‘It was the poor man’s studio’: how Amiga computers reprogrammed modern music
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Re: ‘It was the poor man’s studio’: how Amiga computers reprogrammed modern music
#2Good article! I dabbled with MOD files myself in the nineties, but until recently wasn't aware that music made on the Amiga actually managed to get into the charts.
However I can't agree with the last paragraph: "Thirty-five years after the debut of the Amiga 500, a new generation of retro-curious musicians will have the chance to experiment with the machines, as the A500 Mini has recently launched. Perhaps it could be as loved as the original..." - since the A500 Mini is just an emulator running on an embedded board, and it doesn't even have a functional keyboard, you're probably better off running an Amiga emulator on your Linux/Windows PC or Mac...
Re: ‘It was the poor man’s studio’: how Amiga computers reprogrammed modern music
#3Oh shit there's actually still people who get old Amigas specifically for making jungle. Cool to see an article in a mainstream publication about this. You can legit roll up to a party with two amigas and a mixer and bump an entire jungle set out of them... It's that thick 8-bit bassline and the fact that you're programming the song in a scrolling wall of hexadecimal that makes jungle sound the way it does.
The sound is definitely getting a kick lately. I was playing tech house at a party and some random came up and was like why aren't you playing jungle? Like damn I haven't heard that in over a decade, good question
Re: ‘It was the poor man’s studio’: how Amiga computers reprogrammed modern music
#4Oh shit there's actually still people who get old Amigas specifically for making jungle. Cool to see an article in a mainstream publication about this. You can legit roll up to a party with two amigas and a mixer and bump an entire jungle set out of them... It's that thick 8-bit bassline and the fact that you're programming the song in a scrolling wall of hexadecimal that makes jungle sound the way it does. The sound…
This is a bit silly since good cross-platform trackers are available for free. C64 SID's I could understand, those are actual analog chips and the modern recreations might not be perfect. But making tracked music is not something that needs real hardware.
Re: ‘It was the poor man’s studio’: how Amiga computers reprogrammed modern music
#5Good article! I dabbled with MOD files myself in the nineties, but until recently wasn't aware that music made on the Amiga actually managed to get into the charts. However I can't agree with the last paragraph: "Thirty-five years after the debut of the Amiga 500, a new generation of retro-curious musicians will have the chance to experiment with the machines, as the A500 Mini has recently launched. Perhaps it could…
The new "Mini" emulators typically support USB keyboards, I assume that the Amiga Mini does as well.
Re: ‘It was the poor man’s studio’: how Amiga computers reprogrammed modern music
#6Good article! I dabbled with MOD files myself in the nineties, but until recently wasn't aware that music made on the Amiga actually managed to get into the charts. However I can't agree with the last paragraph: "Thirty-five years after the debut of the Amiga 500, a new generation of retro-curious musicians will have the chance to experiment with the machines, as the A500 Mini has recently launched. Perhaps it could…
If THEC64 is anything to go by, THEA500 Mini will get a full-size followup with working keyboard. It won't have more functionality than a PC emulator, but it'll be easier/more fun for normies to set up and use.
I've been really impressed with THEC64. It really delivers a retrocomputing experience that's close to the original in spirit.
Re: ‘It was the poor man’s studio’: how Amiga computers reprogrammed modern music
#7Oh shit there's actually still people who get old Amigas specifically for making jungle. Cool to see an article in a mainstream publication about this. You can legit roll up to a party with two amigas and a mixer and bump an entire jungle set out of them... It's that thick 8-bit bassline and the fact that you're programming the song in a scrolling wall of hexadecimal that makes jungle sound the way it does. The sound…
This is a bit silly since good cross-platform trackers are available for free. C64 SID's I could understand, those are actual analog chips and the modern recreations might not be perfect. But making tracked music is not something that needs real hardware.
You're missing the point though
It's fun
I dunno how much DJ/VJ/music stuff you do but when you have cute 20 year old total babes literally sitting in your lap asking what that is then it starts to click. Plus with the Amiga thing, again with jungle that 8 bit bass really pumps for such a cheap machine.
I think some get a kick out of working under limitations in order to boost creativity too. Personally I would start with renoise though I can totally see myself having a blast with octamed on some computer that doesn't even really have internet.
Re: ‘It was the poor man’s studio’: how Amiga computers reprogrammed modern music
#8Cheaper than an actual recording studio for sure, but "poor man's" is overstating it a bit. They were expensive machines.
Re: ‘It was the poor man’s studio’: how Amiga computers reprogrammed modern music
#9Cheaper than an actual recording studio for sure, but "poor man's" is overstating it a bit. They were expensive machines.
The Atari ST was the real "poor man's" version. Though PC-compatible systems with good soundcards, etc. were even more expensive back then.
Re: ‘It was the poor man’s studio’: how Amiga computers reprogrammed modern music
#10I used to make music on the Amiga. There is one aspect that the article doesn't explain too well - what allowed the Amiga to flourish as a music making platform, is that it had onboard audio which was much more capable than most other computers of the time, thanks to Paula, which allowed multi channel, high sample rate audio playback [1]
These hardware capabilites in turn allowed the development of the Amiga music software scene, in particular music trackers [2]
The Amiga was the first mass produced computer where you could make music without plugging in expensive synths or samplers (like was common on the Atari ST for example - I remember my uncle connecting his ST to an Akai sampler and a Roland synth, as a kid I could never have afforded a setup like that). But, if you wanted to sample on the Amiga, you actually needed one external piece of hardware: an audio sampling interface, however these were generally very cheap [3]
Just a few hours ago an article about making music on the Atari ST made it to the HN home page (I also commented there), might be an interesting read for those interested [4]
[1] http://theamigamuseum.com/the-hardware/the-ocs-chipset/paula...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker