brandonl@amadeus.WR.TEK.COM (Brandon G. Lovested) (10/21/89)
My desire is to get into music composition, not having any formal training. I have looked at a few keyboards, and have found the Roland D-5 to be sufficient for my needs (8 voices plus drums). Now, the hard part. Realizing the rivalry between Amiga and Atari exists, I ask those of you with some experience with both machines to help someone to decide the "best path for my particular needs." I am aware, also, that both Commodore and Atari will have new machines out soon. This may be under the category of sci-fi, though. In any case, I shy away from small systems, like the A500, for future support reasons, and the fact I will necessarily need large memory (~1 MB RAM to begin with). I am afraid, however, that local support of both machines is spotty here in Portland, Oregon. Sure, there's PC's (dull, number-crunching-intensive machines), and there's MAC's (too overpriced). Is there an optimum solution? Money is, of course, an issue. A few grand is ok for a music system, CPU, a word processor, and a couple games. But for amounts over that, I think I will simply crawl back into my shell and wait for cheaper times ahead. Thank you so much. ================================================================================ | Brandon G. Lovested | "I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, | indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! brandonl@amadeus.WR.TEK.COM | My life is my own." | ================================================================================
baer@qiclab.UUCP (Ken Baer) (10/24/89)
In article <482@wrgate.WR.TEK.COM> brandonl@amadeus.WR.TEK.COM (Brandon G. Lovested) writes: >My desire is to get into music composition, not having any formal training. >I have looked at a few keyboards, and have found the Roland D-5 to be >sufficient for my needs (8 voices plus drums). Now, the hard part. I just got a Kawai PH50, not as good as yours, but it has a decent MIDI implementation. >Realizing the rivalry between Amiga and Atari exists, I ask those of you >with some experience with both machines to help someone to decide the >"best path for my particular needs." My experiences are with Amiga, but the Atari seems to have more MIDI software. >I am afraid, however, that local support of both machines is spotty here >in Portland, Oregon. Well, there's a good Amiga dealer about 2 blocks from where you work. And, there are two (2) local companies that make MIDI boxes for the Amiga (CMI and NES). Also, the Northwest Amiga Group (NAG) has a number of members who are MIDI wizards. So, there are many good reasons to get an Amiga. And a 1 Meg Amiga 500 is a very capable machine for MIDI applications. >Brandon G. Lovested | "I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, > | indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! >brandonl@amadeus.WR.TEK.COM | My life is my own." I just hope that we see more MIDI software come out for the Amiga. II've been reading a number of MIDI related magazines lately, and most of them conclude that the Amiga is the best machine for MIDI, but when they list available software for the various machines, Amiga comes in dead last. I am working on adding MIDI support to our Animation: product line, I'd like to see more developers help to fill the gaps. << Soapbox Mode OFF >>
page%swap@Sun.COM (Bob Page) (10/26/89)
baer@qiclab.UUCP (Ken Baer) wrote: >My experiences are with Amiga, but the Atari seems to have more MIDI >software. That was certainly true up until about 6 months ago. At this point I'd say it's about even. Many of the major packages (all the stuff from Dr.T's, Intelligent Music, Passport and more) run on both platforms. In addition, the Amiga has Music-X and HMSL, both are real pluses for the Amiga. On the other hand, the ST has the Steinberger (sp?) package, which I understand is a real feather in Atari's cap. The Amiga also has Soundscape, which may or may not be an advantage depending on your viewpoint. [At AmiExpo last weekend, A rep from Dr.T's told me they used to develop on the ST and port it to the Amiga. Now they develop on the Amiga and port to the ST. (Who knows, maybe at the Atari show they say the opposite). They had a beta version of KCS 3.0 running; it looked prety sharp but I didn't pay a lot of attention to it because I have enough musical software to keep my interest.] The Amiga has a lot of commercially available audio digitizers and some great sound editing packages (like AudioMaster II). And of course the stereo sound quality of the Amiga is very appealing. None of this relates to MIDI per se, but you'd be surprised at how much you can get out of just the Amiga sans MIDI. And some new packages give you the best of both worlds. Take a look at AMAS, which is a combined digitizer, sound editor and and MIDI interface. You can play your samples via your MIDI keyboard. The software might be right for everyone, but the point is: the capability is there. Here's another great example: At AmiExpo, I picked up Synthia Pro from "The Other Guys". This package turns your Amiga into a 16-bit synth, all in software. You can do additive, subtractive, FM/PM, resynthesis, and a whole lot of 'esoteric' kinds of synthesis (plucked string, drum, etc .. granular is not available). Also in software, you add delay, chorus, etc. If you want to learn about synthesis, this is the best way to do it, on any personal computer. Once you've generated your sample, you can edit it with Synthia Pro, AudioMaster II or any of the other editing packages available. When it's just the way you like it, you can have Synthia Pro send this "sample" to your MIDI sampler (DSS-1 or whatever), and voila, you've synthesized a sample. So you can generate and preview samples on your Amiga, then use MIDI to put them on your sampling keyboard. Hot stuff. >I've been reading a number of MIDI related magazines lately, and most of them >conclude that the Amiga is the best machine for MIDI, but when they list >available software for the various machines, Amiga comes in dead last. Around spring you'll see the magazines catch up with all the software now becoming available for the Amiga. But you don't have to wait for the magazines to tell you there's MIDI software for the Amiga, because there's a whole lot of it available already. And remember: all these packages I mentioned above (and a lot I haven't mentioned) all WORK TOGETHER, at the SAME TIME. You can pick the sequencer package that's best for you, and the patch editor that's best for you, run them both, and they don't have to be from the same manufacturer. Welcome to multitasking. ..bob