Which sequencers did the oldskool pioneers use?

[prollocks]

Anybody know where that bassline in Some Justice came from? was it a synth or sampled?

They were all samples on the Amiga - if you listen carefully you can hear aliasing in the bass of that tune.

[bandwidth]

They were all samples on the Amiga - if you listen carefully you can hear aliasing in the bass of that tune.

Yeah you're right, does sound very lofi now you mention it..!!

How much sample time did the Amiga have & how many samples could be loaded into Octamed?

[samuel]

The 8 tracks via 2 amigas was due to how the amiga did sound - 2 channels on the left, 2 on the right, so for them to get say the drums coming out of both left and right, they had to put the same drums on a left and right channel (using up 2 tracks). so the 8 tracks were really 4 mono tracks (or maybe a bit of panning to give slight stereo placement).
Also heard they used a couple of effect machines in there (as vsts weren't arround back then :) )

It's funny how difficult they had to make it :) When we did live performances with Amiga (Protracker though) we just used a simple stereo -> mono converter as it really doesn't matter much if the sound is mono or stereo in live PA :)

[renegadegenius]

They were all samples on the Amiga - if you listen carefully you can hear aliasing in the bass of that tune.

Yeah you're right, does sound very lofi now you mention it..!!

How much sample time did the Amiga have & how many samples could be loaded into Octamed?

Don't hold me to this as it may have been another program (was a long time aga!!), but I think octamed had a simple synth generator built in & a sine wave was one of those presets.
Sample time - well, the amiga didn't have that much memory - 512kb as standard, but u could upgrade to a max of 2mb.
But people made good use of what they had back then

[Beagle]

Anybody know where that bassline in Some Justice came from? was it a synth or sampled?

They were all samples on the Amiga - if you listen carefully you can hear aliasing in the bass of that tune.

yeah, a classic 'OctamMed' giveaway that!

I pretty certain 'Move & Groove' off this was OctaMed too:

http://www.discogs.com/Diplomat-The-Her ... ase/159757

[Beagle]

you could get 8 channels in OctaMed if you used a synth module too. A mate of mine had a Roland JV80 module and when you plugged this in you could have 4 channels of midi from the synth and 4 of audio.

[squatski]

i seem to remember running 8 channels of audio is a bad idea, first it will half the volume of the samples for you, and the timing buggers up. I think it was fixed for a much later amiga version though.

[renegadegenius]

i seem to remember running 8 channels of audio is a bad idea, first it will half the volume of the samples for you, and the timing buggers up. I think it was fixed for a much later amiga version though.

On 1 amiga yes, but 4 audio & 4 midi on 1 amiga is a different matter :)

[bandwidth]

They were all samples on the Amiga - if you listen carefully you can hear aliasing in the bass of that tune.

Yeah you're right, does sound very lofi now you mention it..!!

How much sample time did the Amiga have & how many samples could be loaded into Octamed?

Don't hold me to this as it may have been another program (was a long time aga!!), but I think octamed had a simple synth generator built in & a sine wave was one of those presets.
Sample time - well, the amiga didn't have that much memory - 512kb as standard, but u could upgrade to a max of 2mb.
But people made good use of what they had back then

wow, it's surprising what can be achieved with such limited equipment!! I wonder if they recorded each track separately onto a multitrack for EQing? I bet it was beefed up at the mastering stage?

DJ Red Alert + Mike Slammers samples always did sound a bit lofi & gritty (superb tunes though!!), I wonder how many other tunes were put
together with Octamed?

The Akai S900 & S950 were popular at that time probably why alot of old tunes were only mono to save sample time & polyphony.

I wonder how many people used hardware sequencers?
I found this site a few years back, some interesting stuff on here:
http://www.vintagesynth.com/misc/sequencers.php

[Thumpson]

Bizzy B was another famous producer to use the amiga.
Pretty sure some early Dance Bass (02 and 03) and Parliament stuff was also made with an amiga.

[squatski]

i seem to remember running 8 channels of audio is a bad idea, first it will half the volume of the samples for you, and the timing buggers up. I think it was fixed for a much later amiga version though.

On 1 amiga yes, but 4 audio & 4 midi on 1 amiga is a different matter :)

ah yeah true that.

about that website with those hardware sequencers, I couldn't possibly imagine the pain, sequencing with a 1 strip tiny LCD screen. It's ok with the akai s950 cause you don't really have alot to do. but as for sequencing a whole tune together with a tiny lcd - F*** THAT!

no wonder people went for the easy option of amigas and ST's

[bandwidth]

Bizzy B was another famous producer to use the amiga.
Pretty sure some early Dance Bass (02 and 03) and Parliament stuff was also made with an amiga.

Yeah I had a feeling Bizzy B may have used the Amiga as a lot of his stuff sounded lofi, maybe Swift & Zinc used one too as they released some stuff on Brain Records which sounded quite lofi..?

ah yeah true that.

about that website with those hardware sequencers, I couldn't possibly imagine the pain, sequencing with a 1 strip tiny LCD screen. It's ok with the akai s950 cause you don't really have alot to do. but as for sequencing a whole tune together with a tiny lcd - F*** THAT!

no wonder people went for the easy option of amigas and ST's

Yeah you're right about that Squatski..!! staring at those those little LCD displays all day is enough to do anyones head in!!

[bandwidth]

Have any of you guys tried the windows version of Octamed http://www.medsoundstudio.com/ is it anything like the original? or is Renoise better? I'm a Cubase user & haven't really tried any of the other proggies apart from Reason.

[samuel]

Yeah I had a feeling Bizzy B may have used the Amiga as a lot of his stuff sounded lofi, maybe Swift & Zinc used one too as they released some stuff on Brain Records which sounded quite lofi..?

This is not the absolute truth 'cos I've only heard a rumour but afaik Zinc used an Amiga as late as 'til the Super Sharp Shooter times.

[renegadegenius]

Have any of you guys tried the windows version of Octamed http://www.medsoundstudio.com/ is it anything like the original? or is Renoise better? I'm a Cubase user & haven't really tried any of the other proggies apart from Reason.

I've used a couple of pc trackers, but now I only use renoise - amazing program.