Play it Again, Atari
They laughed when I sat down at the 800 XL..
by NAT FRIEDLAND, Antic EditorOkay, I confess. Before I settled on writing
I was a committed would-be musician. As a kid and teenager I must have
spent hundreds of hours teaching myself piano, rhythm guitar and chromatic
harmonica. I played first trombone in the high school band, thus becoming
automatically eligible for a music scholarship to state teachers college
if I had wished to go.
It was relatively easy for me to pick up the rudiments
of playing different instruments. But there would always come a time-much
too soon-when I ran into the upper limits of my musical coordination. I
could never seem to really master any instrument.
I used to daydream about some kind of future electronic
musical instrument coming along that would automate things the things I
couldn't get my fingers to do and let me express my musical ideas without
being an instrumental whiz. Little did I know those instruments would become
a reality-even an affordable reality-in less than two decades.
Recently my musical frustrations have been much more localized.
It seemed as if all the good musical software and plug-in computer piano-keys
from companies like Sequential Circuits or Passport were being made only
for the Apple II or the Commodore 64.
1985 ATARI MUSIC
However, in 1985 all this has changed. Some truly phenomenal new musical
peripherals for our favorite personal computer are about to make the Atari
the new champion of computer-assisted musicmaking.
In this article you will read about:
- A new kind of "music generator" software that lets you compose and improvise in real-time at the Atari keyboard. The four-voice sound is tracked by colorful geometric graphics. Press a couple of Atari keys and you'll feel like the next Brian Eno.
- A software and "black-box" product that lets your Atari emulate an advanced 16-track digital recording studio.
- A remarkably powerful new MIDI synthesizer that sells for no more than what an Atari disk drive used to cost.
1. VIRTUOSO
At a music studio in Queens, New York last year you'd find three kids
at a time sitting in front of Atari computers and listening on earphones
while geometric patterns of color flashed across the video screen. These
kids were taking two-hour lessons in creating music on the Virtuoso
sound generator and when the sessions were over their parents often had
to drag them away from the machines.
Virtuoso is such a unique new approach to musicmaking
that it's not easy to describe. It's one of the closest things in the real
world to the multi-arts competitions that Herman Hesse wrote about in his
classic literary fantasy The Bead Game. In that book, Hesse
wrote about chess-like contests where one player's move might be a theme
from a symphony and the opponent's countermove could be a line of a poem
or a section of a painting...
Virtuoso gives you a user-friendly method of tapping the
extremely fast and powerful changes that a computer can control in every
aspect of music performance. It bypasses the limits of traditional musical
notation and uses an almost self-explanatory color graphic display that
delivers mathematical insights into the structure of music.
USING VIRTUOSO
You'd enter a musical pattern into Virtuoso from the Atari keyboard,
or call up one from about 480 that could be stored on a single disk. The
pattern would start sounding and the lines of colors would trace it visually.
At this point you could start creating all sorts of changes in the pattern-which
you would hear and see immediately.
As the pattern was playing, you could change its speed,
rhythm, pitch, tone, volume, key scale, etc. You could enter new patterns
any time. There's even a Future mode where you can enter changes before
they are due to be played. The effect of controlling so much musical power
so effortlessly feels something like conducting an orchestra at the same
time as you are composing the music that it plays.
In technical terms, Virtuoso is a sound generator that
produces four voices from the POKEY chip. You can make instant real-time
changes in the voices in any of six parameters. Four computers running
Virtuoso can be linked together to have up to 16 independent channels controlled
by one Atari.
As a sound editor, Virtuoso can synchronize multiple voices
with 1/60 of a second accuracy and tune them within 10 steps of intonation.
Any musical passage can be moved anywhere, saved, and replayed in any key
and in virtually any rhythm.
COMING SOON
This groundbreaking product is a collaboration between former Julliard
Music Professor Joseph Lyons and Frank Schwartz, a highly experienced programmer
and electronics designer Originally, Virtuoso was financed by Warner Leisure
Software, who naturally wanted it for the Atari and in cartridge form.
After Warner Software shut its doors last year, Schwartz
and Lyons obtained new funding and are hoping to have Virtuoso on the market
by August. At this point, Virtuoso is to be on disk, available for either
the Atari or Commodore 64, and priced at about $50.
Not only that, a $150 MIDI interface for Virtuoso is also
being readied for August release. Virtuoso will therefore be usable as
a visual language for MIDI controllers-not only for music, but also for
lighting and sound effects, lasers, etc. Once again, shades of Hesse's
The Bead Game.
