In this issue we have reviews of three new music discs from
Hybrid Technology and some first impressions of the Music 2000 MIDI interface
from two members who have recently added this unit to their Hybrid Music
System.
'Return to the Homeland' by Obernell
Roy Follett
Right at the outset I must state that I found this disc to
be the best one I have ever heard from the Hybrid Technology stable. The more I
play it, the more I like it. Whether Obernell is a person or a cooperative is
not clear but, he/she or they have produced a set of original tunes, coupled
with some stunning sounds.
I am of the opinion that even with all the infinite
variations that can be achieved with AMPLE, the sound that is generally
produced by the Music 500(0), sounds like a Music 500(0). This disc has changed
that. Give yourself a treat, buy it, and listen to 'Flight by Night'.
What's more, while you are listening, type SHOW and you will
find it's all done with 16 words. Not 75 and half-a-dozen 'mixes' that get in
the way, and cause the music to hiccup. Some of the pieces have only eight or nine
words! Listening to 'Flight by Night' makes me wonder why people are demanding
MIDI interfaces to drive other synthesisers, when this one has not been fully explored.
Listen to 'Deseamos Estar Juntos' and hear what can be
achieved with 9 words. After that, load a real foot-tapper, 'Dreamer'. This one
is extravagant (16 words!) and is my favourite - the guitar sounds as if it is
being played by a real guitarist, not a computer.
If I were awarding stars, with 5 stars being the top, then
this disc would score:
Tunes ***** Sound ***** Programming ***** Value for money *****
I can only repeat myself, BUY IT.
'Music City 2' by Various
Kevin Doyle
In this second Music City compilation, editor Ian Guinan
brings together a collection of popular tunes written by various contributors
to the Music City service.
As with 'Music City 1', the emphasis seems to be on accurate
reproduction of the original (or most familiar) arrangement of the music. The
Doors song 'Riders on the Storm' (programmed by AMPLINEX member Bernie Dawson) seemed
to me to be a fairly successful AMPLE reproduction of the original, and also
managed to provide (optional) lyrics timed with the music.
In 'Music City 1' Ian Guinan tackled what must be one of the
landmarks in popular electronic music - 'I feel love' by Donna Summer. Nothing
if not ambitious, he moves forward a decade on this disc, to program a version
of New Order's 'Blue Monday'. Although it can't reproduce the mass of special effects
and treatments used in the original, his version shows that the Music 500(0)
can attempt such feats and still emerge with credit.
In contrast, an AMPLE rendition of the Nina Simone version
of 'Baby just cares for me' sounds merely lifeless and stilted with its clipped
piano sound and strict rhythm.
Others amongst the 15 songs included on this disc are 'Into
the groove' and 'Papa don't preach' by Madonna, 'Tomorrow never knows' by
Lennon and McCartney, 'The house that Jack built' by Jack'N'Chill, 'I think we’re
alone now' by Tiffany and 'Natural' by Howard Jones.
You can judge something of the quality of the music yourself
with the inclusion of one of the pieces ('Rat In Mi Kitchen' by UB40) on this
disc. In short, if you like your AMPLE music to be familiar, and you're
familiar with the 'Top 40' - this disc is for you.
'AMPLE Vibrations' by David Reed
Roy Follett
This is the second AMPLE music disc from David Reed (his
first 'AMPLE Bytes Back' was reviewed in AMPLINEX 001). It is another good
selection of well-known tunes, eighteen pieces in all, ranging from 'Toccata in
D Minor' by J S Bach to two tunes by Klaus Wunderlich, via three pieces of
music from 'The Phantom of the Opera' by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
It is generally accepted that AMPLE is splendid at producing
organ sounds, and the organ features quite a few times during this disc. But in
the 'Toccata in D Minor' I feel that David has produced one of the best organ sounds
heard in a long while. When I am alone, I turn the volume up and revel in it -
it makes what hair I have left, stand on end. It must be the next best thing to
being in an organ loft. You can judge for yourself since 'Toccata in D Minor'
is included in this issue's Music section.
There appear to be two schools of thought about AMPLE music.
Those in the first prefer music they recognize; those in the second value
originality and creativity. If you are in the first category, you will like
this disc a lot, and will find plenty of good music. Listeners in the second category
will not find much of interest.
All of the discs reviewed above are available from:
Hybrid Technology Unit 3, Robert Davies Court Nuffield Road CAMBRIDGE
CB4 1TP
priced £4.95 inclusive of postage and packing.
As we went to 'press', Hybrid Technology announced the
release of two more music discs - 'AMPLE DCT', a selection of material from the
pages of the AMPLE DCT database, and 'Contrast' by Pilgrim Beart. We will be
reviewing both these discs in AMPLINEX 009 (January 1989).
