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From: keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Time to flame at Aegis....
Message-ID: <1611@cadovax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 22-Jun-87 17:15:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: cadovax.1611
Posted: Mon Jun 22 17:15:05 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 24-Jun-87 06:44:40 EDT
References: <764@gryphon.CTS.COM> <1607@cadovax.UUCP> <3377@well.UUCP>
Reply-To: keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle)
Organization: Contel Business Systems, Torrance, CA
Lines: 71

In article <3377@well.UUCP> ewhac@well.UUCP (Leo 'Bols Ewhac' Schwab) writes:
>>Sonix was playing some stuff that was a full band with vocals.  [ ... ]
>>Unfortunately, the choice of tunes was so much mainstream 'pop' that it
>>just seemed like someone had a tinny little A.M. radio going in the corner.
>>[ ... ] This stuff you might have figured was the hotel's muzak.  You don't
>>need an Amiga to hear that.
>
>	What would you prefer?  Kraftwerk?  Wendy Carlos?  Tomita?

Well, maybe a little more along the lines of Art Of Noise.

>	Mark Riley, author of Sonix, gave Gary Koffler, my boss, a copy
>of the tunes.  About 80% of what your brain is registering is digitized
>loops ("Thriller" is almost entirely one loop).  The remaining voices
>augment the loop to give it "depth".  At least this is the case with
>"Thriller," haven't fiddled much with the others.  Try turning off
>individual voices to see... er.. hear what's going on.

That implies that Sonix can manage a variety of digitized loops.  Is this
true?  What kind of notation/interface do they use?

BTW, does anyone know if copyright problems have arisen yet from such
digitized loops?  If you are talking about Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'
is BMI or ASCAP informed?  Seems like this could be a sticky problem
looming on the horizon.

>General Comments On Message:
>
>	Try not to get too excited, Keith :-).  Seriously, were you in a bad
>mood that day?  Or are you beginning to get a little jaded with all the
>current stuff?  Your message seemed quite a downer, and I'm just wondering
>why.

Well, maybe I am getting jaded.  Got so used to seeing exciting new Amiga
stuff at every turn, maybe I've just hit the saturation mark.  You know,
when you've seen your 3,573rd 1-2-3 clone, the excitement just isn't the
same as it was the first time. :-)   Maybe I should go look at a PC for
a couple of hours to put things back in perspective.

And now that everyone's found out how easy it is to use a digitizer to
produce near-photo-quality images in seconds, and to use ray tracers to
generate scenes, that's about all you see.  The 'fine art' promised by
DPaint II seems to be giving way to quick digitizations of the cover
of Playboy magazine etc.

>	There's no real reason to be down on the Amiga or any of its
>developers.  If Commodore were to go bankrupt tomorrow, we'd still have the
>machines we own.  And even if they were orphaned (not necessarily), we've
>still learned a lot.  The Amiga changed the way we look at and program
>computers, and has been a valuable experience to everyone involved.

I guess the only thing that bothers me is when the marketeers misrepresent
what the product is and what it does.  But then again, maybe that's their
job, I don't know.  I think I'd rather go to an Amiga 'art' show with
a bunch of artists using Amiga's who don't know that much about computers.
Maybe I'm just getting burned out from too much exposure to marketeers, and
not enough exposure to people really using the Amiga to do innovative
things for themselves.  The couple of 'renegade TV' station ID's for Max
Headroom that Richard Lewis did, as relatively simple as they were, were
much more interesting to me than any of the 'automatically' generated
art-like-product presented in the dealer's room.

>	If you are, in fact, beginning to get jaded, fear not; many people
>are at work....

Yeah I know, in fact I'm one of them.  I'm just telling myself the
competition is poor to give myself a boost to keep working.

Keith Doyle
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