larry@cadnetix.COM (Larry Peterson) (01/05/90)
A Review of Bars & Pipes
Bars & Pipes is a "music composotion system" recently released by Blue Ribbon
Bakery for the Amiga. It requires 1 meg of memory and a MIDI interface.
A Nickel Tour
The main display consists of the "standard" tape deck controls, a position
indicator (in measures/beats/clocks), the toolbox and current global tool
display, the group button, a solo button, a tempo display (in beats/minute),
an A-B-A song form manager and the sequencer display. There are also
pull-down menus for songs, tracks, editing, pipetools, timing (including
internal, MIDI sync, and SMPTE sync), windows (including master parameters
and information) and preferences (including metronome and interlaced display
mode).
The tape deck controls are augmented by two extra recording mode buttons:
Loop Mode and Punch In/Punch Out. Loop Mode recording enables you to set
the beginning and end of the loop (using flags on the sequencer display)
and loop through the section of music up to eight times. Each of the
eight recordings can be played back, allowing you to get the "perfect"
take (the other seven are gone once you have selected one to keep). Punch
In/Punch Out enables you to set the beginning and end of the section to be
recorded (again using flags) and record over just that section of the track.
The sequencer provides an optional "lead-in" (defaults to 2 measures) so that
you have a chance to figure out where you are in the song. You may
set the sequencer to record all MIDI signals to one track (will be sent to
one MIDI channel on output) or map each MIDI channel to a separate track.
The position indicator shows the current position in the song. This may be
changed by using one of two markers (flags again) or by changing the current
song position flag at the top of the sequencer display.
The toolbox contains tools that may be added to the tracks (pipelines in
Bars & Pipes) to modify their behavior. For example, you may want to place
the Quantize Tool on the input end of a pipeline to adjust the timing of
all incoming messages or on the output end of a pipeline to adjust the
MIDI signals that come out of the sequencer. Each tool that has settable
controls may be modified in real time, allowing you to get everything "just
right" before you commit yourself. Tools may also be applied globally (the
tool shown in the current global tool window) or, using the track editor, to
individual notes. There are tools that branch from one pipeline to another
(useful for mixing voices or for applying the Counterpoint Tool). There is
also a MacroTool Editor to create your own tool from existing tools. Bars &
Pipes 1.0 comes with these tools: Accompany B, Articulator, Branch Out,
Counterpoint, Delay, Doctor of Velocity, Echo, Elbow, Feedback In, Feedback
Out, Harmony Generator, Inverter, Keyboard Splitter, Merge In, MIDI In, MIDI
Out, Modulator, Note Filter, Note Flipper, Phrase Shaper, Plug, Quantize,
Reverser, Sforzando, Subdivider, Transposer, Triad and Unquantize.
The group button allows you to lump the tracks into "groups". The groups
are treated just like single tracks for solo and editing operations. You
may define up to eight groups which may overlap.
The solo button enables you to turn off a group's or track's output or to
listen to a single group or track at a time.
The A-B-A song form manager enables you to come up with sections and move
these sections around to form a song. For example, you've recorded an intro,
verse, bridge and chorus. You can use A-B-A to try different combinations
to make up the song. Using A, B, C and D to label the sections of the song,
you may want to try ABDBDCBDD or maybe ABDCBDCDA. Bars & Pipes keeps track
of the section (displayed at the top of the sequencer window) and changes
made to the original copy of the section may be propogated to all of the
other copies.
The top of the the sequencer display shows the meter signature, the flags
(for editing, loop mode or punch in recording, current position, etc.),
A-B-A information and has a set of buttons for rearranging the track display.
For each track, it shows the track name, input pipeline, mode (record or
play), a graphical view of the track, the output mode (through, play or
mute), the output pipeline and the output channel number. Tracks may be
edited by double-clicking on the graphical view of the track. You may
graphically edit (add/change/delete) notes on a double staff or on a piano
roll and other MIDI information (velocity, program change, control change,
etc.) as lines below the notes. This window can be set up to display any
information you want to see. There are icons for the editing modes (which
may also be accessed by function keys. If you choose to enter notes singly
on the staff, they will automatically be in the chosen key (settable by track
or globally) and can line up to the measure's rhythm (settable by track or
globally).
The master parameters enable you to set the dynamics, key, chords, rhythm and
enter lyrics that affect all of the tracks in the song. Each of these
parameters can be overridden in each individual track.
There are also Accessories that can be used to print a lead sheet (chords and
lyrics) or to convert Bars & Pipes scores to or from other formats. Follow
the Leader (lead sheet formatter) and Muffy (MIDI file format converter) are
included with release 1.0.
My Humble Opinions
I have been using the Amiga with DMCS and SoundScape to control my simple
MIDI setup (keyboard, sound generator, reverb unit and guitar controller)
for the last three years. I was able to master SoundScape and to put up
with the translations between DMCS for editing and SoundScape for sequencing,
but I have been looking/hoping for a while.
I first used the Bars & Pipes demo disk (very little documentation and no
save capability) and was able to use most of the features. Once I purchased
the package and read the documentation, an appreciation for the power behind
the simplicity began to develop. Without the tools, accessories or the
advanced features (like the clipboard to copy/cut/paste between tracks), this
is a very powerful sequencing and editing system. With the addition of the
tools and advanced features, I've been able to get musical ideas from my head
to tape quicker and have been happier with the final results than I was with
the previous setup. I have used features like "time shift" to make up for
the delay in the guitar controller [:-(], and the Unquantize Tool to make
"hand entered" notes sound more "human".