The Music 2000 - first impressions
Roger Cawkwell
Being the proud possessor of a DX7 synthesiser I opted to
wait for the Music 2000 MIDI interface rather than use up my hardware budget on
the Music 4000 keyboard.
The unit arrived and was attached, the manual was read, and
the M.M2 module was booted into place. I typed
READY 1 VOICES MIDIV C
and was immediately rewarded with a middle C from the DX7. I
haven't looked back since. There have been no snags apart from the ones I've
created myself by not reading the manual thoroughly enough.
My next move was to try adapting some of my existing Music
5000 pieces. This was simplicity itself for most of the pieces; all I had to do
was adapt the existing mix by putting 'MIDIV' in place of some of the usual
instrument names, or (as suggested in the Music 2000 manual) by adding the
supplied 'mix9' which contains all the MIDI information you're likely to
require.
If you use 'mix9' you must change the PLAY instruction. For
example, if you previously had
"1234-1abc" PLAY
then this must be changed to
"1234-19abc" PLAY
Obviously, if your parts contain instructions specific to
the Music 5000 hardware, such as VOL, PAN, CHAN, instrument, or waveform
changes, these will have no effect on your MIDI instrument.
To combine the sounds of the Music 5000 and a MIDI unit you
will need to mix the audio outputs. I have the outputs of both my DX7 and Music
5000 permanently plugged into a Tascam PortaOne anyway, so this was no problem.
Naturally, there is a difference in audio quality between the two synthesisers
(compare the price tags!) but for some strange reason this is less apparent
when the DX7 is under computer control.
The mono-timbral DX7 isn't really exploiting the
capabilities of the AMPLE/Music 2000 combination at all; at the moment I'm
using my own 'pseudo split' DX7 voice programs which can only deliver two or,
at the most, three different timbres at a time (in glorious mono!). I'm looking
forward to trying out the system with a multi-timbral unit such as a Roland D110/M32
or Kawai K1M.
As far as I can tell, without actually having tried these
units (i.e. by generalising from my experience with the DX7 and having read
some of the manuals), one should have full control over these units; dynamics,
voice selection, system exclusive, etc. If you really want to, you should be
able to edit voices from AMPLE, but you'll have to write your own editor!
You don't have to use the Music 2000 from AMPLE, by the way.
I have Martin Russ's DX editing and library software (written in BASIC and machine
code with the BEEB-MIDI unit in mind) and, with a slight re-write of the
machine code to aim the MIDI data at addresses appropriate to the 2000, it's
worked perfectly.
I've started working on some C/MIDI applications (using
Beebug C) and have had perfectly acceptable results with MIDI OUT; at the
moment I've only tried relatively trivial things - playing notes, phrases,
chords (with transposition and tempo change), crude editing of DX7 voices, a
monophonic note-processor, etc.
With MIDI IN, of course, I have had to resort to assembler
to get any results at all and I'm coming up against the same sort of snags
Scott Mackie has reported elsewhere (see AMPLINEX 006 and 007). However, I'm
still working on it...
I have to agree with the view that the Music 2000 unit is
way over-priced. Hybrid has apparently decided that £140 + VAT is the sum to
charge whatever they're selling. By contrast, AMPLE Nucleus plus the Music 5000
is a good deal, and the comparison is inevitable.
The Music 2000 plus Nucleus ROM plus all modules (except for
M5) - i.e. side-stepping the Music 5000 completely - would seem to be a more comparable
package. Any comments, Hybrid?
AMPLE room for expansion?
Richard Bettis
To judge by the Questions and Answers section in AMPLINEX
007, the introduction of the Music 2000 has aroused the interest of many
members, so I'll offer my first impressions of using the Music 2000 MIDI
interface and a Roland MT-32 expander.
Following a recent pay rise, I splashed out what felt like
vast amounts of cash on a Music 2000 (£160) and a Roland MT-32 (about £400). As
the Music 2000 has already been reviewed in detail, I will merely say that I've
had no problems with mine so far, and say something about the MT-32.
To look at, the MT-32 is a black box about the size of two
Music 500(0)s side-by-side. On the front it has a few buttons, a knob, and a
backlit LCD display. At the back there are MIDI In, Out and Thru DIN sockets,
two output jack sockets and a power supply socket.
Inside, the electronics provide a synthesiser that is
superficially similar to the Music 500(0). There are eight music channels
(Roland call them 'Parts'), each of which can play a different instrument
('Timbre'), with control over volume and stereo position.
After that the differences start to become apparent. The
MT-32 can play (typically) up to 16 voices at once (in certain circumstances
this could be increased to 32) and these can be shared between the instruments
at will.
