janzen@ant.dec.com (Tom LMO2/O23 296-5421) (06/13/88)
-< dmcs and synthia >- For about a month, I have been using Deluxe Music Construction Set (DMCS) and Synthia on a Commodore Amiga 500 with one drive. This is the first time I have used computer music software tools. (The cheap synthesis programs I've written in assembler for the TRS80 and PDP11 weren't tools.) DMCS works fairly well. It writes a musical score on the screen and also can display a keyboard on the bottom of the screen and a musical font window on the left. The 3 windows are movable and sizable, per Amiga Intuition. The score's note heads and the piano keys can turn red following the music as it plays, but this can be disabled. It then can play a maximum of 4 voices out the Amiga sound device (two channels; however, DMCS unpredictably assigns the channels note to note, so the two channels should be mixed to stereo.) I studied engraving standard music style in college (on my own from the book by Ross from Hansen publications). The DMCS score is not engraving standard, but I don't mind. It has sizable measures and can have a variety of a number of staffs. I can't be certain it's 1 to 16, but I think so. It can paginate or move from left to right. I have no printer and can't judge DMCSs printing capability. Time signature, tempo, instrument, key and perhaps other things can change per bar. More than 4 instruments can be in memory for when you change instruments, but without MIDI (it reads and writes a MIDI port option) it plays only 4 voices at once. If you score more than 4 voices at one instant, it picks four to play. It can play a section you mark, rather than the whole score. I have trouble getting the exact tempo I want. I use the mouse to slide a little sliding icon along a gas gauge for tempo, and get all kinds of non-standard (OK fine) M.M. markings, usually just 1/minute off from what I want. Maybe I'll master this, but I think that's it. Gee, for film/TV applications, precise tempi are needed. Oh well. It can't do trills. I had to enter each note one at a time, and use copy/paste to build a trill. It can't do totally arbitrary durations, just standard values, dotteds, and triplets (and quints). It can't use proportional notation; it must have a time signature (at least I think so, maybe a MIDI input device would allow such a mode). It must have a tempo; the default is 92. The default time signature is 4/4 (!). The default key is C (!!). Key signature is per staff. Time signature is for all staffs. Words can be entered anywhere. I think the font is changeable but I'm not into that font stuff. Sometimes it's inconvenient. It always uses sharps if you enter notes by clicking the mouse on the keyboard. The shortest way to get flats on a single note is to click the flat icon, click the notehead (duration) icon, and click the place on the staff you want the note at. Or, you can play in naturals, and later click the flat icon over the note. If the music is crowded, the sharp for a note may end up on top of the previous note, but you can resize the measure to correct this. It can beam any contiguous notes on a staff. It doesn't beam across a rest as some of my scores do. Maybe it beams on two staffs, I'm not sure. It makes slurs across anything you select, even rests, but sometimes the slurs are bent a little far out. The ties are OK, but I don't know how to have ties oppose each other on a chord, as they should. The stems are always 3.5 spaces long for single-voice staffs, even if the note is way off the staff on a leger line. You can have 2 voices on a staff. I'm pretty fast at it, until I get a flat. The colors, beige, black, white? and red for emphasis work ok for me. The unprotected version (for $20 more) has different colors. You can move windows in front and in back easily on the Amiga, but I usually close windows that I don't need. Whenever you select an optional or special operation (like setting tempo) you get a window. It can't do fractional tempos, like 4.5/4, but it do 1-99 (I think) beats and any standard beat size (1,2,4,8,16...) I am in the phase in which I am making lots of mistakes selecting the wrong things because I am trying to go faster than I think, and havn't learned. For example, to select a group of notes you should put the cursor out away from the staff to begin the selecting rectangle; if you hit the mouse button to close to a note head, it will select a note head. If you select a note head with a depressed moise button, you can move it up and down the staff (in a scale the program guesses you are using currently, not necessarily the key signature), or horizontally in the measure to reposition it. You can hear the sound if you move a note head up and down. You can hear a sound if you select notes on the keyboard. You can play the piece any time during the process. It has easy delete, copy, and paste commands. You can also "select all" if you want to change the whole piece in some way. I have no midi instruments. I am playing out the standard Amiga sound port, a couple or so DACs. It sounds OK, but is sometimes hummy. Flute duets, which I've been entering, are very exposed, and the flute pitch so high, that intermittent humminess isn't