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Belgian Amiga Club - ADF Collection
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BS1 part 65.zip
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BS1 part 65
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1989-07-29
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CLASSIX1. The music of J. S. Bach arranged
for the Amiga by ROB BAXTER.
This is the first of what I hope will be many collections of
fine classical music for the Amiga. I have chosen Bach for
my first Amiga release for two reasons:
A) I like Bach (what better reason could there be?)
B) Bach's very linear music adapts beautifully to
this electronic medium.
Bach purists might not approve of my "computer orchestra"
but there seemed little point in sticking to conventional
scoring - you can always buy a Bach L.P. if you want that!
The sounds may be new, but the music is pure, note-for-note
Bach. I have made no attempt to "jazz up" the music, it is
humbly presented in its new Amiga clothes as written!
About the music:
The BRANDENBURG CONCERTOS were written around 1721 and
dedicated to Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg.
There are six concertos in total, each one completely
different in character. Nos. 3 and 4 are presented on this
disk.
BRANDENBURG CONCERTO NO. 3 in G Major was originally scored
for three violins, three violas, three 'cellos, double bass
and harpsichord continuo. Needless to say, my
instrumentation is nothing like that! The first movement
swings its relentless way along with an unlikely ensemble of
strings, glockenspiels and purely "synth-like" sounds -
although there is a solo violin tucked away in the mix...
somewhere! In contrast, the third movement gives the brass
and woodwind sections a chance to shine!
Bach did not provide a true second movement for the third
Brandenburg concerto, he merely wrote two chords marked
"Adagio", possibly expecting the performer to improvise his
own slow movement. With this in mind, I have "invented" a
slow movement for this concerto based on Bach's "Arioso"
which leads up to those two final chords.
BRANDENBURG CONCERTO NO. 4 in G Major was scored for solo
violin, two recorders, strings and harpsichord continuo. In
my interpretation of this concerto, I have possibly been a
little more faithful to the master's intentions! Certainly
in the solo sections I have attempted to reproduce the
violin and recorder/flute parts called for by the score, but
in the tutti sections the instrumentation is a little more
open ended.
PRELUDE AND FUGUE NO. 7 comes from a collection of 48
keyboard preludes and fugues in two parts (24 each),
originally entitled "The Well-Tempered Clavier". For obvious
reasons this compilation is affectionately known as "The
Forty Eight"! The Prelude presented on this disk is one of
the most magnificent of all the preludes in the forty-eight
and is itself divided into three distinct sections. First
is a stately introductory passage which for this version is
performed with bright brass and harpsichord tonalities.
There then follows a beautiful and delicate, almost ethereal
passage which is carried by soft string tones. The final and
main section of the prelude is actually a four part fugue
which in this performance is played by a trio of violins
backed up by a solid, woody bass line. The prelude finally
resolves into a glorious, heraldic restatement of its
opening.
The Fugue proper which follows is light and good humoured
and in complete contrast to the gravity and majesty of its
Prelude. I have chosen tonalities which I hope reflect this!
TOCCATA AND FUGUE IN D MINOR is just a little bit famous!
Bach wrote this organ extravaganza when he was a young man
and his youthful exuberance spills out in every passage! The
Toccata in particular is so well known it has almost become
part of popular folklore! I have presented the Toccata in a
fairly conventional manner, using very imitative pipe organ
sounds which work quite well... watch your speakers though!
The Fugue on the other hand is performed by a surreal set of
instruments which I think complement the traditional organ
voicings quite well. I often think that the Fugue is more
exciting than the Toccata, it surges along like a great
river, almost threatening to burst its banks!
--------------
All the music on this disk was entirely realised in Aegis
SONIX using instruments created with SYNTHIA. There are no
sampled instruments or sounds on this disk.
SYNTHIA provides a complete sound synthesis environment on
the Amiga which is enormously powerful and flexible. Of
course it has its limitations like any good synthesiser and
these must be worked around but the ammount of creative
freedom this package brings to music-making on the Amiga is
considerable. It means that all my instruments are TRULY my
own which in turn means that I can at last develop a sound
and style which is unique to me!
I hope this collection brings a fresh dimension to Amiga
music.
Enjoy....
--------------
I'm sorry this collection isn't better presented, there
isn't much room left on the disk for graphics, nor is there
much space in chip RAM for many instruments as well as
pretty screens! Roll on the Enhanced Chip Set with a whole
Meg of chip RAM!!!
There is an option in the main menu for turning the Amiga's
audio filter back on again. When you boot this disk, the
filter is disabled (unless you have an A1000, there is no
way of turning off the filter by software means on that
machine). All Amigas have this filter to reduce the audible
effects of foldover, or "aliasing" as it is more commonly
known. This manifests itself as a high whine on certain
notes and is a by-product of the way the Amiga produces
sound. In simple terms, the higher harmonics on some sounds
try to get themselves reproduced above the so called
"Nyquist Frequency" and consequently get folded back on
themselves so that they are echoed, or "aliased" at
frequencies below the Nyquist. These aliased frequencies
generally bear no harmonic relationship to the note being
played so the result to the listener is a slight inharmonic
whine behind the note being played. Usually though, these
"rogue" harmonics are low in intensity and tend not to
distract to a great degree. However, they do irritate some
listeners, which I suppose is why Commodore Amiga included
the filter in the Amiga's specification - and which is why I
have included an option to turn it back on again if you are
one of these people!
The problem with the filter though, is that whilst
eliminating most of the aliased frequencies, it makes music
sound like you're listening through cotton wool. I'd much
rather enjoy the bright clear tones that the Amiga produces
with the filter turned off!
What is the Nyquist Frequency? The Amiga treats all sound
data, be it produced by SYNTHIA, the SONIX "analogue synth"
or by a hardware sampler in exactly the same way. It treats
it as a sample! Therefore, regardless of the method of sound
production there is a master sampling rate. The Nyquist
Frequency represents the highest frequency that can be
accurately reproduced by a digital audio system and is
theoretically the sampling rate divided by two. Therefore,
with a sampling rate of 10 kHz, the Nyquist frequency would
be 5 kHz. In practice, the real Nyquist frequency turns out
to be slightly less than half the sampling rate but here the
math gets more complex, so I won't attempt to go into it
mainly because it's largely beyond me!!
The higher the sample rate, the correspondingly higher is
the Nyquist, but the faster you sample the more memory you
use up. At present, no matter how much extra RAM you've
bolted onto your Amiga, all sound data must be confined to
the first 512k of chip RAM in order for Paula to read it. So
there is quite a severe trade-off between the sampling rate
you use and the number of samples that can be held in chip
RAM at any given time. SONIX and SYNTHIA compromise by
using a sample rate of around 8 kHz - not "Hi-Fi" by any
means, but the sound is still astonishingly good!
The Amiga, together with SONIX and SYNTHIA are the answer to
my prayers!
WINGE AND WISH LIST...
The sound capabilities of the Amiga are often overshadowed
by its more obvious graphics abilities. There is no reason
why a single "voice" cannot be a multi-note chord, even
chords made up of different instruments. None of the sound
editors currently on the market (I include SYNTHIA here)
offer this facility, nor is it possible with existing
software to create a glide (with the exception of SONIX).
Perhaps you know better... or could do better... yourself!
Although the Amiga has a multi-tasking operating system, no
music editor or player that I'm aware of allows the loading
of new instruments as the music is playing. This would allow
for mega-long musical opuses with loads of instruments!
I suppose I can dream.....
---------------
This disk is dedicated to Wendy Carlos.
Thanks to PSW
ROB BAXTER
Manchester, U.K.
JULY 1989