, totally controllable by Cubase. And if he needs a good sample-editor/librarian, Steinberg Avalon is a perfect companion for Cubase. I don't know if there are versions for other than Atari yet... With Avalon it is possible to use SCSI-link to samplers for almost-realtime editing and fast dumps/loads. And there is the new Cubase Audio, which combines pro-sequencer and digital recording, it may even be a sort of direct-to-disk recording/playback system, havent tried myself yet. Most important point: He should FIRST CHOOSE THE SOFTWARE, then an approppriate computer to run it... I have used (and still am) combination Cubase & Atari for my musical productions, which include some soundtracks for computer animations and nature videos. I have never really hit any limits with Cubase, it is more like Cubase hitting the limits of my MIDI-instruments... -- Jartsu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1993 07:49:36 +0000 From: Nick Rothwell Subject: Re: best music software >He has been working on an atari machine for a number of years now. The ques >tion is which would be the best computer/software setup for such a midi composi >tion center. (No, I'm not going to start a war.) If he's been using an Atari for years, why does he want to change? If there are reasons, it makes the question easier to answer. (I personally can't stand the Atari machines, but some people do wonderful stuff with them, and I don't see any reason for this guy to switch - yet ...) Nick Rothwell | cassiel@cassiel.demon.co.uk CASSIEL Contemporary Music/Dance | cassiel@cix.compulink.co.uk ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1993 07:57:52 EST From: Douglas Ramsay Subject: Ed/Libs Hi... I'm new to MIDI and would like to know if there are any shareware editor/librarians for Yamaha's TG55 and DX100. My computer's a Mac Classic II 4/40 w/System 7.0.1. Any help would be greatly appreciated Cheers! Doug Ramsay ramsayd@smtp-gw.spawar.navy.mil ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1993 21:42:48 UTC+0100 From: gui Subject: Ed/Libs Hi, Doug... You can try to have a look in: sol.cs.ruu.nl --> /pub/MIDI/PROGRAMS louie.udel.edu ucsd.edu Good luck Luis A. Fuente gui@cpd.uva.es ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1993 11:01:00 PST From: "Aguilera C., Domingo UDG" Subject: midi files Does anybody know from where can I download midi files (ftp sites, bbs or on line services like compuserve and the like) ? Thank You. Domingo Aguilera domingo@redudg.udg.mx ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Mar 1993 13:38:33 LCL From: CBDZ117F@GRTHEUN1.BITNET Subject: Re: midi files > > > Does anybody know from where can I download midi files (ftp sites, bbs or on > line services like compuserve and the like) ? > > Thank You. > > Domingo Aguilera > domingo@redudg.udg.mx Use : saffron.inset.com pub/music/samples/midi (I think) files : 1-d.zip e-m.zip hope this helps ! bye, P. Stokas ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 13 Mar 1993 01:10:21 PST From: mifriese@CLN.ETC.BC.CA Subject: re: MIDI note to Hz. g.landini@UK.AC.BHAM writes >What is the formula to convert the MIDI note number to frequency? Gabriel - there is not necessarily any correlation between MIDI note number and a frequency. A MIDI note number is simply a way to identify a note to a synthesizer engine. The frequency of this output depends entirely upon parameters within the receiver itself. Insofar as there are any rules at all, many synth manufacturers regard middle C as corresponding to MIDI note number 60. I believe that would make note number 69 normally the same as A-440. But this is, of course, entirely dependent upon the tuning which the synthesizer is using; the transposition of any given sound; and whether the sound even has a single discrete frequency. Hope this helps. **************************** Michael Friesen I'net:mifriese@cln.etc.bc.ca North Peace Secondary School Fort St. John, B.C. WorkVox: 604 785 4429 HomeVox: 604 787 9856 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1993 17:59:24 COL From: Oscar Agudelo R Subject: MIDI note number --> Hz Hi, Someone ask about how convert MIDI note number to frequency... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 6 | | 6 | | | 6 | | 6 | | 7 | | | 7 | | 1 | | 3 | | | 6 | | 8 | | 0 | | | 3 | +---+ +---+ | +---+ +---+ +---+ | +--- | | | | | | | | | | 60 | 62 | 64 | 65 | 67 | 69 | 71 | 72 | | | | | | | | | | ...+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-- .... /\ /||\ || 440 Hz ((n-69)/12) 1) f = 440*2 Hz (min_note =< n =< max_note) ------------------------------------------------------------------ (n-69) 2) f = 440*(1.059463094) Hz ( min =< n =< max ) ------------------------------------------------------------------ where: f= frequency n= MIDI note number * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE COLOMBIA * Oscar Agudelo Rojas * VICERRECTORIA DE RECURSOS UNIVERSITARIOS * Programmer System * UNIDAD DE SERVICIOS DE COMPUTACION * +57 (1) 2691270 * * Santafe de Bogota. