| ★ APPLICATIONS ★ CREATION MUSICAL ★ THE MUSIC SYSTEM ★ |
THE MUSIC SYSTEM (Amstrad Action) | THE MUSIC SYSTEM (Popular Computing Weekly) | THE MUSIC SYSTEM (Amstrad Computer User) | THE MUSIC SYSTEM (CPC Amstrad International) |
CURIOUS The Music System for the Commodore 64 by Rainbird Software was an astoundingly sophisticated yet very user friendly package that revealed just how powerful the Sid chip could be. Rainbird have produced a similar package for the Amstrad - not highly regarded for its sound properties. The Music System on the Amstrad is a rather curious affair. Though extremely well designed, visually attractive and flexible it, a) has some curious restrictions and b) is limited by a sound chip that Obviously, that the sound chip isn't capable of much is hardly Rainbird's fault and in a sense it's precisely because so much work has gone into this package and it is so powerful that the sense of ‘marvelous but what's the point' is heightened. The package uses a series of pop down menus and overlays to give you access to everything from basic insertion of notes onto the stave to subtleties of pitch notation, accents, repeats and general control of voice parameters, music files and the like. The music can be entered either by tapping away on the Qwerty keyboard, in real time or actually entering notes on to the on screen score.
It is easy to use and flexible in all but a few respects, but these odd restrictions are most curious. For example, the tempo is not fine tunable -there are only a set number of options, 16 in total. That may be enough for most purposes but why limit it at all? Similar things can be said of the sound parameters. There are only seven envelopes available and apparently only one waveform, although you can mix in white noise and change the attack and decay of the volume (which is what most people call the Envelop in the first place). True many of these restrictions are the result of the hardware but. again, the end results are never better than mediocre. Lest this sounds like a poor review let me be clear. Rainbird have worked wonders with program design and presentation, in that sense the program is excellent, but frankly I don't think the Amstrad's sound facilities merit all the effort. You can argue that the program is an educanonal tool but in those terms I have seen other, cheaper, packages specifically designed for that purpose. which are more suitable. PCW |
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