Amiga Sequencer Showdown!!!

[Kurt A. Geisel]

It's high noon and our spur-clad contenders are face to face. Music-X,
although he's a bit old and late to the fray has gots some pretty big guns.
But the new Kid in town, Bars & Pipes, is lookin' pretty mean. And this
town aint big enough for the both of them!

So folks, what'll it be? I want to hang up SoundScape, and was reaching
for Music-X when Todor Fay leapt out of nowhere waiving something
that SoundScape was meant to be. Music-X looks pretty solid, but
Bars & Pipes has some really innovative features. Problem is,
SoundScape had innovative features too but I would have rather
had something a little more solid. I am interested in comments from
anyone who has compared the two, via reviews or actual testing.

As far as the Amiga goes, this is great news. Both of these products
have drawn claims that they will put the Amiga on the map in the
music world.

- Kurt

[...]

kg...@andrew.cmu.edu (Kurt A. Geisel) said (in part):

>I am interested in comments from anyone who has compared [Bars and
>Pipes and Music-X], via reviews or actual testing.

And while we're on the subject, how about the Dr T's line of ed/libs
and sequencers? Is their stuff any good?

Or, to make the question a bit more open-ended, "What's the best
sequencing software for the Amiga?" Ditto for ed/libs. Alternatively,
comparisons of strengths and weaknesses among the various choices
would be nice.

nj

[Lee Fogel]

In article <19...@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> n...@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (...) writes:
>
>And while we're on the subject, how about the Dr T's line of ed/libs
>and sequencers? Is their stuff any good?
>

I've been using Dr. T's sequencer software (KCS II w/PVG, Tunesmith
& Fingers) for quite a while now on my Atari ST. If you are
just looking for a basic sequencer that imitates multitrack
recording functions, KCS may be overkill, although it does have
a 'Track' mode for that kind of stuff. What I love about Dr. T's
software is the power and flexibility it gives you for composing
and manipulating musical events. In 'Open' mode, sequences can
call sequences which call sequences... Sequences can be triggered
in real time from the computer keyboard (up to 136 I think) as
well as transposed in a variety of ways. Besides musical
information, you can imbed all kinds of control commands in
a sequence to change the rythm, transpose another sequence,
choose randomly from a group of events, and on and on. Music
can be entered into KCS in realtime, steptime, typed in, or
from another sequencer, and the standard midi sequence file format
is supported.

In addition to the sequencer, there are all kinds of
algorithmic composing tools. PVG (programmable variations generator)
will take an existing sequence and let you generate variations
of it according to an abundant amount of parameters that you
define. This included all kinds of editing options that
will let you split and combine sequences based in the velocities
or pitches or midi assignments of the notes. I've only
touched the tip of the iceberg with PVG.

The other programs I have, Tunesmith and Fingers give me
some really fun ways of interactively generating new
sequences. These programs can be intergrated into
Dr. T's MPE environment which lets load them into RAM
along with KCS so that sequence data can be transferred
all around. I'm not sure is the MPE environment is
supported for the Amiga.

Anyway, I think the bottom line with Dr. T's sequencer
software is that you can take it as far as you want, or
you can keep it simple. I haven't really used any other
sequencer software worth mentioning, so I can't compare
Dr. T's to anything else. For the last three years I
haven't needed anything else. Hope this helps. I'll
be happy to answer any questions via email.

<<lee>>