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1993 12:42:04 MET From: cgra@BTMA74.DNET Subject: re: MIDI note to Hz. />What is the formula to convert the MIDI note number to frequency? /Gabriel - there is not necessarily any correlation between MIDI note number /and a frequency. /A MIDI note number is simply a way to identify a note to a synthesizer /engine. The frequency of this output depends entirely upon parameters /within the receiver itself. /Insofar as there are any rules at all, many synth manufacturers regard /middle C as corresponding to MIDI note number 60. I believe that would make /note number 69 normally the same as A-440. /But this is, of course, entirely dependent upon the tuning which the /synthesizer is using; the transposition of any given sound; and whether the /sound even has a single discrete frequency. /Hope this helps. /**************************** /Michael Friesen /I'net:mifriese@cln.etc.bc.ca /North Peace Secondary School /Fort St. John, B.C. / /WorkVox: 604 785 4429 / /HomeVox: 604 787 9856 / All very true, but to put the guy out of his misery we should give one more hint: in the um, widely-used "equal-tempered" system, going up a semitone corresponds to multiplying the frequency by the twelfth root of two, and going down a semitone corresponds to dividing by the twelfth root of two. The mathematically gifted will spot that this means that 12 semitones = 1 octave means doubling/halving the frequency. So: $$ frequency = 440Hz \times 2^{{notenumber - 69}/12} $$ - if you want to have the notes come out at the same pitch as on your Casio keyboard. Sweet-temperedly yours, Chris cgra@se.alcbel.be _____________________________________________________________________________ A closed mouth catches no feet ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1993 16:53:49 UTC+0100 From: gui Subject: Re: PD patch lib.... Hi John..... If you are searching PD patch librarians try nic.switch.ch louie.udel.edu ucsd.edu sol.cs.ruu.nl Maybe you find them all interesting :) Luis A. Fuente gui@cpd.uva.es University of Valladolid Spain ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1993 10:47:04 +0000 From: John A Tuffen Subject: PD patch librarian wanted for ST. Hi, Does anyone know of a Public Domain (ie free) patch librarian that I can run on my ST ? I need it to dump patches to/from my EX-800... Thanks, john.. (jat@ohm.york.ac.uk) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1993 13:46:28 EST From: ronin Subject: pink toons Organization: The American University i recently was motivated to return to an old idea motivated by the back of larry fast's "computer experiments" album. the album was apparently generated by a program called "pink tunes" running on some small microprocessor, and providing polyphonic control to a prophet 5. not much is said about the program, other than to indicate what is obvious from its title - that it is some kind of controlled randomness generator. what piqued my interest at the time is that the back cover carries a photoreproduction of the actual assembly code for the program. i always wanted, but never got around to, program that code and play with it. more recently, i have been reading manfred schreoder's "fractals, chaos, power laws", in which he discusses the pink power spectrum of western music. the idea is something like this... graph as a waveform the succession of intervals of a piece of music by bach. the power spectrum of this waveform will be roughly that of pink noise. furthemore, he says that a similar result will be obtained by graphing the intervals of much of popular western music. apparently too much randomness in music, an excess of surprise over expectation (as would be produced by a musical decision process whose spectrum is white), is not pleasing, while too little (corresponding to a brown power spectrum) is boring. makes sense to me. so i programmed a monophonic version of it, using a model that he provides in the text. the program generates a pink noise datapoint and uses its value as a lookup to a note table. the durations of notes are also pinkly distributed, following further suggestions from the text. the first significant tweak to the program came when i found simple chromatic note choices sounded interesting but bizarre, and so constrained the allowable notes to modal scales. suddenly, the program did in fact begin to produce something vaguely musical. the hitch in all this is the pink generator itself. you may not believe it, but while uniformly distributed and gaussian numbers are fairly mundane beasts to create, pink noise seems to be a bit of a bear. currently, i'm using the model from the book, which sums the results of three relaxation processes, and supposedly provides pinkness over the critical bands of the spectrum, while falling off pretty radically in the end. so the question here is... does anyone have a better pink noise model? -----------< Cognitive Dissonance is a 20th Century Art Form >----------- Eric Harnden (Ronin) or The American University Physics Dept. 4400 Mass. Ave. NW, Washington, DC, 20016-8058 (202) 885-2748 (with Voice Mail) ---------------------< Join the Cognitive Dissidents >------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1993 15:52:50 GMT From: Gabriel Landini Subject: RE:pink toons Yes, you are not alone in the universe. The original algorithm belongs to R Voss and it relates to the sum of dice following a binary table of frequencies. I wrote a short article for Fractal Report on the implementation in QB45 of that algorithm which can be extended to many more random additive processes. Other source is "random multiplicative" processes. However, the 1/f power spectra (not distribution!!!) is valid over limited range of frequencies. I found that 1/f output PLUS note rejection rules for scale consistency produce "music" (?). The note length chosen by 1/f sounds natural BUT rythmic construction is, in my opinion, based on very different concepts than melody. Gabriel If you are interested I can leave the reference of Fractal report (dedicated to fractal images, mostly, but sometimes there are articles on fractal music. