TO YONDER TUNESMITHIES: >>greetings, earthlings, Greetings spaceman:-) > >general Comments about Tunesmith: > >an excellent app. Agreed...and ahead of its time! > >some algocomp prg's are very difficult to use if you want to make a more or less 'finished' piece with it. this one is not like that at all. > >you can use it 'live' => realtime (but prepared) performances stuff. > >or deterministic, if you're not an improvisor. This is very true. You can create presets of all your settings, then perform it live as well as record your actions in the Arranger module. > >if you're not mister keyboard, this program can make you sound like him. HE HE! Especially with the Matrix keyboard Tunesmith Instruments. You can set the tempo to 220 or so, play some of the qwerty keys in a rythmic fashion and you will sound like Rick Wakeman! >everything is on one screen, this is very userfriendly. no going to menus to transpose, reverse, etc... just one click on something you were already looking at!! >well... there is a menu for saving, loading and configuring, but you won't need to access it for making music. YES..this was one of Jim Johnsons goal is to make it realtime. You can even hit HELP and the help screen comes up WHILE THE MUSIC IS PLAYING, so you can referance something that you would like to change in realtime. Even though it looks crowded,it is layed out in a logical fashion and once you understand it, you can swiftly go to the parameters you want to change. >AND the way it looks is ideal for making people believe that you're not REALLY human after all. (it looks like that, of course, because everything was put on one screen, which, again, IS very fast to work with.) That is why I have it on my opening pic on my site! BTW: I think it looks GREAT on a color monitor and this is my prefeered way of working with it. Looks rather cool in color..you can configure the color schemes to your liking as well. > >programs music output can sound a lot like tunesmith or a lot like you. you have a lot of control, if you want that. or you could not care and stuff would 'happen'. if you have never used the program, you'll have made something interesting within the hour after booting it (eh, how many programs allow that?). and it will have been fun. I found this to be the case. I fooled around with it FIRST before going into the manual. However, we have some good tutorials on it now...Gregs and mine. Try them out and see how they work. I had good feedback from a NON-ATARI user who loaded up steem on his PC and went thru my tutorial and found it a neat program.Greg has written some excellent stuff as well. Its all in the Tunesmith folder as txt files. Link is on the Footer of every message. (aotm link) > >program output can sound human OR computer: yes. This is different then just hitting PLAY. You can tweak it in realtime which brings in the human element. > >default settings are for rather fast rythmic stuff, but you could make ambient things too, why not. ABSOLUTLY! Just set the tempo to a slow beat, use sustaining voices and there you have it! I think I will try this as I mostly have done very fast stuff...thanks for the idea Greg! > >the music can be recorded by the program. not difficult. then you can save it, for use in a sequencer. I think there is a SEQ to MID utility?! KCS HEADS...is there such a beast? Or do you have to convert it to mid from within KCS? > >docs are pretty complete. would really like more info about some stuff on the set options screen though ;o) I will get this soon for you. > >in my EXCELLENT opinion, you will not regret it. even if the screenshots look like this is a program from hell. HEY...I like how the program looks...so UN-WINDOWS like! It does not look like an office application! Would Appreciate More COMMENTS on TUNESMITH (pretty please???!!!) Tim ======================================================= Tim Conrardy ======================================================== If you use Atari for Midi come join us at Atari-Midi! ********************************************************* Tim's Atari Midi World http://sites.netscape.net/timconrardy/index.htm Atari-Midi Mailing List:http://www.yahoogroups.com/group/atari-midi