Making Music with your Computer

or

Making Computer Music

Ever since the early 1970s, when I first saw Francis Monkman of Curved Air, and Brian Eno of Roxy Music make weird and wonderful sounds come out of their EMS VCS3s, I've been fascinated by synthesizers. Walter Carlos (later to become Wendy) released the amazing "Switched on Bach", which put the name Moog on the map. Who didn't admire the sounds that Rick Wakeman made with his Minimoog? In fact just to make me really envious, he had at least two of them.

Sadly I've never been a musician, but I have always been fascinated by music technology. In 1973 I started constructing my own synthesizer, based on a project which was published in an electronics magazine. After spending a lot of time and a lot of money, I produced a device, which only ever issued the sound "pop". It did this several times, until I ran out the fuses, which were making the "pop" sound. That project was abandoned.

In the 1980s I did acquire a couple of Yamaha TX7 sound modules, which I hooked up to an Atari ST computer and I dabbled with some early sequencer programs. I also acquired a second hand Minimoog. Although the Minimoog was fun, it was not midi enabled, so I couldn't connect it to my Atari sequencer. In addition the Minimoog is monophonic, so it can only play one note at a time, so no chords.

When I moved to Singapore in 1994, I disposed of all my music gear and really hadn't done much since, except for some dabbling with a Yamaha SW1000XG sound card.

In the new millennium, I started to become interested in Virtual Synthesizers, which I read about in various PC and music magazines. One which really fascinated me was the Model E VST from Steinberg. This is basically a software version of a Minimoog. However it has several advantages over the original physical Minimoog, not least of which is that it is polyphonic, so it can play chords.

The disadvantage from my point of view was that it was a VST instrument and at the time of it's release that required a recent version of Steinberg's Cubase to run it. As a non musician, Cubase for me would be like buying a Ferrari for my grandmother to drive herself to church in, on Sundays.

I also did some research to see if the cut down version of Cubase, which is named Cubasis could support VST instruments. Eventually there was a release called Cubasis VST 3.0 which could. The main problem was that I couldn't find either Model E or Cubasis for sale in Singapore. I checked amazon, but they would not ship out of their regions.

I also checked ebay and from time to time Cubasis would come up and at other times Model E VST would also appear, but again trying to find sellers who would ship overseas was tough. Then Cubasis VST 4.0 came along. I was on the point of buying it, when I heard that Pinnacle had acquired Steinberg.

Now I was already a fan of Pinnacle's video products and have used several of their Studio products for video capture and editing, so I decided to wait a while. To my delight they soon released Cubasis VST 5.0. I was over the moon, when I discovered that in Cubasis VST 5.0, they had bundled Model E VST, as part of the package. In addition Cubasis VST 5.0 now supported 8 virtual instruments instead of the 4, supported by earlier releases.

I still had the problem of obtaining a copy of Cubasis VST 5.0. Searches of the Pinnacle web site revealed the details for the distributor in Singapore. However the shop was being renovated, so was closed. The phone number was unobtainable and the email bounced. Then by sheer chance I spotted a copy in Challenger Superstore in Funan Centre. I purchased it immediately even though it was 30% more expensive than it was being offered for, by amazon.co.uk (who would not ship it outside of Europe).

I rushed home and loaded it up. To say I am delighted would be an understatement. Eat your heart out Rick Wakeman, not only do I have an easy to use sequencer, which can handle midi as well as audio samples, but I also have a number of software synthesizers, including a virtual Minimoog. Not only is this Minimoog polyphonic, but I can run 8 of them simultaneously. And guess what? Cubasis VST 5.0 including Model E VST costs less than US$100. If you look on ebay right now, the chances are that you will see that real monophonic Minimoogs from the 1970s are selling at more than US$1,000 each.

If you are interested in making music with your computer then I cannot think of a better way of getting started and more, than buying Cubasis VST 5.0.

The screen shot above shows the sequencer part of Cubasis VST 5.0. Each of the coloured bars in the top section represents a musical track. These can be midi tracks, which you can capture by playing a midi instrument such as a keyboard, or audio sound samples recorded live, such as birds tweeting or temple bells ringing. The midi tracks are automatically translated into music notation for you, which you can edit on screen if you wish. The Midi tracks and the audio samples can be mixed together and put out as audio tracks, which can have effects applied to them, before being burned onto a CD.

This screen shot shows some of the Virtual instruments which are provided with Cubasis VST 5.0. The Model E VST being at the forefront (this virtual synth. used to retail at more than the price of Cubasis VST 5.0, which now includes it). There are also a number of other virtual instruments provided including "Father Gregory", who is a not very useful singing monk - but he is a bit of fun.

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