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1989-11-17
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CLASSIX2... by Rob Baxter
With this new collection of Baroque music, specially
arranged for the Amiga, I have set out to improve on what I
had achieved with my previous disk (Classix1, also available
from 17 Bit Software), both in terms of musical
interpretation and, possibly more importantly, sound
synthesis. The instrumental sounds on this disk are all new
and unique to this collection and were created exclusively
using the remarkable SYNTHIA (about which, more later!).
There are no digitised sounds used at all - I don't even
own a digitizer!
Once again, the music of the 17th and 18th centuries
is given the Synthia treatment. I hope you find the
naturally bright sonorities of the music from this period as
pleasing as I do. It is certainly well suited to the
computer music medium and I have chosen some of the more
popular examples of Baroque music to demonstrate this to you.
ABOUT THE MUSIC:
ARRIVAL OF THE QUEEN OF SHEBA is the popular name
given to the Sinfonia to Act 3 of HANDEL's oratorio Solomon
which was first performed in London in 1749, and it is the
opening track on this disk. The main melody is carried by
two Oboes over a characteristic figure of broken chords
played by the Strings. The oboes periodically step forward
to play unacompanied duets and I have suplemented the
conventional oboe sound with two distinct and purely
synthetic tonal variants.
J. S. BACH wrote four Orchestral Suites of
Movements, from which three extracts are presented on this
disk. The first file comprises the charming and lively
BADINERIE from Suite no. 2 in B Minor, and the lovely AIR
from Suite no. 3 in D Major. Badinerie (or "Frolic") is a
term used by 18th Century composers for a quick, frivolous
movement in duple time. The piece on this disk is a good
example, it was originally scored for flute and strings
with harpsichord continuo. The AIR which follows was made
famous with the arrangement by August Wilhelmj, in which
the first violin part is transposed down so as to be
playable as a solo on the lowest string of the instrument,
hence the name "Air on the G String". The version presented
here is the original and is performed throughout in multiple
string voices (more or less...!).
The ALLEGRO DECISO is probably the best known "bit"
from HANDEL'S WATER MUSIC. The "Water Music" is a suite of
some twenty pieces which were composed by Handel around
1715 for a royal barge procession on the Thames. The
orchestra would have been ferried along on its own barge and
Handel arranged this suite for the brighter instruments of
the orchestra, brass and strings predominating, so that the
music would carry well in the open air. King George I must
have apreciated the effect, as "...he caus'd it to be plaid
over three times in going and returning..."!
The GAVOTTE is the final example on this disk from
BACH's orchestral suites and is taken from the Suite no. 3
in D Major. A Gavotte is a French dance in fairly quick 4/4
time but Bach lends an almost symphonic feel to the style
which transcends the mere notion of a courtly dance! Here,
brass, strings and timpani create an almost heraldic motif
while softer, more lyrical interludes evoke the more
traditional image of the formal dance.
BACH's BRANDENBURG CONCERTOS can be considered to
be poised on the dividing line between chamber and
orchestral music. They represent the peak of the Baroque
concerto form in the 18th century, the brilliance of
interplay between soloist and tutti (full orchestra) has
rarely been approached before or since. The Concerto no. 5
presented on this disk can truly be said to be the first
real keyboard concerto. Prior to this work, the harpsichord
was deemed unsuitable as a solo instrument in an orchestral
setting as it lacked the volume and penetration essential
for a soloing instrument - in other words, it simply
couldn't "sing out" above the rest of the orchestra and was
hitherto confined to mere continuo (accompaniment) roles.
Bach's brilliant scoring changed all that! In the tutti
sections, the harpsichord merely fulfills its traditional
continuo function, but in the solo passages it shares space
with just a single violin and single flute and is allowed
to become a real melodic force. In the final third of the
First Movement, the harpsichord takes over completely and
performs a brilliant extended solo before the full
orchestra returns to close the movement.
The final work on this disk is PACHELBEL's CANON
AND GIGUE. The Canon is very well known indeed, but it's
accompanying gigue (jig) is not so familiar. A Canon is a
polyphonic composition in which the introductory part is
imitated by one or more other parts. Pachelbel's famous
Canon is a supreme example of the genre as you will hear.
The Gigue is really very short, just two repeating 10 bar
sections, but it uses its time wisely and accomplishes
quite a lot in such a short space of time.
-------------
ABOUT SYNTHIA:
In simple terms, the Amiga generates its high
quality audio by "playing" wavetables through a Digital to
Analogue Convertor (DAC) within the Paula custom chip. A
wavetable is simply a numerical representation of an audio
event and comprises a series of discrete "samples" of the
sound over time. The most commonly used method of getting
interesting sounds into the Amiga is via a hardware sampler
or "digitiser", together with one of the several excellent
sample editing packages on the market. However, this
requires you to have access to the interesting sound in the
first place, be it on record etc., or made by a "live"
musical instrument or human/animal voice! Both sources imply
of course that the actual process of sound creation occurs
OUTSIDE the Amiga!
