Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

cott Hallam's love affair with dance
music began back in 1988 when Acid
House was sweeping the nation.
Manchester was the epicentre of the
Summer of love and a new club was opened on
Manchester's Whitworth Street called the Hacienda.
Like many other people at the time, Scott was
completely enamoured with this new musical form:
"The music had energy, it was aggressive with a
sound of it's own - new, fresh and full of power".
After a few years clubbing and buying almost every
House track he could get his hands on, Scott grad
ually got to know people who were compiling their
own tracks.
After visiting a House musician, Scott was
inspired to start creating his own tracks.
Collaborating with Mark, Scott got to know the
equipment needed and the processes of creating a
decent tune. In addition to learning how to use mix
ers, drum machines and keyboards, Scott was intro
duced to the Amiga.
Starting off
Bitten by the bug, Scott started to build his own
recording studio in earnest. Starting off with an
Amiga 500 and turntable, he used the Amiga for the
turntable and for internal samples. After acquiring a
Roland D10 Keyboard, Boss SE50 Effects Drum
Machine, and other gizmos, Scott came to realise
the true strength of the Amiga. Although very adept
at sampling, the Amiga was also extremely useful at
managing external sound sources. In the fledgling
studio the Amiga was at the heart of the system,
connecting and controlling everything.
Remarkably, seven years on, Scott is still using an
Amiga despite having bought a 486 PC a year ago.
Although some of the music software available for
the PC looks good, the PC didn't cut it when it ,.
came to handling the large amount of data m
required
\
Whilst the Amiga could control and sequence every
thing almost flawlessly, the PC had the irritatingly
habit of crashing almost every time it was used. The
Amiga, in Scott's words, "Has only crashed about
twice in its existence" Because of the architecture of
the system and the fact almost every component is
Hugh Poynton talks
to musician Scott
hiallam about the
place of the Amiga
in the modern
recording studio
made by the same company, there are no incompat
ibility problems between sound cards, graphics cards,
memory boards and the like.
Scott continues: "What 1 like about the Amiga is
that it is all in one, you don't have to worry about get
ting compatible components, its all done for you. You
just get a hard drive for it and you're away. Its also
quite versatile, I would have loved to have got into
the video editing side of it There are a lot of Genlocks
available for Amiga. Pretty good machine as long as
you've got the memory for it.."
A remarkable number of people still use Amigas to
create dance music. Not as many professional studios
use Amigas because in a full recording studio there are
probably specialised machines - such as the industry
standard Atari or the new Atari Falcon that are too
expensive to be owned privately.
Future magazine publish CDs full of home produced
tracks that are often listened to by industry A&R people.
If deals are signed and contracts drawn up, chances are
they will stick with the Amiga because they know how
to use it and are comfortable with the machine and its
abilities.
Amiga Computing
A British trio calling themselves Conemelt are on the
prestigious Andy Wetherall label. They use three linked
Amigas because they are inexpensive and on one
machine you could process 16 MIDI channels, with
three networked you could run 48 channels making for
a pretty rich blend of sounds.
I asked Scott to show me the process undertaken to
produce a new track. Amid the organised chaos of his
recording studio sat a little A500 surrounded by
machines that wouldn't have looked out of place on
the dashboard of the space shuttle. Like any other
musician, Scotfs primary requirement is inspiration,
you need some place to start.
"Get the idea in mind, be it a melody or a
drum loop or a sample - put the first thing
down. Find the sample you want to use -
before or
after