ared in games or demos.
Except for the fact that it takes a lot of processor time to play
digitized music (especially at a high frequency) and other tasks
of a program running the music will be harder to program, using
digitized sound is very easy. That's why I usually dislike
digital music when used in games; it just consumes a lot of space
and is very easy to program (even yours truly could do it).
But there is, as you could have guessed, an even more advanced
way of playing back sampled sounds. This method is sometimes used
by professional sound programmers and was first tried out by
Jochen of The Exceptions in the "B.I.G. Demo".
This way consists of single samples sounds (e.g. a guitar chord,
a bass drum, a flute note, etc.) and storing them in a much more
compact file. When playing them back, you can perform some
complex calculations that play the instrument sample on different
heights, thus obtaining different notes. When you want to make a
song with just a solo guitar, a bass guitar and a single drum,
for example, you would just have to sample ONE guitar note, ONE
bass guitar note and ONE drum sound.
This saves a LOT of memory space, since now you only need three
sounds instead of much larger segments of a song. And if you want
to use different sounds, you simply sample them, too. The program
will then play them back.
But what if you want a DRUM sound and a GUITAR sound to be
audible simultaneously? All the previous methods only played
'with one voice'. Since the ST has three voices, Jochen found out
that it is possible to play back three voices as well, by using
the individual channels.
Now we're getting somewhere. Not only can we now use digitized
music while consuming a great deal less memory, but we can also
use three channels together (in the "Amiga Demo" - March 1988 -
Jochen even uses FOUR channels by adding an extra one to the
third voice's data). Even advanced sound options (transpose and
portamento) are possible using this technique!
The only disadvantage of using three separate voices and
digitized samples is time: It uses up just about ALL processor
time there is (there's the answer why there are no other tricks
in the "Amiga Demo" digi-sound screen!).
Tommy Software's "Soundmachine ST"
Building upon the concept of THREE voices and single digitized
samples of musical instruments, Tommy Software's Ute Wickenhäuser
and Jürgen Piscol designed a program that would not only allow
efficient playback of this music, but that would also allow the
user to enter the notes themselves - just like on sheet music.
The "Soundmachine ST" was born.
The program is no doubt about the most revolutionary music
program to date on the ST. Ever heard of "Sonix" on the Amiga?
Well, "Soundmachine ST" allows you to do the same (only with
three instead of four voices since the Amiga simply has one
more). The main difference is the processor time used: The Amiga
has a 'digital soundchip' (whatever you want to call it) built
in, so it doesn't take much time to play digitized music. On the
ST, it does. It is quite impossible to do anything else at the
same time, or you'll have to compensate on the sound quality.
"ST Soundmachine" allows you to play samples, and therefore the
whole disk (plus a second one) of the package are filled up with
samples. They use a different format than the 'regular' sampled
sounds that are produced by sample programs - but that needn't be
a problem because conversion is possible.
There are two kinds of samples: First, there are the ONCE
samples; these sound once (e.g. drum sounds) and then fade away.
Next, you have the HOLD samples (e.g. violins) that just continue
to sound until they are no longer wanted.
Each sample can be assigned its own volume value, and each one
of course has its own length.
The user interface
Mainly, there are two screens inside "Soundmachine ST": The
screen on which you put down notes and special commands (more
about those later) and the screen on which you specify sample
volume, shape forms and such.
The whole program is mouse-controlled (very much in a way like
their old "Musix32