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

[ludditetech@mac.com (Simon Williams)]

In case anyone is burning with curiosity, here's a sample of how the
thing sounds at this point. It's streaming mp3 in flash, so you'll
need flash installed on your browser (obviously). Streaming so there's
no long wait... just a couple seconds, even on my crappy dial-up.

http://www.luddite.ca/APPLE2/testing.html

For anyone who missed out on this fascinating thread, the short story
is that I've been trying to write some sample sequencing/drum-machine
software based on Michael Mahon's DAC.522... the idea was to come up
with something that would run on any 64K Apple II and would at least
attempt to sound polyphonic (for the drum loops anyway, the instrument
sequencing is monophonic with a one-and-a-half-octave range).
One thing I should make clear is that the 'tune' you will hear is
actually five or six layered tracks... each instrument or drum kit is
a seperate instance of the sequencer. Also this sample was played on a
GS simply because the headphone jack was a convenient line out -- the
program sounds very much the same on a IIe with an Echo II installed,
though running it straight through the Apple's built-in speaker yields
slightly less than optimal results.
Any way, don't get your hopes up too high -- remember it's a program
written by a novice programmer with limited musical knowledge, running
on a twenty-year-old computer... hmm, what could be better???

Comments welcome at:
REMOVE_THIS_BITemail@luddite.ca
(be gentle)

PS. There are still a few bugs to be ironed out, but I'll eventually
make this little gem (the program that is) available one way or
another...

Simon