Peggy Herrington on Music & Sound

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This article was taken from Peggy Herrington's site at: http://www.pegboard.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=7

Peggy Herrington on Music & Sound
.info Magazine, Contributing Editor, Nov. 1999

The inimitable Benn Dunnington, publisher, came into my professional life in 1984 at CES in Chicago. A rebel at heart, Benn was nonetheless good to his staff and, as a contributing editor, I wrote for him for years through two iterations of his magazine, from Info-64 to .info--when, like most of the industry, he moved from the Commodore 64/128 to the Amiga. This story ran in one of .info's final issues...



Peggy Herrington on
Music & Sound

This issue, Peggy examines the trials and tribulations in putting together a little multimedia background music

Amiga SMUSic is a mess, and the world is about to hear about it. With the current move toward multimedia production, more people are going to get into Amiga-produced music as a background task, particularly internally-generated music. And a lot of them are going to be terribly surprised.

Serious musicians laugh at Amiga-generated music, and with good reason. The music the machine is capable of playing straight out of the box may be great for hobbyists but it's a joke to professionals—particularly those robotic-rhythmed scores that most note-editing programs produce. But the real problem with Amiga-generated music lies in the 8-bit sound resolution that is inherent in 8SVX instruments. (It's not called eight-SVX for nothin', you know.) 8-bit resolution simply does not permit the creation and retention of enough data for quality musical instrument sounds. And there are other annoying problem with 8SVX (and SMUS) as well. It's sad but true that anyone who is truly serious about making music with a computer turns to MIDI.

One Man's Story

Picture, if you will, a successful travel agent who wants to make a multimedia presentation using video footage and stills he's shot on the photographic safaris in which he specializes. Being the confident type, he reads a couple of magazines, talks to the salesmen, and finally decides to get an Amiga. And before long, because he has some talent and a goal, our safari specialist is up to his armpits in animated alligators.

Before long, because he has some talent and a goal, our safari specialist is up to his armpits in animated alligators.

Actually, he's quite happy with his hard-earned 15-minute presentation, but despite the sound effects, the dazzling screen wipes, his nice video section, and those colorful crocs, he still feels it's missing something. Wait! It says right here that AmigaVision (or whatever authoring system he has) can play background music. So, having growled through piano lessons as a kid, he reads up again and goes out and buys Deluxe Music Construction Set (DMCS) and the simplified sheet music for "Baby Elephant walk."

Many hours and mouse moves later, our travel agent has almost two whole minutes of potential background music. Unfortunately, even to his tired ear it sounds alarmingly like a bunch of croaking bullfrogs. Figuring he must be doing something wrong, he calls the computer store and they tell him that the local users group has better-sounding instruments. So he tracks down the user group librarian, from whom he gets not only new instruments but some tips on using Deluxe Music's play-styles, a technique that applies envelopes to 8SVX sounds which can indeed make a wonderful difference in DMCS music. Sure enough, a few DMCS sessions later, his wife can actually tell what his song is supposed to be. She also remarks that it sounds like a bunch of bullfrogs playing wax-paper-covered combs, and while he admits to a certain adenoidal militant quality, it isn't that bad.

And that, of course, is when the fun starts. AmigaVision refuses to read the score. He copies it here and copies the instruments there, rearranging them in and out of drawers, but it still won't peep. So our man—who can practically spout the video instructions in AmigaVision's manual like some artsy whale—finally gets around to looking in its cryptic (to him) little section on music. Vaguely recalling something from their earlier conversation, he phones the user group librarian. "What did you say S-M-U-S is?" he asks. After sitting politely through 30 minutes of jargon about standards which, by now, our erstwhile travel agent doesn't even want to understand, he finally gets the gist of it. He boots Deluxe Music for the umpteenth time and reloads his score, saving it to disk again as the librarian instructed—not with SAVE but by selecting one of the last items on the first pull-down menu: The mysterious SMUS format.

And what do you know?! AmigaVision doesn't choke. Shouting excitedly at his wife he flings back his chair and scrambles to his feet. By the time the disk drive light goes out he's practically quivering with anticipation. This is a major victory!

And then, as the music starts, he hears those damned frogs again. "What happened to the wax-paper combs?" the wife asks, thereby throwing him to the alligators. "That was better than croaks. And why are they singing so high?" Thankfully, she wanders back to her TV show and the music stops far short of the end of the presentation. It's all he can do to stand there quietly, a saying he suddenly recalled echoing off the wall of his mind: "SILENCE IS GOLDEN... Silence Is Golden... silence..."
   
"What happened to the wax-paper combs?" the wife asks, thereby throwing him to the alligators.



SMUSic Problems

This isn't a joke, and if you think I'm making it up then you haven't tried it. I was equipped with a degree in music, years of digital experience, and extensive industry contacts when I first encountered these problems. I finally found solutions to most of them, but lots of people are going to rediscover them now, thanks to authoring programs like AmigaVision, CanDo (which, contrary to what the box says, won't play background music) and ShowMaker. Some of which problems are:

    * Authoring programs won't play DMCS scores. You must use a composition program to enter music (i.e. DMCS, Sonix, etc.) and then save it in SMUS format for background music purposes.
    * SMUS does not accommodate DMCS play-styles. Don't use them if you're going to save a score in SMUS, else your wax-paper combs may turn back into frogs.
    * Some instruments sound an octave off in pitch (higher or lower) when played by a different music program. I've heard conflicting explanations for this and it's always somebody else's fault. I finally gave up asking why.
    * Although the Amiga does audio in two-channel stereo, instruments cannot be directed left or right. Play it in mono with a good amplifier and speakers.
    * All contemporary music is copyrighted. Unless you have a license from ASCAP/BMI, you're legally limited to using tunes written before circa 1900, hence the popularity of classical music.

SMUSic Solutions
Synthia II from The Other Guys

The only commercial developer I know addressing these problems are The Other Guys, and they're doing it through public domain distribution. In fact, a viable alternative to entering a songs by hand with a composition program can be found that way, too—namely music files on electronic bulletin boards and commercial networks. While most of the hundreds of scores there are in DMCS or Sonix format, if you own that music program you can easily transfer the file to SMUS, perhaps tweaking it in the process, saving yourself hours of tedium. Loads of new 8SVX instruments are online as well.

Along with a demonstration version of their splendid new Synthia II instrument-making and editing software, The Other Guys have released a program that plays SMUS files plus a collection of CLI-based utility programs with instructions for adjusting SMUS scores. Available from networks and boards, they include utilities for:

    * Playing SMUS scores from Workbench or a CLI
    * Showing what instruments are used in a SMUS score
    * Changing instruments in a SMUS score without using a composition program
    * Deleting from a SMUS file any instrument that is not actually played
    * Showing the range (highest/lowest pitches) an instrument is set to play
    * Transposing an instrument into a different range, up or down

A possibility for improved Amiga-generated music instruments lies in a format called Audio IFF (which is already in use on the IBM/PC and Macintosh) which Commodore is considering blessing. The aforementioned SMUS playing program by The Other Guys plays these AIFF instruments on the Amiga, and comes with a number of them, plus scores for your listening enjoyment. They're much improved over 8SVX instruments. The Other Guys will soon release a jukebox player and a transparent background SMUSic player for commercial product development as well.

D.S. Al Fine

The impact music has on a multimedia production is greatly undervalued, and it is well worth the trouble getting some into yours. If you're planning on working with background music, I highly recommend The Other Guys' SMUS utilities and player. If you can't get them online or from the Fred Fish collection, contact The Other Guys directly at the address or phone number at the right. They'll provide you with a copy of the disk for $5, which includes shipping.