page@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu (Bob Page) (08/06/87)
I just spoke with a few people from MicroIllusions, soon-to-be makers
of the "Music-X" package for the Amiga. The ad for the package says
it does just about everything, so I called to find out a little more
about it. Nobody I spoke to could tell me anything about it. They
DID say that it would be shipping in mid-September. I asked them how
I could get a beta copy; they said "write to us and tell us why we
should make you a beta tester; we'll decide on our beta testers RSN."
OK, I think, but if you haven't gone to beta yet, how do you expect to
go to stores in 5 weeks?
The ad says "patch program included" or some such. I asked them for
what device ... even supplied some names of synths for them, but they
didn't know.
Anyway, I'm not trying to belittle the company or product; I'm looking
forward to seeing Music-X -- it looks like it will be a nice package
for us artists who don't use colors to practice our craft.
..Bob
--
Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept. page@ulowell.{uucp,edu,csnet} jdow@gryphon.CTS.COM (Joanne Dow) (08/12/87)
[lineaters beware of the wizardesses. We eat line eaters.] In article <1603@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu> page@swan.cs.ulowell.edu (Bob Page) writes: >I just spoke with a few people from MicroIllusions, soon-to-be makers >of the "Music-X" package for the Amiga. The ad for the package says >it does just about everything, so I called to find out a little more >about it. Nobody I spoke to could tell me anything about it. They >DID say that it would be shipping in mid-September. I asked them how >I could get a beta copy; they said "write to us and tell us why we >should make you a beta tester; we'll decide on our beta testers RSN." >OK, I think, but if you haven't gone to beta yet, how do you expect to >go to stores in 5 weeks? > >The ad says "patch program included" or some such. I asked them for >what device ... even supplied some names of synths for them, but they >didn't know. David Joiner, the author, is on bix. The Microillusions people in general have policy against outside beta testers. (Especially after the way Diga! was ripped off from Aegis' beta test so badly.) ie. you'll have to do some serious persuasion to convince them to make you a beta tester. Anyway, if you have questions about Music-X he is the person to talk to and the only net he's on right now is bix. (Or you can catch him thursday evenings at the LASFS - Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society - weekly meeting on Burbank blvd near Lankershim in North Hollyweird area.) In order to make the serial port work correctly for midi purposes he has entirely rewritten the serial device driver as midi.device. Knowing the quality of David's recent work I suspect Music-X will be quite good. As far as patch programs go I feel certain there'll be one for the CZ101. I know David has one of them thangs. What else I have no idea yet. <@_@>
nsw@cord.UUCP (N Weinstock) (01/21/88)
In article <9508@ccicpg.UUCP> harald@ccicpg.UUCP writes: > > Shoot, it's been 4 days since the AmiExpo in LA, and nobody has said > didly. > > Allright, I'll kick it off, everybody jump in! > > [lots of info deleted] > > Music-X was in high gear. Dr. T was there, but in a way hugely ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ TELL ME MORE! I have yet to hear about any first hand experience with this program. Any details on the Patch Editor Construction Set? ENQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW (like mine) > Work: Computer Consoles Inc. (CCI), Advanced Development Group (ADG) > Irvine, CA (RISCy business! Home of the CCI POWER 6/32) > UUCP: uunet!ccicpg!harald /\ /+---|/--------------------------------------+----------------------+ )|---+-- 5 - Neil Weinstock -----------------|- ...!codas!cord!nsw -| < |--/|------ AT&T Bell Labs, Liberty Corner -|--------- or ---------| )|-|-T\- 4 - DISCLAIMER: blah blah, etc. ----|-- nsw@cord.att.com --| \+-`-|'--------------------------------------+----------------------+ /
nsw@cord.UUCP (Neil Weinstock) (05/18/89)
In article <105160@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis) writes: [ ... ] >Of course Music-X would appear to have everything I want in a Sequencer >but David Joiner (talin on BIX, and the author for the most part) keeps >making it "better and better..." Argh, gosh I wish he'd just ship it. Gee, I thought Music-X was dead. However, spurred on by this posting, I called up MicroIllusions to find out. The first person I spoke to said, "The program is done. The manual is done. All the pieces should be together within a month or two." The next person said, "We'll have it out just as soon as the programmer is done with it." Sigh. Anyway, is there anything you can tell us (who aren't on BIX) about what Music-X will really be able to do? At $299 list it will be the most expensive sequencer in the Amiga market, so it had better be damn good. Actually, I would think that MicroIllusions will have to sell quite a number of copies just to offset the money lost on advance (to put it mildly) advertising (they had the inside back cover of Keyboard for *months*.) I'm sort of surprised that they would even allow the programmer to make it "better and better" when it's already so late. Oh, they said they *might* be at summer NAMM showing it. If it's done, that is... ;-) /.- -- .. --. .- .-. ..- .-.. . ... .- -- .. --. .- .-. ..- .-.. . ...\ / Neil Weinstock | att!cord!nsw | "One man's garbage is another \ \ AT&T Bell Labs | nsw@cord.att.com | man's prune danish." - Harv Laser / \.- -- .. --. .- .-. ..- .-.. . ... .- -- .. --. .- .-. ..- .-.. . .../