Lyons and Schwartz are as enthusiastic about the Casio
CZ-101 synthesizer as Antic is, and Virtuoso will definitely run
on this outstanding electronic instrument-which will provide even greater
power, versatility, sound quality and handling ease than the Atari POKEY
chip.
PLEASE NOTE that Virtuoso is a product that is still under
development and has not yet been released at this writing. Antic
will print more news of Virtuoso as soon as it becomes available, so please
do not phone or write us asking where to get it yet.
How does Antic know that Virtuoso is for real?
There are two reasons. 1. We have heard (and seen)Joe Lyons play four-part
Bach Fugues on it. 2. Antic has a first-generation Virtuoso cartridge
that Frank Schwartz gave us.
Our prototype Virtuoso cartridge is packed solid with
microchips and actually a plug-in board. Its music generating functions
are 100% in working order, but figuring out how to play it from only the
skimpy documentation notes is not too easy. At present you'd need Lyons
standing over your shoulder to explain things, the way he does in his studio
lessons.
Thats why the final development work is concentrated on
making Virtuoso even friendlier to operate. There will be icon menus, an
inexpensive membrane keyboard for musical input (if you're not using a
MIDI instrument), and six levels of complexity that will gradually take
you from beginner to expert status.
2. MIDITRACK II
MIDITRACK II has been wowing them at computer shows and musical instrument
shows since last fall. It's available at various professional-music stores
around the country or by mail from the manufacturer for $349. (Detailed
manufacturer information will be found at the end of the article.)
Interestingly, your Atari will be the least expensive
component of this music system. Bob Moore of Hybrid Arts, makers of MIDITRACK
II, gives a slightly surprising reason why the Atari was chosen to drive
the system. "The Atari is the sturdiest of the inexpensive lightweight
computers," he said. "We believed it would have the best chance to survive
a long professional road tour."
MIDITRACK II disk software and the included MIDIMATE interface
box work with any Atari that has 48K memory. The Atari itself does not
produce any sounds with its POKEY chip here. It simply acts as the controller
for up to 16 channels of information transmitted by MIDI instruments.
WHAT'S MIDI
MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. It's a set of
electronic standards-just as ASCII, RS-232 and Parallel Centronics are
standards- that allows electronic musical instruments to coordinate and
exchange digitally encoded sound information.
Moore, who was primarily a Hollywood studio musician before
coming up with the idea for MIDITRACK II, said, "If you've already got
an Atari and disk drive, it should cost you no more than $3,000 to have
a fully professional digital recording setup. (To just have fun with your
Atari music system, you could get away with $500 or less. More on this
later.)
What you need for a fully professional system is a main
synthesizer, a drum machine, and probably a second synthesizer to give
you a bit more variety of sounds. The second synthesizer doesn't even need
to have a keyboard because you can play it from the main synthesizer.
At the other extreme, you could theoretically daisychain
huge gangs of MIDIMATEs and electronic instruments. You could mix 16 completed
tracks onto a single track, make 15 new tracks and mix everything down
to track 2, and then repeat the process. You could run a symphony orchestra
of synthesizers from a single Atari, even a stadium filled with synthesizers..
Normally the way you'd operate a MIDITRACK II system is
something like this: First you'd set up a drum pattern and record it on
track 1. Next you'd adjust your synthesizer to sound like a bass and play
an accompaniment onto track 2. With your "rhythm section" in place you
could then start layering all sorts of interesting synthesized sounds on
top to make melodies and harmonies in the rest of the available tracks.
STUDIO IN A BOX
Once you were finished, you would have a fully edited arrangement for
MIDI instruments which you could then record on tape for combination with
vocals or non-MIDI instruments. The length of the music you could save
would depend somewhat on how many notes were in the piece. The limit per
file is 3,000 sequenced notes.
By the way, usually you can simultaneously call up more
than one track from a single MIDI instrument. Many synthesizers could give
you as much as 8 simultaneous tracks.
On the whole, the MIDITRACK II documentation is excellent.
Once you have plugged everything in, the manual suggests that you simply
press your Atari spacebar, play something on your synthesizer, and then
press the spacebar again. That's all it takes for a recording and playback!
One of our testers kept losing his music at first, every
time he tried to save a track. But once he figured out that this was caused
by holding down the Inverse Video key too long during the save command,
there were no problems.
MIDITRACK II is designed to operate like a professional
multitrack tape recorder. So it contains all the features you would normally
expect to find in a recording studio. All 16 tracks are independent unless
you mix them together. You can synchronize tracks or change the speed of
the entire recording. You can over-dub or transpose tracks. You can automatically
locate any spot on the recording. You can "punch in" anywhere to record
difficult passages one note at at time.
