About Oldschool process : Jorg M1 & Atari 1040St (Cubase)

[Uman's]

There was a time, just before getting Reason 3 and a computer, i was runnin on a Korg M1 and a personal computer Atari 1040St.

The Korg M1 is probably the first Workstation. (4Mo Ram memory)

The Atari 1040St (green screen) was a poor computer with a floppy disk and 4Mo of ram memory.

1000 Mo = 1Go (octets)

Impossible to make an entire and complete song with just the internal memory of one or the other.
So I had to deal with a short memory. Each additional event can compromise the achievement until its completion.

For example, it may be necessary to play certain sounds or instruments directly live, while the cassette recorder does its job.
You have a certain possibility of saving your instruments ans songs in the Korg memory or in the Atari floppy disks,
but all is : just Midi events !
For greater ease of listening, the audio was recorded on cassette tape.

The editing possibilities were wide but limited, very limited.
We only load one song at a time, 8 tracks and memory remaining limited to 4MB for midi events.
Whatever we do!

I will try to tell you more on this subject, at your request.

A small example however. I found this track from 1998 and it's an opportunity for us to talk about these old techniques where everything wasn't as simple as it is today.

Analyze it knowing that the piece reflects how difficult playing piano live is for me.
Note that the quantize possibilities were otherworldly ! (Joke)

Personally, I find it amusing to see the number of events that I managed to make eat to these old things in this one song.
I also remember that I heavily abused the reverb.

Have fun.

[Uman's]

Damn, I would have liked to make some corrections but there is no command for that in this section.

Like the Title !!! Not Jorg bur Korg !

About memories :

Korg M1 : internal memory is 4Mo but not all for the inside recorder cause the memory also includes 100 modified instruments.

Each tracks of the song recording are done on the fly.
Corrections are made by selecting a portion to replay it directly. ("Punch in" / "Punch out"]
One mode to edit one note but very impractical and boring (2 lines on the Lcd screen).
The same way to carry over copies of sections of a song by selecting a section within the same track or from one to another.
The inside memory can only support one complete short song.
With each new song, you must completely erase the previous one !
(I used it in this configuration before later getting the Atari.)

Atari 1040St (Gray Monochrome 12") : 1Mo of memory (extendable to 4Mo)
Cubase version 1.1.
The small screen allow to show a grid like our Reason.
You can view each Midi event, correct easily note by note, which brings comfort to the Korg M1.
A hard drive option existed for the Atari which I did not have. So each song was saved on a floppy disk.
The computer does not produce sounds but controls those of the Korg through Midi events.
There was a possibility of saving the Korg sounds on the Atari but it was rather poorly done.
You had to use grids on paper to write your sound backups. (Synthesizer parameters one by one)

Songs could be 8 full tracks long, but the more tracks and Midi events we used, the shorter the song became !
So we had to chose long songs without a lot of detail or short songs if we wanted them to be dense.
Brainstorming !

[bxbrkrz]

One thing I used to do in Cubase 2 was a live remix with the parts of my songs on the fly just to have new ideas for arrangements. By accident I discovered I could jump to new sections with that big mouse. Loop ON and move the left locator after the right locator, then quickly move the Right locator to catch the loop again, going direct to cassette. At a slower tempo because the mouse was too heavy to move it around quick, but still fun. Then playback the cassette, listen to the best ideas and transitions, then move the sections around to recreate what was on tape in Cubase. That was one of the first trick I tried, R/L locators on Reason and it worked

[Uman's]

The big, heavy square mouse ! With a ball inside that must be taken apart from time to time to clean !

Fun but not great for live performance.
Live, it might be a good idea to still use this material, because composing a song entirely on it is crazy today.
Otherwise, for just editing and storing ideas it's a bit too much.

I must have around 500 songs on floppy disk, some of which may be of interest.

I have not investigated the possibility of transferring the data on floppy disk to a modern computer.
Put the Midi tracks and events in Reason and cover some of my songs.
Perhaps also in another way, record the tracks directly via Midi with cables while playing the Atari.

The easiest thing is probably to replay everything completely directly in Reason.

[Uman's]

Most of young people today have ready-made machines and sounds.
Even discussion forums on the subject of electronic music are dying.
What if I told you about Formant now? You would think am I a dynosaur or an alien ?

manuauformantreduc.jpg

[robussc]

I had Pro-24 on an Atari 1040ST connected to a Yamaha V-50, another of the early workstations, I really liked that keyboard. Sadly I emigrated and had to leave it behind.

There was definitely enough storage to make a full song. Heck, Atari STs were industry standard for a long time.

[robussc]

As for editing, you get a short window to correct your post, before it’s locked in.

[crimsonwarlock]

Most of young people today have ready-made machines and sounds.
Even discussion forums on the subject of electronic music are dying.
What if I told you about Formant now? You would think am I a dynosaur or an alien ?

I started out with synthesis by building my own synthesizer, which was basically a rather simple synthesizer kit with a stylus touch keyboard, that I expanded with a real clavier. I learned to play and do rudimentary synthesis on it, and after a while I augmented it with several Formant synthesizer modules, but all with fixed connections instead of it being modular.

There is a VST-version of that synthesizer because Full Bucket made it into a software version (so it is free as well). The backstory of my hardware synth, that I named Ragnarök, is in the manual of the VST version

[bxbrkrz]

The big, heavy square mouse ! With a ball inside that must be taken apart from time to time to clean !

Fun but not great for live performance.
Live, it might be a good idea to still use this material, because composing a song entirely on it is crazy today.
Otherwise, for just editing and storing ideas it's a bit too much.

I must have around 500 songs on floppy disk, some of which may be of interest.

I have not investigated the possibility of transferring the data on floppy disk to a modern computer.
Put the Midi tracks and events in Reason and cover some of my songs.
Perhaps also in another way, record the tracks directly via Midi with cables while playing the Atari.

The easiest thing is probably to replay everything completely directly in Reason.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... In 1986.

The Atari ST can read/write MS-DOS formatted floppies. You could skip all the MS-DOS formatting adventure if like me you've always used MS-DOS floppies from the very start.
But, if not...
Get a USB floppy drive for your computer. Get a utility app to format blank floppies to MS- Dos on your computer.
Don't forget to tape over the hole on the floppy to get Single Density instead of Double Density. Check Youtube for more info if this is necessary or not. Depending of the drive you have in your ST. Not sure anymore.
Resave all your songs, .sng and .arr as midi files on the MS-DOS floppies. Double check if you have hidden ideas/ windows on top of each other in the song. Midi files will only save the window you see.

Way faster than playing all your 500 songs via a midi cable between 2 computers. It is also a bit scary to see either the ST's or Reason's BPM in a flux, dancing a lot because of the sync trying to catch up.
Don't forget to give your tracks their proper names. I'm still sad looking my Pro 24 midi files with 1000s of tracks named "noname"

Good luck