Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!masnet!canremote!john.russell
From: john.russell@canremote.uucp (JOHN RUSSELL)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Amiga Music
Message-ID: <89120318304670@masnet.uucp>
Date: 2 Dec 89 22:11:00 GMT
Organization: Canada Remote Systems Limited, Mississauga, ON, Canada
Lines: 40

There is an aspect of the C64's music that has been largely lost on the
Amiga.  Since we suddenly have a sound chip that can accurately
reproduce real-life sounds, everyone has rushed to do so with digitized
samples and instruments.  But what comes out of this is generally not of 
any better quality than we hear all the time on the radio, in
commercials, etc.  I mean this in terms of the quality of the music (how 
many original compositions does your local BBS have in its download
area, as opposed to transcriptions of sheet music?) and the quality of
the sound.
 
To wit: on the 64, where programmers didn't hesitate to take full
advantage of the sound chip, we had things like Synth Sample which
played prodigious amounts of music utilizing many, many different
"instrument sounds".  If someone wanted to put a bit of expression into
a piece there were plenty of tremolo effects, glisses, distortions (ring 
modulation), and other variations that: w3ere availab+ke with little
more than POKE 54272, ...
 
On the Amiga, where the sound is amazingly better but also much more
complicated to use, everyone has taken the easy way out.  So much easier 
to digitize a trumpet playing one note, then stretch or squeeze the
waveform to play other notes.  Hey, it only takes 20-30K per instrument! 
And if you want to simulate a mute, the music programs will let you
tweak some parameters zVand sw3#c1ave yourself a new instrument_.  No
big deal, why you can fit a couple of dozen instruments on a floppy. 
Maybe not quite that many in chip memory -- of course by this time you
have been forced to upgrade to 1M chip.
 
The result?  You can hardly find a music sample that doesn't require you 
to have expanded memory, a spare empty disk to devote to its
instruments, and stixDll there are no more than a couple of dozen unique 
sounds in the piece.YG:
 
The solution?  Either the music programs start letting you dynamically
adjust the parameters of instruments in memory while they're playing, or 
dedicated musicians start taking up C programming and buying RKMs.
 
John
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