Music on me 1200

[bazza1975]

Hi Folks,

I want to get into making some tunes on my amiga1200. Is it as good as the 500 for this purpose? I seen a midi interface for sale, it was for the 500, would this work on the 1200? I also seen a techno sound sampler, and a sequencer one, would they work on it? Next step is to get a midi keyboard... right? Anybody have some ideas for me?
If the 500 would be beter for making music i still have a 500 kicking around, although its a UK model, would this work in Holland?

cheers Baz

[golem]

Hi Baz
MIDI interfaces for the 500 work on the 1200. Personally I wouldn't recommend a sampler for the Amiga as the results from recording your own samples in 8 bit (all an unexpanded Amiga is capable of) can be crunchy at best. Sequencer One is a good MIDI sequencer for a beginner but you would need a MIDI keyboard and sound source (not just a MIDI controller) to take advantage of it. If you want to mix Amiga samples and MIDI then OctaMED is the next logical step and is used and abused by many people on this forum. for purely MIDI stuff then the two most popular (with good reason) are Bars & Pipes and Music X. Bars & Pipes seems more popular mainly because it is still developed by Alfred Faust and you can get it for free - yes, for free - from his website.

[niklasni1]

Your A1200 is fine for this.

You don't need a MIDI keyboard. You do need a sound source, though, which can either be a sound module connected via MIDI (meaning you'd need an interface) or you can use samples on the Amiga directly in a tracker like OctaMED.

[SamOS39]

Where would i be without my A1200!  :-D
I use it for sampling, minimalist electronica, sequencing my yamaha A3000 rack sampler .. EVERYTHING .. and i use OctaMED, its the best and dont let anyone tell you otherwise :lol:

The midi interface for a500 should work fine .. i think  :roll:

btw hi golem! i like your display pic! It may interest you that i am developing a music tracker for the acorn BBC 32k ..  :-)

[bazza1975]

Thanks for the very useful replies...


So is OctaMED a music studio sort of program?
I watched some notator films on youtube, this was for the atari st. Is it similar stuff for the amiga?
Bars & Pipes easy to use?
Will any amiga midi interface work, and what kind of music formats will be recognised, for example .wav files?
Is it a much more difficult doing this instead of using a normal modern pc?
sorry if im asking to many questions

[SamOS39]

OctaMED has a notation editor as well as a tracker but personally i dont use this function ..

I really think OctaMED sound studio is what you r looking for though! Its got brilliant sample editing features, you can import and export mod and midi files, you can import 16bit stereo .wav samples, record samples and like all octaMED versions it has a great midi configuration editor thingy ..:idea:

[golem]

You don't need a MIDI interface to use OctaMED on the Amiga. I think Sam is right and as a first step you should try this tracker.
http://www.medsoundstudio.com/
There is no doubt that making music that sounds awesome is probably easier on a PC but then it wouldn't be so much fun which is why we do it I guess.  :-)

[bazza1975]

Ok some very useful info there thanks again!!!!!!
Is it easy to connect a cdrom player to a 1200?
How do i get samples/songs from the pc onto the amiga?

cheers Baz

[SamuraiCrow]

You can output .WAV files with OctaMED Soundstudio and use .WAV samples as instruments as well.  The added processing power of the A1200 will help a lot as will any added memory you put into it.

Modern PC music usually uses VSTi instruments that are expensive on editors like Renoise.  Sample-based music is cheaper and doesn't sound much worse.  If you already have a PC, you can use MilkyTracker to get similar sample-based results for free without needing a MIDI synthesizer.

One thing that is better on the PC than on the A1200 is that sound cards typically produce 16-bit CD-quality sound.  The most that an A1200 can play back without a sound card of some sort is 14-bits.  (Although it can produce 16 bits in software as a .WAV so you can burn it to a CD for better playback in OctaMED Soundstudio 1.03c .)

[bazza1975]

I can get my hands on octamed v1.1, will this be any good, seeing i heard people talk about v1.3 on here...?

[TheGoose]

Hi,

That will be workable, 1.1 . But I'm not sure if 1.1 was able to load samples into fast ram?

But it did have basic MIDI capabilities I believe.

[bazza1975]

If it cant load samples into the fast ram,, is that a problem?

[bloodline]

bazza1975 wrote:
If it cant load samples into the fast ram,, is that a problem?

No.

[spihunter]

    bazza1975 wrote:     If it cant load samples into the fast ram,, is that a problem?    No.

It isnt a problem until you want to larger samples. If your writing chip tunes or something that uses small samples then you would be fine.

I think all version of Soundstudio could load samples into fastram anyway.

I think V6 was the last one that couldnt.

[bazza1975]

Ok thanks, will buy it then :-)