| ★ APPLICATIONS ★ CREATION MUSICAL ★ MICRO - MUSIC CREATOR ★ |
MICRO-MUSIC CREATOR (Amstrad Action) | MICRO-MUSIC CREATOR (Amstrad Computer User) |
Now you can be in harmony with your CPC - Pat McDonald takes centre stage and conducts a review First Byte Software is one of those low key, low budget operations that occasionally advertise in the A/1 Small Ads. That sort of pedigree isn't widely regarded as a hallmark of brilliance, so the question is: does this product have anything going for it? Micro Music claims to let you compose your own pieces using up to three voices. All well and good - other programs have similar claims. But this one is special, in that you can play back your tune under interrupt, that is as a background task while you type in listings, write letters or whatever. That's not all, because a sound sampler or digitizer is included too. That's hardware and/or (as in this case) some software that can pick sounds up from a tape played into the computer, analyse it and then reproduce it at a later date. The sound can be changed around, speeded up or slowed down and even played backwards. Theory the for much so (think about it!). In practice The tape/disk/ROM has a colour label, rather than a handwritten scrawl. Documentation for the product - an A4 manual - is good, though it's a pity it's photocopied rather than printed. An amendment sheet is included as well - tut tut! You are presented with a menu of options featuring the above two functions, a sampled demonstration, a 'free' game and a help program. Selection is by number, and your Amstrad mumbles, shouts, squeaks, grunts or says that number when you press it. Using the Compozer (why spell wrong?) is easy. I tried the usual test of attempting to use it without reading the manual, and it was a piece of cake compared xo some of the other music programs around - a big achievement given its complexity. Graphically you are presented with a central stave area, and a status line above and below. The top one reads: channel (A to C). Tenpo {value from 2-100). Octave, Lowest (note), Piano (which envelope selected), Repeat (On/Off): and Page (no.). The lowest window keeps track of the number of notes used in each channel - up to 500 in each - and mdicates each note's channel and envelope value. The musical stave is full height, so music can be transcribed across four octaves. Note values range from demisemiquaver to semibreve, which should cope with most musical pieces. Dah dah dah DUMM Putting music into the system is easy. The cursor can be moved to any part of the stave, and you use it to decide on the pitch of a note. Numerical keys 1-6 dictate the duration of the note. The channel in which the notes is played can be changed either by using the numerical keypad or through a pull-down-menu. Micro Music automatically scrolls when you reach the edge, and a faint shadow line is drawn to indicate overlapping pages. All bar lines have to be put in manually, but that will probably come in useful for irregular time signatures Envelopes can be edited and swapped around within a subprogram of the Compozer. This section is not well documented -understandable given the pages devoted to the subject in every CPC user manual. For someone who's virtually tone-deaf, like me (Til second that - ed). the program is informative. Certainly it can be used for ad-hoc education on the subject. 1 doubt if it will prove as popular as Rainbird's Advanced Music System, which can print pages out and has more features in general but then again, that program doesn't have a sound sampler.
Singing CPC The ROM version has a small idiosyncrasy when the machine starts up, a sample of a manic laugh plays. An original start to anyone's working day... The onscreen design is up to the same high standard of the rest of the page. The top part has two menus: when a sample is recorded, it is displayed in the middle/lower section as a series of vertical lines, apparently drawn at random. After messing about with the package for a while, it dawned that the start and end points of a sample were fairly easy to work out from this. Using the package is so simple I'm only giving it one paragraph. First, you record a sound onto a tape. Then you select the Record option, and play the tape. Your CPC reads the sound into memory. After that you can edit where the sound begins and ends, change its speed and even play it backwards The playback option can be used to check it's all going well. Sample standard is a bit hit and miss, and you'll need to experiment with sound level to get the clearest results. Permanently storing the sample on tape or disk is a cinch. So what can you do with these weird and wonderful sounds? The manual explains how to play them from within your own programs. and your next version of Pac Man will knock spots off the competition - you can really hear the munching and gobbling noises... As an example, the 'free' game, Empty Tummy, is a really worthwhile little maze game, made special by the samples. Similarly, including musical compositions to play within a game (under interrupt!) is also well detailed in the manual. That makes Micro Music attractive to programmers - it's the one feature the competition, including A MS, lacks. For professional music composition, however. I'd still recommend the Rainbird package. Most, of the Amstrad owning population should go for Micro Music Creator. It's user-friendly, fast, has a large note capacity and the ability to sample. But above all it's a damn sight easier (and more fun!) to use. AA |
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