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MegaDisc 08 (1988)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)[WB].zip
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REVIEWS
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A-Drum
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1988-05-28
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A-DRUM
==========
A review by Eric Holroyd
===========================
If you're a budding rock drummer, music programmer or just someone who
wants to get his own back on the guy next door for the 7am Sunday
grass-cutting, here's something that'll interest you.
A-drum is a drum-machine program that lets you build sequences of
percussion sounds in 4 voices and stereo. It uses it's own library of
digitised sounds to build a drumkit and up to 26 different sounds are
available.
Several demo "projects" are on the disk for you to load in and play. The
book then takes you through the steps of changing instruments and sounds
to make up your own project by changing one of the demo ones. It's very
easy and you hear the results straightaway. I had a lot of fun changing
sounds and rhythms and it's quite absorbing.
Sounds are stored in the standard IFF format which means that if you have
a sound sampler yourself you can make your own "instruments" by sampling
whatever takes your fancy and using it in a drumkit. Of course, IFF sounds
from other programs are usable too so there's no limit to what you can do
with A-Drum.
I found this software very easy to work with as it uses the mouse and
pulldown menus for the various operations. I tried my usual trick of
getting it working without reference to the manual and was able to do just
that. Of course, to really get into it properly I needed the book but the
point is that it's user friendly enough to start up easily.
To write a sequence is simplicity itself: build a "measure" of music by
placing letters where you want each sound to happen, then play it back.
Write as many measures (or bars) as you like then tell A-Drum in what
order you want them to be played. With 8 different measures I was able to
create a sequence that ran for several minutes.
A-Drum is MIDI-compatible, which means that it can be controlled by any
device capable of sending the appropriate MIDI signal to synchronize it
with another instrument, say a keyboard or synthesizer. This is very
useful in a recording situation or even in a live performance as many
musicians are now discovering.
MIDI is a wonderful system which allows a musician to control other
instruments from one "master" instrument. So, if you're playing a
MIDI-equipped guitar you can "trigger" synthesizers, effects machines,
other guitars and especially drum machines (like A-Drum) to play at the
same time.
This is a good program for musical Amiga users. It can be as easy as you
want it to be or if you really get creative it'll handle that too. I found
it very useful both for experimenting with percussion sounds and for using
as drum accompaniment to other instruments.
A-DRUM: From Ozi-soft (02) 211-1266 RRP $129.95
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