dwells@polaris.cognet.ucla.edu (David Wells) (06/19/91)
I'll be getting an A3000 with the trade-up deal, and I'd like to get it set up for music. However, I'm just getting into electronic music, so I don't know what's good, or even what features I should be looking for. I'd like to interface with MIDI equipment, perhaps digitize (16 bit) and play back sounds, and write music. Any suggestions on hardware and software? Are there other interesting things that can be done - like what is a music language used for? thanks, dwells
ewilts@janus.mtroyal.ab.ca (Ed Wilts) (06/19/91)
In article <1991Jun19.005452.14756@cognet.ucla.edu>, dwells@polaris.cognet.ucla.edu (David Wells) writes: > > I'll be getting an A3000 with the trade-up deal, and I'd like to get > it set up for music. However, I'm just getting into electronic music, > so I don't know what's good, or even what features I should be looking > for. I'd like to interface with MIDI equipment, perhaps digitize (16 > bit) and play back sounds, and write music. > > Any suggestions on hardware and software? Are there other interesting > things that can be done - like what is a music language used for? For starters, to get into MIDI, you need a MIDI interface. Basically all of these are the same; some have serial passthrus or multiple outs, but no one interface stands high above any other. My own is home-built; it has 2 MIDI ins (switchable) which is something that no commercial interface has. For software, "write music" is too vague. There are two basic methods for writing music; one is known as scoring (write the music on a staff); the other is known as sequencing (write music by playing it live). Scoring packages are few and far between. Sonix is very low-level and DMCS is moderately buggy, no longer supported, but otherwise quite usable. Both let you play back using internal voices or output to MIDI (Sonix is very limited though). On the high end, there is Dr.T's Copyist. It has no playback capabilities but can convert to formats that other packages can read for output. The printed output from Copyist is supposed to be quite good. Sequencing packages are become plentiful, and many good choices are available. I use Dr. T's KCS 3.5, which probably has the best editing capabilities of all the packages available. It's come a long way since it was first released a few years ago (it's available on other platforms as well; the vendor has a solid reputation in the music industry). You should also consider Music-X, Bars & Pipes, and MasterTracks as alternatives. All have their strenghts and weaknesses. None of these are copy-protected (KCS used to be key-disk protected, but this was removed in the 3.5 upgrade). If you are more into experimentation at this stage, you may want to consider Tiger Cub; it's an excellent introductory low-cost package, and you can upgrade it to KCS later. For sampling, 12-bit and 16-bit samplers are just starting to hit the market, but traditional 8-bit has been out for quite some time and is relatively inexpensive. For high-end sampling, consider some samplers from (say) Akai or Roland; check out the music stores for these. For recommendations on MIDI keyboards, samplers, or those other nice toys, check out rec.music.synth. [My personal setup is a Roland HP3500 digital piano coupled with a Roland CM-64 synthesizer). -- .../Ed Preferrred: Ed.Wilts@BSC.Galaxy.BCSystems.Gov.BC.CA Ed Wilts Alternate: EdWilts@BCSC02.BITNET (604) 389-3430 B.C. Systems Corp., 4000 Seymour Place, Victoria, B.C., Canada, V8X 4S8