My first music program was something called MED for the Amiga computer, back in 1990 or 91. It could play up to four parts, using vertical columns for the parts with 64 rows for rhythms. You could assign whatever value you wanted to the rows (say sixteenth notes, or 16th triplets if you wanted to use triplets anywhere). You would enter a note by a C4 type designation and hit enter on a row if you wanted the note to sustain. For example, C4 followed by 3 rows of "enter" would give you a quarter note if you decided that each row is a sixteenth. As I recall, the sound samples were actually pretty good. You could create your own waves, but I didn't know anything about how to do that then. You could also add vibrato through some keystroke and control lthe volume and tempo, but that was it for controls. In any case, it was loads of fun when I was in 10th grade.
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James Semple said:
Was introduced to Logic, which I found much easier and then for a long time was using version 4.7.3 with VST instruments, only in the past couple of years updating to Logic Pro 8.
I was lucky I could write demos with my set up in the 90's and take a floppy disc to a studio to finish a track, I still miss the Film Octaves patch, on the Roland JV 2080. I realise I can get the samples, so I must get round to that.
I think your SW1000XG sounds better based on the youtube clip.
Ray Kemp said:
Our music dept in our school decided to embrace something modern and new and they bought a Roland D-5 with the trusty atari and cubase as a way to push forward and inject some modern thinking into there program.
It was a enormous success and without that life line , im not sure i would have pushed on as its so frustrating trying to get ideas down fast while your having them!!! and this medium for me,was the only way to make sure moments are captured hot off the press so you can return and dissect them later.
Althou the atari was outboarding its workload onto your synths and only truly working as a glorified time piece,it did this for years way above and beyond of all other technology which is an amazing feat and a ground breaking one for its time.
That episode was a corner stone for a lot of writers especially myself.As soon as PC power came up to spec, we all migrated slowly but surely but one can never deny the unfeasable rock solid nature of the old atari.
btw i still have one under my bed as a keep sake!!
I had a trs-80 model I clone back i those days... lol
god, back then... if you had one or maybe two floppy drives, you was high steppin... we rarely SAW a hard drive for a while there, if it wasnt a business setup...
the main music function was just a "beep" (ascii 8 maybe??) , but... you could work from hex code, and call a machine subroutine, thru the cassette player... and reproduce actual TONES on the cassette... we went nuts figuring out what Hz tones went with what notes, so we could enter simple lines like mary had a litle lamb...
the apple IIe lab at the high school was the ones that had all the graphics and sound and games on it...
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