nsw@cbnewsm.ATT.COM (Neil Weinstock) (07/11/89)
In article <114667@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> page@sun.UUCP (Bob Page) writes: [ ... ] >Let's talk about Amigas. How 'bout that Music-X, eh? Best music >sequencer package I've ever seen anywhere, and I've seen a lot of 'em. OK, let's. Music-X is very, very impressive. It is currently available from Abel Supply for about $139, in case anyone's interested (Abel = (615) 428-5100). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- DISCLAIMER: I haven't really *used* Music-X much yet, just read the manual (no small task) and experimented with as many things as I have had time for. I am in no way affiliated with Microillusions or Dan Quayle. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- For those interested in a real good MIDI sequencing package, here is a rundown of Music-X's features: General: * Comes with 450 page manual. Not the greatest organization, but complete. * Not copy protected (the manual oughtta take care of that ;-) * Fully Intuitionized all the way; all in all an impressive piece of Amiga programming. * Keystroke equivalents for almost everything * Seems reasonable quick. Haven't yet run into any bugs, though too early to make any conclusions in this area. * "Suspend" feature frees serial port for other uses without exiting Music-X. * Supports interfacing with external modules including third-party modules (but not until they publish some interface specs :-( ) * SMPTE support * fully documented file format. Also includes utilities to convert to/from Standard MIDI file format and SMUS format Sequencing: * Standard tape-transport style controls * Up to 250 sequences may be in memory at once; up to 20 ("tracks") may be playing simultaneously * A "performance" file includes sequences, filters, libraries, and samples (see below). Or, each of those things can be saved and loaded from separate files. Editing: * Includes both graphic event editing and text-oriented event editing. * Graphic editor ("bar editor" in their parlance) can scroll to show what's playing when playing a sequence from within the editor. * Editors call up quantizer, aftertouch scaler and velocity scaler as modules. Filters: * Separate input filtering on each of the 16 MIDI channels * Up to four separate keymaps may be active: a keymap allows you to translate MIDI note events into Music-X commands, so you could use keys to trigger sequences, etc. * Nice looking keymap editor is a separate page Internal voice support: * Accessed on "Amiga Samples" page * up to 16 8SVX or SONIX sound files may be loaded at once * sequences may output either to MIDI or to the internal voices * Amplitude envelope for each sample may be edited from the samples page Librarian: * Generic sysex librarian * Includes protocol editor to create protocols for talking to new devices * Protocol may specify a patch editor module, so that you can call up a patch editor from the librarian page and edit the currently selected patch in the library. * Included are patch editors for the D-50 (very nice), DX100 and TX81Z. Have I forgotten anything? I don't think so. All in all there are about a zillion different screens, all of which are nicely done and very functional. Music-X seems to do just about everything. One thing it lacks is a programmable variations generator. Also, the file requester desperately needs a "parent" gadget (glaring omission!!) I wish the screen colors were settable. I also wish that the bar editor didn't initially default to the "add" setting. But no matter. Music-X is a wonderful package, and it's pure Amiga all the way. If anyone has any specific questions about it, please email me and I'll try to answer. /.- -- .. --. .- .-. ..- .-.. . ... .- -- .. --. .- .-. ..- .-.. . ...\ / Neil Weinstock | att!cord!nsw | "One man's garbage is another \ \ AT&T Bell Labs | nsw@cord.att.com | man's prune danish." - Harv Laser / \.- -- .. --. .- .-. ..- .-.. . ... .- -- .. --. .- .-. ..- .-.. . .../
nor1675@dsacg2.UUCP (Michael Figg) (07/14/89)
In article <1809@cbnewsm.ATT.COM>, nsw@cbnewsm.ATT.COM (Neil Weinstock) writes: > In article <114667@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> page@sun.UUCP (Bob Page) writes: > [ ... ] > >Let's talk about Amigas. How 'bout that Music-X, eh? Best music > >sequencer package I've ever seen anywhere, and I've seen a lot of 'em. > > OK, let's. Music-X is very, very impressive. It is currently available > > For those interested in a real good MIDI sequencing package, here is a rundown > of Music-X's features: > Neil continues on to list features and thoughts on the new Music-X package. It seems like this is the type of article that we could use more of, although we never have a shortage of articles. It listed in some detail the features of the particular package, w/o starting a discusion of the 'My sequencer is better than yours' type. Real good job Neil. I might also add that Neil didn't feel it was necessary to talk about used Honda's for sale, or dorm rooms at the University of Waterloo. I'm just left wondering: How many Buds does it take to forget this discussion of how many bits are in a baud? -- "Hot Damn! Groat Cakes Again Michael Figg Heavy on the thirty weight!" DLA Systems Automation Center Columbus, Oh. (614)-238-2446 (Temporarily)
pfaff@gemini.asd.contel.com (Ray Pfaff - Oakwood 457 934-8162) (07/15/89)
Michael Figg writes: > How many Buds does it take to forget this discussion of how many bits > are in a baud? Don't know, but I've killed a six-pack and I can still remember it!
karl@sugar.hackercorp.com (Karl Lehenbauer) (01/08/90)
Is anyone using or trying to use Music-X? Although it has received nothing but praise in all the Amiga literature, I have found the program to be difficult to use because of bugs and unneeded complexity of the user interface. First as to bugs, here is a list of some: o when you stop playing in the middle of a sequence, Music-X sends an All Notes Off but does not send a Sustain Pedal Up command. This causes voices on some synths to hang, until the sustain pedal is pressed again and released. o The metronome is "just another sequence," and as such, it is easy to accidentally kill it or screw it up, plus its trickier to configure and less intuitive than some sort of specific metronome gadgetry. o It is difficult to use Music-X to create a bunch of sequence segments and stick them together as a song. You can get sequences to not play and create sequences that play other sequences, but this is not intuitive, and appears to require putting in the subordinate sequences a "don't play me" command. There is nothing like Texture's segments where each segment contains all the tracks used by that segment. o MIDI Time Code synchronization has bugs. I used an Opcode Timecode Machine to read a SMPTE-striped tape and play MIDI Time Code to Music-X. Music-X would properly autolocate in the forward direction if the tape was stopped, fast-forwarded a bit and then played, but if the tape was rewound and played, Music-X would wait until the time reached the last time it had played, i.e. it will not autolocate backwards. To get Music-X to "rewind" the sequencer, you have to select internal sync, locate to the beginning, then select timecode sync again -- ick! o MIDI Time Code synchronization causes problems with the metronome sequence. o It is sometimes impossible to select events that are clearly shown by the bargraph editor. o It is hard and quite time-consuming to select a span of events greater than a screen in with in the bargraph editor. o garbage events seem to randomly appear at the end of sequences if you hit stop while recording before the sequence has finished playing. These are often invisible or uneditable by the bargraph editor. As for problems with ease of use, as an example, here is what you have to do to record a track: Click on Record, a window comes up that lets you select options, even if you don't want options there is something you have to click (as I recall -- not totally sure on that one), then you can click or hit a key to start recording. You then play in your sequence, click stop, select the track to which you wish to save what you played with a click, then click a gadget labelled "store" to write the record buffer into that track. If there's something already there, you get a requester asking if you really want to write over it. Of couse you almost always do, but that's a lot of clicks. Also, don't forget to click store, because if you play, you'll get whatever was there before you last recorded, something I seemed to do constantly. Punch-in/punch-out, by default, do not stop playing the sequence you are punching over. You can select a thing in the record window described above to make the punch mute the track being punched during the punch, but it is quite surprising that they went the other way by default, as although it might be very rarely of use to not mute the target track, one almost always wants it muted when punching. Quantize is not readily available. You have to pull down a menu and select a different screen, then hit a gadget on that screen but, oops, gotta pull down the menu and load that quantize module first, then hit a gadget on a screen, then set the quantize amount. But, next time you want to quantize, you still have to pull down a menu (or hit an Amiga-X key combination, which would of course speed up a lot of this stuff), select the other screen, select quantize, etc. There is no autoquantize-it-every-time capability like texture has, nor does it ever become a totally simple and short sequence of operations to do the quantize. In conclusion, if you are coming to Music-X from a totally solid sequencer like Performer on the Mac or Sequencer Plus or Texture on the PC (I haven't seen Texture on the Amiga yet), you will find Music-X to be almost unusable. I called MicroIllusions to report the bugs but they will only accept bug reports in writing. Thus far, I haven't mailed them in. Disclaimer: There may be ways to do some of the stuff that I haven't figured out. Also, I had a fairly crummy experience with MicroIllusions as a developer and I am developing MIDI software for the Amiga. -- -- uunet!sugar!karl "Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? Now there's a -- frood who really knows where his towel is." -- HGTTG -- Usenet access: (713) 438-5018
borzieri@nqueeg.ICO.OLIVETTI.COM (Ivan Borzieri) (10/10/90)
Hi, I am looking for a software which can convert Music-X (pre-release) performance files to Music-X (V. 1.0) performance files . Anyone knowing something ? Thanks Ivan