Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

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K, so you've finally decided to
take the plunge. You've bought
yourself a Midi keyboard and a
Midi interface for your Amiga, now all
that remains is to buy yourself a
suitable sequencer package.
But which is the right one for you?
After all, they all seem to do basically
the same job.
To help you make the right buying
decision, Amiga Computing takes a
look at the current cut of the crop of
Amiga sequencers. This month we see
what the market has to offer the
"professional" musician. And for those
of you with less demanding
requirements, next month we'll be
reviewing the range of budget
sequencers.
KCS 3.0/DR.T
E299/071-724 4104
Dr.T's software offer the most complete
range of MIDI software available for the
Amiga. Their catalogue includes a vast
range of patch editors, sequencers to
suite all budgets, SMPTE hardware and
software, and even a range of Copyist
tools for the production of scores from
sequencer files.
KCS 3 is available in two versions.
Levels 1 and 2. Level 2 has an extra
Programmable Variations Generator
that applies mathematical techniques to
create rhythmic cycles. The heart of
KCS 3.0 is a powerful 48 track realtime
MIDI recorder providing similar
recording options to Musick Sequence
editing is carried using a MIDI data
stream editor only — there's no fancy
graphic editors here.
KCS is indeed a powerful sequencer,
but it is rather unfriendly to amateur
users. If some kind of graphic editing
were included, then KCS would have
been far more approachable. As it
stands, it remains a tool for the
hardened professional.
KCS - not the easiest to use
120 AMIGA COMPUTING November MO
MUSICX/Microlliusions-The
Software Business/E230/
0480 496497
musicx is generally regarded as the
number one sequencer currently
available for the Amiga. Unlike the rest
of the pack, MusicX was developed on
the Amiga specifically for the Amiga, as
a result it boasts easily the most friendly
and well designed user interface of all.
The 250 tracks of real time MIDI
MusicK's editor takes some beating
recording offers such features as punch
in/out, multichannel record, track
merging and splitting, plus a lot more.
Editing is via a friendly piano roll-like
bar editor and a more conventional MIDI
stream editor. The current release does
not offer any form of score editing, but
MicroIllusions have promised both this
and lots more in a future release.
Also worth a mention is MusicX's
powerful filters page which acts like a
dedicated MIDI patchbay, allowing you
to redirect MIDI events and even assign
events to individual keys using the
keymap editor.
For those of you with synthesisers,
MusicX offers a powerful librarian page
to store synth patch data. Also included
are a range of patch editors for various
synths including the Roland D50.
FOR most programmers, composing
tunes for their gaming creations meant
only one thing — Sound Tracker. During
its brief history, Obarski's music editor
has become famous among both
crackers and demo writers.
Chances are that even the games
you buy contain tunes produced using
Sound Tracker, However, due to its
legal position — nobody seems to know
whether Sound Tracker is now PD or
not — the program has been almost
impossible to obtain.
A new (legal) contender for Sound
Tracker's throne is TFMX from the
German software house of
DemonWare. As the manual goes to
great lengths to stress, TFMX was
designed exclusively for the production
of music for Demonware's own game
titles, After realising what a good
product TFMX was, Demonware have
kindly made TFMX available to a much
wider audience.
It uses a pattern-based editing
MASTER TRACKS PRO/
Passport/E289/071- 724
4104
Until recently, Master Tracks Pro was
Passport's only release for the Amiga.
Although it is not that well known in this
country, the Americans love it Master
Tracks is available on a number of
different systems, including the Mac,
Amiga and ST. All share a common,
graphical-orientated user interface
based around the Mac Finder system.
Master Tracks offers 64 tracks of
realtime recording, complete with some
of the most powerful editing options
available within an Amiga sequencer.
The main workhorse editor is the step
editor, which is almost identical to the
MusicX bar editor. The program also
has a unique song editor which can be
used to built up songs from patterns.
Other editing tools include a useful Fit
Time option which can be used to
compress or expand a sequence to fit a
particular time space — very useful
when providing music for video. Also on
offer is a humaniser that attempts to
make sequences more human by
making them less rigid.
Master Tracks is a powerful music
composition system that gives MusicX a
run for its money — a studio proven
system that is well worth investigating.
system very similar to conventional
drum machines. Songs are constructed
by building up patterns that are then
combined to form the final song.
Individual patterns are constructed by
entering hex values representing the
note to be played and the sample
macro with which it is to be played. You
can specify both the volume of the
sample and which channel it is to be
played through , a handy facility for
creating stereo bounce effects.
Directly after a note has been entered
it is followed by a further command that
specifies whether another note is to be
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?MX: A legal Soundtracker?