This means that the 'mix' can have up to 32 voices (the
limit set by the M2 module), and as long as they aren't all actually playing a
note at the same time the MT-32 will play its notes on whichever 'instruments'
are required.
In practice, I've yet to run out of MIDI voices, and the
'scrimp & save' techniques sometimes required for the Music 500(0) can be
forgotten.
In addition to this new found freedom in voices, there is a
special channel set up just for percussion - no more Music 500(0) CHANs eaten
up by complex 'drum kits'.
So what does it sound like?
The main weak point (to my mind) of the Music 500(0) is its
percussion effects. The 'rhythm' part of the MT-32 has 30 sounds, from a basic
drum kit to 'ethnic' instruments. These are PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) samples
of actual instruments, and are thus very realistic indeed.
The eight main parts can take any of the 128 built-in
Timbres. These range from some very realistic imitations - a range of strings,
brass, woodwind, fretted and keyboard instruments - to some powerful 'synth'
sounds. PCM samples are used in conjunction with the sort of sound-building
techniques used by the Music 500(0), so that a trumpet sound has a sampled
attack and a synthesised sustained note, giving maximum realism for a low
effort.
My own personal favourites are the 'breathy' Pan-pipes and Whistle
sounds, something I've never heard from the Hybrid hardware.
In addition to the 128 preset Timbres, there is space for 64
user-programmed ones. These can only be set up using MIDI system exclusive
commands, and I've yet to delve into these.
There is also a built-in reverberation effect, so you can
also forget those very short 'Echo's which you might use to add 'presence' to
your Music 500(0) and which take so many voices.
The Music 2000 allows you to use both MIDI and Music 5000
instruments in the same piece of music, so you can still keep those sounds
which are better on the Hybrid instrument - piano sounds on the MT-32 are very
weak, for instance.
You can play the MT-32 voices using any normal method - i.e.
music words, notes at the '%' prompt, the Music 4000 keyboard or the keyboard
utility program from AMPLINEX 005.
So that's the plus points - but there are one or two
drawbacks. Some of these are an inherent part of any MIDI expander. The control
of volume and stereo position uses MIDI 'Controller' values, not the familiar
POS, PAN and VOL. However, it's a matter of moments to write the equivalent
'pan' and 'vol' words in AMPLE. Also, the MT-32 doesn't respond to the Music
500(0) sound programming words - CHANS, Flat, Reedy etc.
You'll also need either two amplifiers or some sort of mixer
to hear both synthesisers at the same time.
The Music 2000 driver module (M.M2) does take up extra
memory, but as the instrument definitions are built into the expander, not
stored as words in memory, you can actually end up with more room for your
music.
I also have one or two gripes about the MT-32 itself. These
mostly concern the documentation supplied with it. The section describing the
buttons and how to use them is OK, but the technical description - how to use
the unit to its full potential with MIDI system exclusive programming etc. - is
frankly abysmal. The actual details are there, in a form which I can only describe
as 'user hostile', but what it all means and how it can be used isn't even
mentioned.
Some of the more advanced features of the MT-32, such as
user-programming are shrouded in unnecessary darkness because of poor
information from Roland, and are in any case far more complex than those on the
Music 5000 - more complex even than the original Music 500 and AMPLE BCE!
So, to conclude, the MT-32 is a powerful piece of hardware
which can add new, highly detailed and realistic sounds to your music, most
notably its sampled percussion sounds. It can also increase the flexibility of
AMPLE by allowing more voices and a greater freedom of voice allocation.
I certainly don't regret having parted with my hard earned
money - it's just that music contributions to AMPLINEX may be suspended while I
revel in my new found freedom!
As some members may have seen in the BBC micro press, Hybrid
Technology have released a new product called the 'Music 5000 Synthesiser
Junior'. This is a package consisting of the Music 5000 synthesiser, a 32K ROM,
disc and manual, which provides a cheaper alternative to the Studio 5000 package
- £99 as opposed to £161.
The software provides a graphics interface for such
activities as 'Mixing Desk', 'Instrument Designer', 'Staff Editor', 'File
Manager' and 'Music Arranger'. A three-octave music keyboard is created using
the BBC computer's keys and a pointer and icons provide the means to move between
different parts of the system.
The system is not AMPLE-based, but the system can be
upgraded to the standard Studio 5000 by buying the Music 5000 software upgrade
in the same way as Music 500 (AMPLE BCE) owners. The upgrade still costs £69.
The Music 5000 Synthesiser Junior will be available in
January 1989 and we will be reviewing the system in our January issue (AMPLINEX
009).
Hybrid Technology have also announced some changes in their
price list: the price of the Symphony keyboard upgrade pack has increased from £47
to £69 and the footswitch for the same keyboard from £11.50 to £15.
Published in AMPLINEX 008, November
1988
