Re: Need IIe, IIgs MIDI software

[Mitchell Spector <mitch2gs@hotmail.com>]

Mitch Monger <m@m.com> wrote:

>In general, the Apple II community doesn't seem as 
>fired up about making music as the Commodore folks are. 

    I'd certainly agree. Not just about music (which, as an Apple II user,
has always been a *huge* interest to me--from my II Plus to IIGS) but just
about writing any sort of software at all. When the mainstream companies 
and programmers abandoned the Apple IIgs in the beginning of the 90's, 
there was, for a brief time, a resurgence of interest in doing everything 
possible to push the machine to its limits in graphics, animation and music.
Some of the best things came out between 1992 and 1995. Then it all 
just seemed to stop...cold.

    The past decade there's been really nothing happening, which is
disappointing when you consider there's been programming revivals     
with many of the other now "dead" platforms (i.e. C64, Atari ST,
Atari, Amiga, even old game consoles).

>The amount of energy going into working with the SID 
>chip is staggering. But what about the SID's grandson, 
>the Ensoniq ES 5503 which is in the IIgs? Something 
>tells me that it has potential which is far from being 
>tapped.

    Definitely untapped. There's always been huge potential in the
Ensoniq 5503 DOC, just very few people have figured out how to 
use it to its fullest. The problem is just when things started to get 
interesting for the machine (in terms of this new golden age of 
programming) everyone just suddenly abandoned the machine.

    Certain games like Zany Golf and The Immortal showed how 
unique and ear-filling the chip was in the late 80's. I always
thought MIDIsynth (i.e. synthLAB in System 6) took the Ensoniq
to new levels, but apart from some demo songs Apple produced
(e.g. Midsummer.seq, Demo.seq, Capri.seq) a lot of the music
people composed for it was generic sounding. Very few people
every designed banks patches for it either--in fact I got tired of 
waiting and put together one or two to get a decent sounding
piano and percussion.

    There weren't too many really talented music composer around 
the Apple IIgs scene either. There was the FTA, James Brooks, 
Gene Koh, and late in the game, Dreamer (Ninjaforce). I may be
forgetting someone but that gives you an idea compared with the
number of musicians on the Amiga or C64 side.

>I'd very much like to build a MIDIbox SID:
>
>http://www.ucapps.de/midibox_sid.html

    That makes two of us, I have six C64's sitting around and only
two work (I know the SID's inside are fine though). :) 

>The mp3s I've downloaded from that page are superb. The 
>mp3s I've heard so far of IIgs music are wonderful, but 
>of a lesser sonic quality. But isn't the Ensoniq ES 
>5503 a superior chip? It was designed by Bob Yannes, 
>who had previously created the SID 6581. One would 
>assume that he was taking a step forward and not back.

    The Ensoniq DOC is superior, by far. It can do everything the
SID can do (potentially, with programming) and much more. 
It has unlimited waveform capability and 32 oscillators.

    A good example is some programming done by Jimmy Huey. In
his commercial port of California Games for the IIGS he perfectly
mimicked the SID chip for music and sound effects (maybe with a
bit of reverb thrown in), and his ProDOS ALF Player turns the 
Ensoniq into an AY-8910 (used by the Mockingboard sound card).

If you want to have a listen how flexible the Ensoniq is:
http://www.virtualapple.com/californiagamesgsdisk.html

>Maybe people just look at the Ensoniq synths which were 
>based on the 5503 and throw up their hands and think 
>"why bother, it's already been done." I'm not so sure 
>about that. The sounds coming out of todays SIDs are 
>comparable to what came out of the Ensoniqs synths. How 
>far could the 5503s go?

    I suppose one reason is the 5503 was mainly geared for wavetable
synthesis (much like now forgotten PC sound cards like the Gravis 
Ultrasound or SoundBlaster AWE32), and secondly, because few
people even realize the Apple IIgs existed. Mention the "IIgs" and
most people think you're talking about something from the Macintosh II
line or a faster version of the Apple IIe they used in school. Or worse,
most people just never heard of it at all.

    Take the website Overclocked Remix (http://www.ocremix.org).
How many music remixes were done for the Apple II or IIgs? Unfortunately
the answer is: Zero. There were so many great pieces of music composed
in Apple IIgs games though no one knows of them. The musical scores from
Thexder or Tass Times in Tone Town on the IIgs are just screaming to have 
a techno remix done, or the music Alien Mind turned into a soft piano piece.
Or Zany Golf and The Immortal, they're worthy of a live orchestration remix
(they've already done that for several Super Nintendo games actually, which
is another cousin of the IIgs). :)

Mitchell Spector