The user interface is well-thought-out with many actions available using
Amiga-meta keys (AmigaC for copy, AmigaP for paste, etc.) and function keys
as well as under pull-down menus.
The manual is well-organized, well-written and thorough. It includes an
index, quick reference and appendices for tools and accessories. The manual
is ring-bound to facilitate additions (new tools and accessories) and comes
with a plastic case for storage or for standing the manual up on the table.
Performance has been pretty good. I have a 1-meg Amiga 500 with 2 floppy
drives and have been pleased with the speed. The only things that took more
than "interactive" time were the setup for and exit from loop-mode recording.
I was able to bring up DMCS at the same time, but didn't have enough memory
left after loading a song in DMCS to edit tracks in Bars & Pipes.
Support has been outstanding. I called Blue Ribbon Bakery for information
before purchase (my local Amiga source didn't have any info besides the phone
number at that time), called to figure out how to bring it up (the initial
release had to be brought up from the CLI on a 1-meg 2-floppy machine
running WorkBench 1.2) and again to report a bug (misalignment of measure
numbers). Each time, my questions were answered with enthusiasm and my
problems were quickly resolved. I have also received 2 updates following
my initial purchase (on December 20): 1.0c enabled me to run from the
WorkBench (December 28) and 1.0d fixed all known bugs [:-)] and added
scrolling of the sequencer display (January 2).
A programmer interface is available for those of you who like to roll your
own, as well as a couple of additional accessories and tools that have
already been placed in the public domain.
Now for what it's missing. The capability to use Amiga voices is not yet
available. SMUS compatability is not available, although at least one
converter has been placed in the public domain.
What enhancements would I like to see? The ability to use the edit flags to
mark the start and end of each section for the A-B-A song form manager would
be nice. Having a "lock to next spot" in the track editor would
save me a few keystrokes/mouse clicks when hand-entering notes in an
otherwise improvisational piece (just a measure of something together and
syncopated).
Further Pointers
Blue Ribbon Bakery
1248 Clairmont Road, Suite 3D
Atlanta, GA 30030
(404) 377-1514
Disclaimer
I'm not in any way connected with Blue Ribbon Bakery or Commodore Business
Machines, I just buy the stuff and let other people know if it's any good.
Copyright (c) 1990 Larry A. Peterson
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Larry A. Peterson Internet:larry@cadnetix.COM
Daisy/Cadnetix Inc. UUCP: cadnetix!larry
5775 Flatiron Parkway {uunet,boulder,nbires}!cadnetix!larry
Boulder, CO 80301 Voice: 303-444-8075 x 439nsw@cbnewsm.ATT.COM (Neil Weinstock) (01/06/90)
In article <10782@cadnetix.COM> larry@cadnetix.COM (Larry Peterson) writes: >A Review of Bars & Pipes [ ... ] I have the Bars and Pipes demo, and find a couple of things objectionable (BTW, I use Music-X, which is good though certainly far from perfect). I would be interested in hearing from an owner of the package if these are really problems or not. 1) No support for sysex yet. I *need* sysex to do certain varieties of patch changes on my M1R. 2) As far as I could tell, each "track" could only hole MIDI data associated with one MIDI channel. I'd like to hear I'm wrong about this one. I find it to be an unacceptable restriction. Do the top PC and Mac (ok, and Atari) packages typically work this way? In Music-X, I can put absolutely anything in a sequence. I depend on that quite a bit. 3) I was told by the Blue Ribbon Bakery (love that name, BTW) folks that when you construct an ABA format (or however you'd phrase it) that, for instance, the "A" data is *copied* to produce the second repeat. The memory-consuming aspects of that worry me. 4) I am not crazy about the "appearance" of the package. It looks very carnival-like to me. Certainly, that's purely a matter of personal taste. I guess that #'s 1 and 2 are really the killers for me right now. I certainly do give them credit for coming out with a truly *interesting* program. ________________ __________________ _________________________ //// \\// \\// \\\\ \\\\ Neil Weinstock //\\ att!cord!nsw or //\\ "Your hair is so... //// //// AT&T Bell Labs \\// nsw@cord.att.com \\// lustre-laden." - Moss \\\\ \\\\________________//\\__________________//\\_________________________////
bleys@tronsbox.UUCP (Bill Cavanaugh) (02/05/90)
>>usually, "What's a good Amiga magazine?" > >>The answer, as you all probably know, there isn't one. Let's see what we've >>got. Amiga World. Yes, it looks slick from the outside, and there are a lot > > Flame On. In the January Amazing, there's an article on a Menu Builder utility that might be very useful. I'll never know. I should have realized I was in trouble when the title of the article was "MENU BUILDER!". Why the exclamation? There are five more exclamation points int he first three paragraphs, which take up a total of seventeen lines. I'm all for "informalizing" technical articles, but this is rediculous! IMHO, this article was edited badly, if at all. I'm willing (if not happy) to accept grammatical and punctuation errors in "specialty" magazines, but some things are so intrusive that they make reading the article a chore, rather than a pleasure. Flame Off. I subscribe to Amazing, and hopefully still <grin> subscribe to the Transactor, so I'm not just sitting on the sidelines sniping. /************************************************************ * * * Everything above is copyright me. All rights unreserved. * * uunet!tronsbox!bleys BIX: bcavanaugh * * * * "The perversity of the universe tends to a maximum" * * Finagle's First Law * * J. Pournelle * * * ************************************************************/