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.
You need to be a member of Composers' Forum to add comments!
Replies
My first, personally... was Fruity Loops sequencer. Started out trackign and mixing (Cool Edit Pro, forerunner to Adobe Audition) young musician friends to make a demo, then making drum tracks for drum-less tracks and for guitarists to practice to, then became intrigued with pitched music and never looked back.
It was on my father's computer and wasn't a bad scoring and midi program.
I used it to drive a sound module with midi cables connected and did my first round of composing on it.
I returned to composing about 5 years ago and my later works are a lot better, but I will maybe dig out the early stuff.
Then, when I went to Nelson and Colne College of Further Education to study A'level Music and Music Technology in 1994, I was introduced to my first computerised sequencer; "Atari Notator". This wasn't much different to the sequencers of today. A lot more primitive obviously but it certainly did the job. Software samples didn't exist in those days, so the computer was hooked up to a tone generator called a Yamaha TG100, which was about the size of a digital alarm clock. There were a very limited number of synthesised samples (not organic samples) but they weren't too bad, and certainly apt for orchestral composition. In the recording studio at the college, there was a much better tone generator called a ''Proteus'' but we weren't allowed to use that without supervision.
Then in the late 90s at university, I was introduced to Digital Performer and a Yamaha TG500. Plus for electro-acoustic composition, we used Pro-tools.
And that's about it, until a few years ago when I bought Cubase and somebody bought me Miroslav Orchestra and Choir Workstation.
That really is getting desperate !
Adrian Allan said:
I think we need a thread here on whether drugs are a useful aid to composition, either from personal experience or otherwise.
The only drug I really want to try is Ayahuasca
Adrian Allan said:
-
1
-
2
-
3
-
4
of 4 Next