Re: The Great Apple II Drum Machine Project...

[Simon Williams <DON'Temail@luddite.ca>]

On 03 Dec 2002 06:26:07 GMT obsbedia2@aol.com (Obsbedia2) wrote:

> 
> While I could see the flash pic, I didn't enjoy any audio.

Do you mean there was no audio... or it was there but you just didn't
enjoy it? I'm no flash whiz, so I'm afraid I can't offer any help other
than to say: make sure the volume is up on your computer ;-)

> Is this similiar to "back track" by Tom Hall and Bryan Vekoius?  Published in
> 1988 by SoftDisk, it allows 64 sounds to be included in a beat, 9 saved beats,
> and 9 selectable sounds:
> BassD		LowTom	Claps
> Snare		HiHat		Rimshot
> HiTom		Cymbl		CBell
> 
> 	Any similarities?

Probably many, though I'm not familiar with that program. In TIMELORD
a beat can consist of up to 32 sounds, but beats can be strung together
to form arrangements of up to... I forget actually, but it would be a 
few thousand at least... there are 16 selectable sounds which represent
combinations of 5 distinct drum sounds in three 'channels'... channel 1
is the Bass Drum, channel 2 is the HiHat or equivalent and channel 3 is
one of three sounds (Snare, Hi Tom and Low Tom). This gives the program
a glimmer of polyphony, though it does rather limit the available
sounds... my main concern was that the HiHats didn't have to drop out to
make room for the Bass Drum. There are 6 'drum sets' and six sets of 
bass synth samples (1-1/2 octave range), though anyone with some sound
files on disk and too much time on their hands could easily make their
own sample banks.
Since it uses Michael Mahon's 5-bit DAC as the audio engine, the sounds
are of course a bit lo-fi (although all things considered, quite 
dynamic compared to the noises that usually come out of an Apple II).
While it will never be a serious threat to midi, I am planning to
include the ability to synchronize with another Apple II via the game port, which will be really cool (eventually).
At this point it is quite usable, though the composing interface leaves
much to be desired. If anyone is really curious to try it out, I'll be
quite willing to trade for any other noisy software... or you could just
send me a blank diskette... sorry, don't have any way to get files from
my A2 to the net, so there won't be any way to download an image for a 
while. Email me.

Is anyone else working on anything Apple II and musical? I'd heard a
rumor some time back that a new version of DAC.522 was coming that 
supported seamless looping... anyone hear anything about that? ;-)

-SW