mab@druky.UUCP (BlandMA) (11/20/84)
This article is a review of several products for the Commodore 64 made
by Sight & Sound Music Software Inc. The products reviewed are:
Kawasaki Rhythm Rocker
Kawasaki Synthesizer
Music Processor
Incredible Musical Keyboard
KAWASAKI RHYTHM ROCKER ($39.95)
This program allows you to "Create space sounds and hi-resolution color
graphics to the beat of electronic rhythms". The graphics and sound are
both impressive. The documentation is good, using examples to teach
most of the features.
The program lets you play along with a bass/drum track. You can choose
from four pre-loaded tracks, or you can create your own. The disk comes
with about half a dozen additional tracks. You can "record" your own
tracks (this takes practice) and you can create tracks with KAWASAKI
SYNTHESIZER (see the review below).
As you play, the program draws geometric patterns against a starry
background. There are a lot of keystrokes to control the graphics -
color, horizontal scrolling, pulsating colors, angles, etc.
This program is basically for "play" - improvise with the bass track and
graphics. You can record what you play, but it usually doesn't sound
exactly like you played it.
This program is more limited than I originally thought. Only three
basic sounds (although there are lots of fun "percussion" sounds with
matching graphic effects). The disk includes a demo program that is
very impressive, but shows more capabilities than the program can do by
itself (the demo led me to believe that you could record a song longer
than 256 notes, and record the graphics with the sounds).
This is a flashy program that is fun to use and makes good use of the
sound and graphic capabilities of the Commodore 64.
KAWASAKI SYNTHESIZER ($49.95)
This package includes two disks: the Performer and the Composer. They
are reviewed separately.
-- THE PERFORMER
This is another program to play along with the bass line. That's about
all you can do with it, but it's well done. It comes with 4 pages of
documentation to get you started, with the program fully documented via
help screens.
This one has only one, non-programmable bass track, and you cannot
record what you play. The graphics are cute ("Chuga" taps his foot
while you play). You have more control over the sound than with RHYTHM
ROCKER - 21 instruments to choose from, plus the ability to change
waveforms and a few other parameters.
Also included is the "Space Dance Theatre", a cute graphics/sound demo,
and an "album" with a dozen or so tunes, most of them quite good.
-- THE COMPOSER
This is a relatively complete synthesizer program. It provides access
to most of the SID features. It too lets you play along with a bass
line, and you can compose and play-back short compositions. The
documentation is bulky and pretty good.
As you play, you can control some features, such as waveform and
vibrato, but most features are accessed on a separate sound editing
screen. This screen lets you modify all of the sound parameters (except
those on the keyboard screen!). It's quite easy to customize sounds
from this screen. And once you've created a sound, you can save it in
memory or disk to be recalled later. Unfortunately, it doesn't save all
of the parameters, so you'll have to jot down the ones that aren't saved
and enter them manually! Ugh.
Rather than recording as you play, this program has an edit mode where
you enter the notes for one, two, or three voices. The idea is good,
but the implementation is terrible! Once you've entered a tune, you can
replace notes, but you can't insert or delete them! That makes this
part of the program almost unusable. Once you manage to create a song,
you can save it to disk. Bass lines for RHYTHM ROCKER can be created
here, too.
Another poor feature with the song editing is its notion of memory
banks. There are 9 memory banks, each holding 256 notes. If your song
is shorter than 256 notes per voice, ok. If it's longer, you must store
each bank in a separate disk file, and load them in the proper order
when you play it back. Since the rest of this program is fancy enough,
it seems that the memory banking could have been hidden from the user.
But since it's so difficult to edit a song, you may never want to make
one long enough to use the memory banking :-(.
MUSIC PROCESSOR ($34.95)
This program is a full-featured music editor, plus another "play along
with the bass line". Documentation is thick and very good (but see my
later comments about "music videos").
The main intent of this program is to create music using a BASIC-like
editor and language. There is about 12K available to store music (I
don't know how much play time that is). You have full control over all
SID features and some additional sound controls. You can also POKE
anywhere in memory and execute your own machine language programs, so
the power is virtually limitless.
There are STEP and TRACE modes for "debugging" your compositions. You
can record from the keyboard, and then edit what you recorded. You can
enter notes with the joystick if you'd rather not use the BASIC-like
language. You can adjust sound parameters while a song is playing.
You can record bass lines to play along with, or full 3-voice songs.
Unfortunately, the disk format is incompatible with RHYTHM ROCKER, so
you can't create a bass line here and play it back on RHYTHM ROCKER.
A dozen or so demo songs are included that are quite impressive. You
can list and edit them. Some of the demo songs generate dazzling
graphics - sprites and kaleidiscopic effects in time with the music. A
look at the listings of these songs show cryptic, undocumented commands
to manipulate the graphics. A program that will be available in "Fall
1984" called MUSIC VIDEO KIT will let you create your own "music
videos". It probably is a friendly interface to these cryptic commands.
INCREDIBLE MUSICAL KEYBOARD ($49.95)
This is a plastic piano-style keyboard that overlays the computer
keyboard. It has a "toy" feel rather than a professional keyboard feel,
but it's much easier to use than the qwerty keys. It works with all of
the programs above.
Simple software is included to play music (sorry, no bass line this
time). Also included are flashy demos of several Sight & Sound
programs, including the ones reviewed above.
OVERALL IMPRESSIONS
I am pleased with all of these programs. They are all professionally
done and documented. My only major gripe is the edit mode of KAWASAKI
SYNTHESIZER. It would be nice if the MUSIC PROCESSOR could create bass
lines for RHYTHM ROCKER. It would also be nice if MUSIC PROCESSOR could
print sheet music on the printer.
If you're in the market for music software, take a look at these
products. I recommend MUSIC PROCESSOR if you want to write compositions
using all of the SID capabilities, and don't mind the complexity of
programming in a music language. If you primarily want to play along
with the computer without learning much about the SID, RHYTHM ROCKER is
a good flashy program to get. If you want to experiment with the SID
chip, and also want to play along with the computer, KAWASAKI
SYNTHESIZER is acceptable, although there may be better programs on the
market. And the INCREDIBLE MUSICAL KEYBOARD is a good buy if you
purchase any of those programs and expect to use them much.
--
Alan Bland (druky!mab)