hidden. The humminess isn't flakey intermittent; I think it depends on the pitch and/or wavetable. DMCS can store a score or a SMUS (IFF?) file of the piece, or both of course. It can get scores and instruments from other dedicated data disks, as I use it. I verified that DMCS can use instruments created with Synthia. DMCS is copy-protected. You can make a copy, but when you use the backup, upon entering DMCS, it prompts you to put the master in a drive to check a registration number, so you must keep the master around. This prevents implementing the physical security measure of keeping the distribution kit in a separate place. I sent $20 to the company (the original was ca. $70 at Software Shop) to get an unprotected backup. SYNTHIA: The DMCS instruments subdirectory (AmigaDos has subdirectories similar to VMS) has only a few essentials. So I bought Synthia to suplement it. Synthia can built instruments for DMCS (and other programs) a number of ways, not including FM or Phase Distortion. Software Shop had Synthia for ca. $70. Synthia is also copy-protected, but offers no go-around. It makes a heck of a bottle-popping sound. Synthia has a few different ways of building sounds: additive, subtractive, percussion, string model, interpolation. All the techniques offer "effects" such as reverb, amplitude modulation, pitch modulation, and others. Subtractive is a subset of additive; it lacks Additive's envelopes for individual harmonics. The model for Synthia is a little subtle and interlocked, and I can't remember the right names for things, so I don't want to confuse you. But here goes. Under additive synthesis, you may specify 16 harmonics either by envelope. The envelopes can be mouse-drawn or calculated from 8 sliders that represent harmonics of the envelope shape, or polynomial factors(powers?) or the sliders represent the shape of the envelope to be interpolated with spline or in a linear way. whew! Don't expect to build long gentle envelopes that fade in and fade out slowly. If you can do it, I don't know how. References to envelopes here are to things that come and go pretty fast in the mid range, about .5 second. Envelope lengths seem inversely proportional to pitch. However, notes can repeat indefinetly if you want. IFF sound definition permits repeating any part, such as the tail of the sound until the score stops the sound. Under additive synthesis you may define sounds with sliders that define the waveform, i.e., are harmonics or polynomials or linear trace for 8 harmonics of the waveform. The string model permits building a sound based on a plucked (not bowed) string. It distinguishes between nylon and steel. It's good for guitars and basses. Maybe I'll try to make a harpsichord on it. I think a book example made a strung waterglass with it. The percussion model is pretty thorough, modelling the initial excitation wave, feedback, resonance. It also has alternate synthesis techniques within the percussion window for non-harmonic sounds. It can use a noise source with this model to make a muted cymbal, for example. I need more experience with it. A non-linear vibrator model is included. The Synthia Extras disk includes an SMUS file player and some dumb pieces to play with it. I need more experience with both programs, but especially Synthia, which is very deep. There is some disk-swapping with only one disk, but not during just working on a score or a sound. Tom Janzen Digital Equipment Corp. 111 Locke Dr. Marlboro MA 01752
sjk@utastro.UUCP (Scot Kleinman) (06/13/88)
In article <8806121945.AA27561@decwrl.dec.com>, janzen@ant.dec.com (Tom LMO2/O23 296-5421) writes: > > -< dmcs and synthia >- > > For about a month, I have been using Deluxe Music Construction Set (DMCS) > and Synthia on a Commodore Amiga 500 with one drive. > Sometimes it's inconvenient. It always uses sharps if you > enter notes by clicking the mouse on the keyboard. The shortest > way to get flats on a single note is to click the flat icon, click > the notehead (duration) icon, and click the place on the staff > you want the note at. Or, you can play in naturals, and later > click the flat icon over the note. If the music is crowded, > the sharp for a note may end up on top of the previous note, but you > can resize the measure to correct this. I have been using DMCS on my 1000 have not experienced this inconvenience mentioned. My hunch is that you have clicked on the sharp button and therefore its default mode is to place sharps on the staff. To fix this problem, click on the "CLR MOD" button. This button should clear all modifications to the entered note such as triplets, dots, sharps, etc. I hope this works. Scot sjk@astro.as.utexas.edu BITNET YOW!
bobb@tekfdi.TEK.COM (Robert Bales) (06/17/88)
In article <8806121945.AA27561@decwrl.dec.com> janzen@ant.dec.com (Tom LMO2/O23 296-5421) writes: >Synthia is also copy-protected, but offers no go-around. Synthia -- I bought my copy at the LA AmiExpo in Jan. -- is not copy protected. I am not a musician, or even close. But I think that Sythia is to creating instruments as Deluxe Paint II is to creating pictures. Wow! Bob Bales Tektronix, Inc. I help Tektronix make their instruments. They don't help me make my opinions.