An adventure into old music software/technology

[oldschoolgoa]

Recently i found this.

i was bored so went on discovering how they used to make music back in the days.

I seen in the 'how to make techno music in 1994' video that they had this small computer and i read in some magazines that the Atari ST played a big role in the 90s because it was one of the best midi sequencing machines you could find.

the atari ST is praised for flawless midi and i believe it is.

altho its probably very slow compared to our computers its like going back to stoneage of technology. i own a commodore 64 and thing has some lag browsing from one page to another due to low ram / memory i think..

 

yep i know its funny watching this now but thats how it was back in the days

 

the adverts were cheesy and straight in your face. omg... did we really live all this? lol i still remember sega selling the mega drive genesis making fun of the nintendon't lol

funny is nintendo is still up and sega... major flop . :| had lots of potential but they fucked up big time.

anyways back on topic :

i just googled atari st and you can see first topics coming up:

-

The Atari STe – Still The World's Tightest Music Computer? – Synthtopia Atari-MIDI Software - Tims Atari MIDI World

 

well that pretty much says it.

Well check it if you want. Many old producers will tell you it's really tight machine.

Ok . Now to the next part and interesting part :

- You can use an emulator of Atari ST get yourself a 'rom' of old cubase and run it in a modern machine .

I gave it a try thought it would be cool to actually get my old Roland hardware working with this for old nostalgia sake lol

 

So i got the emulator which is called Steem got floppy copies of old cubase but then things got complicated i have no idea how to work with the OS and damn it seems older than me but its not ... jeez i really feel old .

Shows you how much technology has evolved in a short space of 10-20 years , not to mention Internet kicked in which radically changed everything in our lives..

 

Here's the video that i found and got me curious...

 

 

You can give it a try if you have the patience for it... well i got to the point of grabbing the emulator and some shit old cubase copy . Ran the emulator then you have to get through all these options and the emulation felt heavy and sluggish.

Not due to the computer , mine is outdated but its a dual core , way above average to run this sort of thing... But i quit.

Think its so much easier to open FL Studio which i still have an old version ... because you know they are always changing shit , ive checked latest version and uninstalled right after. how can these people cope with so much intensive change? i dont get it. why are they always changing stuff have they nothing better to do??

yea it pisses me off its crap.

One person said in this forum yesterday that fans change ... yea musicians change but this constant software change feels like its saying : ' oh you are too old for this now , this is not for you anymore.' i mean seriously??? fuck offfffff

 

ok so basically happens new FL removed most of old features , sequencer and all i mean , what da fuck?? its not even fruity loops anymore and the sequencer is taking me ages just to get a simple loops on playlist because the 'blocks' pattern playlist was removed.

yeah. thanks. NOT.

So i still use FL Studio 10 believe it or not . Not even worth buying it because of the constant upgrade factor, Of course many people can tell me off like oh but its lifetime free once you buy it and its cheap .

True it is but thats not what bothers me. What bothers me is the fact the frikking programmers couldnt find anything better to do than just mess and add more shit and more and more to something that never needed it.

It was fast and intuitive they even made adverts about it how fast it is from your brain to speakers... now?? i just rather flush it down the toilet . Not gonna even support this sort of thing no way.

I wonder now if they are going FL Studio 13 maybe Jason Vorhees will join Nightmare in Elm street and some horror or Image-Line (company that owns 'FL Studio' stupid name)... da fuck knows . its funny.

 

So next also read here and i know other goa artists used amiga so i tried the same .

Got amiga emulator WinUAE and 3 roms of the floppy disk of Music-X

read recently on youtube prince used this too but da fuq knows its true or not... you know rumours...

guy died recently so maybe thats cause of the hype.. just plain stupid an artist dies and all them labels go and try and cash in... now that's fucking SAD...a guy has to die to fucking sell records... ah well

 

So next here's Music-X of the Amiga :

 

 

never had amiga , i guess this is like windows or something ...

loading is so fucking slow... real pain ... makes me wonder how in the hell did we work with such slow machines ?? fuckkkkkk... so damn slow and heavy again... like me most of the times .

 

after the loading then you get this menu (got this from google the menu is blank)

 

 

in the emulator i was like ... 'ok so now how to save load etc..?'

its a real pain. i couldn't be bothered. So many files are needed so I just quit.

Of course if you have the real thing its easy you use floppy disks... way easier than this but maybe one day ill find a real amiga but sure... there's no need your pc does it all and floppy disks ... if new kids know da fuck is a floppy disk lol

 

So in conclusion for now:

its 2016... and man ARE WE SPOILT!!

Technology is far easier to use and so fast... you can cram so many synths in your computer its so crazy... take the machine you have now back in the 90s are you are a GOD ... if such thing was possible... really.

The idea of having an entire studio in one pc its a miracle really. Think before in 90s how so expensive , bulky and that jungle of cables you had to get through to get a 'simple' song that we think today is so easy but it wasn't. Things changed drastically and really mean it.

I still happen to few hardware and it still has its advantages. But pc software wise things were so primitive.

Now imagine making a goa song on this... man i would have to sacrifice so much time to learn this.. maybe one day ill gather enough patience around to learn this but i'd still prefer to own the original machine... but still ... the menu transitions are slow and takes a while for the computer to draw the stuff.. slight delay which i dont like..

 

well worse than this is trackers... all a bunch of codes... i admire them tracker musicians/programmers learning all this...

 

there's a lot i could say really...

also shidapu used tracker fast tracker it was . today you can grab the so popular power of celtic and play the music project straight out from pc... sound is nice and crunchy.

for the music producing nerds : the sound was aliased not filtered so thats what was unique in tracker music. modern software automatically anti-alias any sample played which is what causes the aliasing.

anyways

heres the program which was impulse tracker back in the days and try it if you will for curiosity or fun if you might

 

http://schismtracker.org/

 

 

thats all for now in this 1st part of old music adventures old technology

(man what a pain)... we really are spoilt today believe me... software is so quick... altho i still dont know shit about cubase... even today.

[recursion loop]

Thanks, man! I was really curious what the oldschool guys were using and how did they put it all together before the DAW/VST era.

 

I remember a friend of mine gave me a floppy with an app called Fasttracker and a bunch of samples all of which sounded like they vere recored inside someone's asshole. I've made a bunch of 2-minute long tracks with it, but I wasn't into electronic music back then so I gave it up quickly. Also there was Rebirth. I had no idea what all these knobs are supposed to do and why they have such funny names like "cutoff" or "decay" but I did have some fun with it.