MIDITRACK II even supports the advanced technique of quantization,
or autocorrect. For example, if your timing was a bit uneven when you were
trying to play that flashy bass part you could set the notes to automatically
come out on the beat.
3. CASIO CZ-1O1
Most Atari owners who buy MIDITRACK II will probably decide to use
the new Casio CZ-10l synthesizer as their primary keyboard. That's because
the CZ-l0l sells for about one-fourth the price of any comparable synthesizer!
It lists for $499 but has been on sale at Macy's for as low as $300.
The instruments that Bob Moore brought along to demonstrate
MIDITRACK LI were the Yamaha DX7 synthesizer which has a list price of
$1,995 and the Yamaha RXII drum machine which lists for $895. Both of these
instruments are very popular with professional musicians and are not considered
unusually high-priced in comparison to the competition.
At the time, Moore told Antic that a new low-priced but
powerful synthesizer from Casio was due to be released shortly and it would
apparently be at least somewhat comparable with the DX7. Well, the CZ-l01
was shown at the Consumer Electronics Show and Casio kindly let us have
one to use with our MIDITRACK II.
ST OF SYNTHS
We swiftly discovered that the CZ-101 is considerably more than merely
a stripped-down version of the DX7. In fact, this Casio could almost be
considered the Atari ST of sythesizers- it delivers far more "power without
the price" than anything else in its class. Despite the Casio brandname
we are talking about a real synthesizer here, not an "electronic music-maker"
with one-key chords and preset drum-bass patterns. (It doesn't have a built-in
speaker either.)
In many ways the CZ-101 is even more versatile than earlier,
more costly synthesizers. A review in the March, 1985 issue of "Keyboard,"
the top magazine for electronic keyboard players, concludes, "The CZ-101
makes good use of the latest digital technology. Its attractive features
include seven excellent envelope generators, good-sounding waveforms, and
several doubling modes for building up complex timbres. As an inexpensive
and versatile MIDI slave module, it could be a very effective addition
to almost any stack."
Upon translation from synthesizer jargon, what this means
is that the CZ-101's strongest point is its wide-ranging capability of
creating and manipulating synthesized sounds. It has more waveforms,
envelopes, oscillators and more ways to combine these soundmaking
elements than most previous synthesizers.
In this instrument you'll find a full assortment of standard
high-end synthesizer features such as pitch-bend wheel, ring modulator,
portamento, octave shift, detune control, phase distortion sound generator.
16 INSTRUMENTS
The CZ-l0l starts you off with 32 factory-preset sounds-flute, electric
piano, violins, organ, etc.-that range from okay to pretty good. You can
reprogram 16 of these sound "patches" to hold your own sound creations
(you can bring back the factory patches anytime). Also there's a slot for
additional 16-patch programmable cartridges.
People who play piano by ear and can only play in one
key (usually either all white notes or all black notes) will deeply appreciate
the transpose button that will instantly shift you into even the most complex
key (four flats, five sharps, etc.).
The CZ- 101 has 49 keys of standard "mini-keyboard" size.
Purists may insist that only full-size keys will do, but personally I enjoy
the feeling of spanning left-hand tenths as effortlessly as I would reach
octaves on a full-size keyboard.
A GREAT TEAM
The CZ-10l works in combination with MIDITRACK II remarkably effectively.
You don't need to be a musical genius to record and playback flashy multitrack
compositions featuring your own synthesized sounds almost as soon as you've
got your system cabled together.
And you can dramatically change the synthesizer voicings
during playback and hear your new sounds in real time. Or if you tinker
with the playback of the demonstration songs provided with MLDITRACK II
you can try out sounds as unique as a Mozart Sonata being played on a vibraphone
or jazz organ.
So tune up your Atari and unlock your creativity. With
MIDITRACK II, the Casio CZ-l01 and Virtuoso, you might very well be world's
next musical genius!
MANUFACTURERS
MIDITRACK II
Hybrid Arts
P.O. Box 480845
Los Angeles, CA 90048
(818) 508-7443
$349-48K disk
CZ-101 SYNTHESIZER
Casio, Inc.
15 Gardner Road
Fairfield, NJ 07006
(201) 575-7400
$499 (Suggested list)
VIRTUOSO
Enhanced Technology Associates
125 W. Duke Ellington Blvd.
New York, NY 10025
$50-48K disk
$150-MIDI interface
(Available August 1985 or later)