Direct synthesis of sounds actually on board the
Amiga is a very attractive alternative to the above but for
some reason there are very few packages which permit you to
do this. One, of course, is the "Analog Synth" section of
SONIX which is quite versatile and easy to use. It is
somewhat restricted in its capabilities though. For serious
synthesis, SYNTHIA represents the state of the art for the
Amiga. SYNTHIA is a suite of five programs, each one
representing a different method of synthesis. There are
three general purpose synthesisers: SUBTRACTIVE, ADDITIVE
and INTERPOLATION and two specialised synthesisers: PLUCKED
STRING and PERCUSSION.
SUBTRACTIVE uses the method commonly found on the older
analog synths like the Moog, in which a harmonically rich
waveform is processed by a variety of filters to produce the
desired sound. Amplitude and frequency modulation can then
be added to enhance the sound.
ADDITIVE lets you build up a sound harmonic by harmonic and
allows you to control the intensity of these individual
harmonics over time in order to create some remarkably
complex and realistic instrumental sounds.
INTERPOLATION is a unique method of synthesis which can
produce some remarkable dynamic effects just by smoothly
changing the shape of one waveform into another. With care,
some startling sounds can be created with no additional
processing. For instance, in the first track on this disk
"Arrival of the Queen of Sheba", there is an oboe-like sound
in the second solo which sounds like it is being wildly
filter-swept! In fact, this sound was created in
INTERPOLATION with no filtering used at all!
PLUCKED STRING is a specialised module devoted to the
creation of such sounds as guitars, string basses,
pizzicatto violins and so on, in fact, any instrument which
has to be plucked! In essence it is similar to SUBTRACTIVE
in operation but it employs special algorithms to impart a
highly realistic "pluck" to the attack of the sound.
PERCUSSION as its name implies is for producing all manner
of drum and allied effects. It can also be used as a highly
versatile "special effects" generator for all those wierd
"synth-like" effects (that's the only way I can describe
them!).
In addition, each module shares a number of common
tools and special effects such as filtering, flanging,
reverb and so on. Each module also incorporates a device
known as a NON-LINEAR WAVESHAPER which can serve a number
of functions. It can be used simply for creating some
interesting distortion effects, like "fuzz" on an electric
guitar for instance. Or, it can be used by the more
adventurous musician as a sixth, completely independant
method of sound synthesis in its own right.
All of SYNTHIA's modules output their files in
standard IFF 8SVX format which means they can be used in
just about all the popular score editors available, SONIX,
Deluxe Music and so on. In addition, any digitized sound in
this format may be loaded into SYNTHIA for further
modification, perhaps a touch of flanging or filtering for
instance!
For the creation of the sounds used on this disk
however, SYNTHIA was not the end of the story. Once
synthesised, each sound was saved, then further processed in
SONIX to give variations in loudness (for dynamics), vibrato
and articulation in order to maximise the expressiveness of
the music. Therefore, you will find that there are several
versions of any given sound on this disk.
Feel free to use any of the sounds on the disk for
use in your own SONIX creations!
Above all, enjoy the music! I hope you are able to
listen to it through your stereo, that's what Amiga music is
all about. I'm sorry about the lack of graphics to look at,
try listening with your eyes closed, you get much better
pictures that way!
ROB BAXTER
November 1989
AFTERTHOUGHTS DEPT...
When you boot this disk, the Amiga's audio filter is
disabled, allowing the full frequency range of the Amiga to
come through. Unfortunately, it also allows the dreaded
aliasing to come through as well! Because of the relatively
low sampling frequency used in SONIX, some degree of
aliasing is impossible to avoid. Although I have tried to
minimise the effect of this by band-limiting my sounds
wherever practicable, aliasing can still be heard from time
to time - even the best Amiga music suffers from this
malady! You can turn the filter back on again in order to
reduce the aliasing even more - but only if you enjoy
listening to music with your ears full of clotted cream!
Apologies to the impatient for the time it takes each piece
of music to load! All these pieces need to load a lot of
instrument data and of course, matters aren't made any
better by the fact that the Amiga isn't exactly blessed with
the fastest drives in the world!
Press space...
THANKS-FOR-THE-MEMORY DEPT...
Unexpanded 512k users may find that they need to disconnect
or disable any external drives they have connected to their
Amigas, especially for bigger files like the Brandenburg 5.
SPECIAL THANKS TO MARTYN AND EVERYONE AT 17 BIT.
VERY SPECIAL THANKS TO PSW.
THAT'S ALL FOLKS...