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1993 12:06:01 -0500 From: "Daniel S. Riley" Subject: Re: pink toons Organization: Wilson Lab, Cornell U., Ithaca, NY 14853 ronin writes: > i recently was motivated to return to an old idea motivated by the back > of larry fast's "computer experiments" album. the album was apparently > generated by a program called "pink tunes" running on some small > microprocessor, and providing polyphonic control to a prophet 5. This will probably be mostly of historical interest...but anyways... The microprocessor may have been some variant of the PAiA microprocessor controlled synth keyboard for the P4700. John Simonton wrote an article about the 'pink tunes' program for the P4700/J that appeared in the July/August 1978 issue of Polyphony (for the temporally challenged, Polyphony started life as the house organ for PAiA, eventually evolved into Electronic Musician, and then was sold to Mix), which included an overview of the algorithm and a copy of the assembly code. It's a good bet that Fast was at least aware of Simonton's work. Simonton's pink tunes program used the 'pink' random numbers as an index into a lookup table of acceptable notes, so you could preselect the harmonies available by selecting the notes you entered into the table. For pinking the random number generator, he used an algorithm by Richard Voss of IBM that had apparently appeared in the April (1978? 1977? with Polyphony's publication schedule, it is hard to be sure) Scientific American in Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games column. The duration algorithm was a bit bizarre, and I would have to think for awhile and study my (un-commented) code and the article to remember how it worked. The Voss algorithm, as realized in Simonton's program, uses 5 four-sided dice, and a 5 bit counter. Every roll the counter is incremented, and only the dice that correspond to changed bits in the counter are rerolled. I have no idea how true a distribution this gives--I've never investigated its properties. I wrote a crude version of pink tunes for the Amiga, that allowed you to "play" the notes for the note table from a MIDI keyboard, and select a different note table for each MIDI channel. After experimenting with it, I heartily endorse the note table method, as it does give much greater control over the results. (I have a C90 of pink tunes created with a borrowed D110 that I still play when I want non-intrusive background music--the ideal content-free new age music.) I've been meaning to write a clean version of my Amiga version that I could redistribute without wincing, but haven't gotten to it... -- -Dan Riley Internet: dsr@lns598.tn.cornell.edu -Wilson Lab, Cornell University HEPNET/SPAN: lns598::dsr (44630::dsr) "Distance means nothing/To me." -Kate Bush ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1993 10:21:34 -0500 From: John Ottenhoff Subject: Shareware Sequencers Does anyone know of a good fully operational shareware sequencer? I have a mediocre computer (8088, 640k, CGA) so I need something that doesn't need a lot to run. I tried the Dynaduet software but it doesn't seem to work. Can anyone give me any help? I already tried the FTP sites. Thanks. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1993 23:04:00 EST From: rg8 Subject: Solaris OS "Sun Microsystems Inc., challenging Microsoft Corp. in seeking to become a major software supplier, said it will develp a version of its operating system software for a computer being jointly developed by Apple Computer, Inc., International Business Machines Corp. and Motorola Inc." The Wall Street Journal March 30, 1993 Does anyone know anything about this computer? If so, is it going to be something to consider for MIDI and/or DSP? Bob Gibson rg8@umail.umd.edu ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1993 18:31:30 CST From: Arne Claassen ISE Subject: Re: Solaris OS The computer developed (and operating systems) being developed by IBM, Apple amd Motorola is currently named Pink. It is supposed to be a object-oriented GUI system which will give Apple and IBM a proprietary platform, now that both have lost theirs. Aside from their own interest, it's supposed to be a RISC based machine that will be Apple's and IBM's multimedia standard platform. OS and System 7 compatible (data exhange and look and feel only, i believe) Main problem, it's scheduled for 1995 and probably won't really hit the mass market until 97... -AFC ------------------------------ End of the EMUSIC-L Digest ******************************