From: ercolessi@uimrl7.mrl.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: rec.music.synth
Subject: Re: A manifesto for NEW EXCITING MACHINES
Date: 6 Apr 92 06:44:55 GMT
Reply-To: ercolessi@uimrl7.mrl.uiuc.edu
Organization: Materials Research Lab

In article <1992Apr2.204959.19370@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>, 
     bsanders@mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu (Barry Sanders) writes:
|> In article <D88-JWA.92Apr1130605@dront.nada.kth.se>, 
|>      d88-jwa@dront.nada.kth.se (Jon W{tte) writes:
|> >So, a slew of 96002s, a modular bus, and 150 MBit optical network.
|> >Extensible OS, OPEN ARCHITECTURE (really important !) and written
|> >in CC++. Any takers ? :-)
|>
|> Now you're talking!  Start out with one of those 100 megaflop I-860 
|> CPU chips for horsepower, give it 64MB of RAM ($2000 current retail)
|> a 3.5" magneto-optical drive (128MB/disk), and you have tomorrow's 
|> workstation.  Music? Video? Multi-media? Aren't they all the same
|> thing to a fast computer?  At least that would give a developer some
|> breathing room (for him/her to fill up with inefficient code :-)

Yes the computer power is there, also the new Transputers (H9000,
still vaporware but condensing at the end of the year ...) are
there and better suited to parallelism, not to mention the other
goodies above ... but before deciding *what* to put inside the NEW 
EXCITING MACHINE, or N.E.M., its overall architecture and 'philosophy' 
should be discussed.

Because: if they use the above goodies to make a 256-voice ROM sampler,
operated by means of a 80x25 (wwwwow) LCD on a 12-level hyerarchical
menu with the 'Immediate Jump To' feature for traversal moves
in the tree, and very fast response time and inaudible delays
on thick chords, yes, we would be happy, but not *that* happy,
isn't it?

What about:
- have keyboard in front of you with several sliders and 'performance
  handles'
- have monitor in front of you
- have a program running somewhere which presents to you a
  restricted view of the N.E.M., defining an 'instrument'.
  You play this 'instrument', but another program can give you an
  entirely different instrument.  The instrument parameters,
  whatever they are, are controlled by the keyboard sliders

As an example, Grand Piano fans will have a Grand Piano program.
They can tune each string in each note.  They have all the pedals
(yes when all strings are undamped that i860 will have its
pipeline pretty filled ...)
They have a Steinway<->Bosendorfer slider.  They can even shout 
into a microphone and hear the strings resonate.

Old vintage synth fans will have the EMS Synthi/VCS3 matrix and
will make connections with the mouse.  The powerful hardware
simulates the Synthi.  An advanced option gives a four-dimensional
32x32x32x32 matrix, really nice sounds can be made by going deep
enough in exploiting its connectivity.

Real time control fans will have a metaslide controlling a continuous
motion of the simulated virtual machine in the (x=MiniMoog,y=JD800) 
plane.

And so on.  Eventually, these programs become the industry engine.
They should be affordable to write by any music software
developer.  The hardware platform should be well thought out,
powerful yet simple and with a clean interface.
Of course, it will also grow, but in speed, memory , etc, not in
the basic architecture.  Ideally, a 'binary compatible' kind of
evolution.

Now I wonder if the most natural and cheap way is for this N.E.M.
to stay into a ISA board in a PC, or into a Mac.  This is because:
- the problem of a fairly high (OK, not *VERY* high) speed
  connection is solved: it will be the PC bus.
- no LCDs, no SCSI port, no disk: use the computer resources,
  and save money, and gain flexibility (files can be archived,
  exchanged, compressed, encrypted, ...)
- PCs are cheap, if you do not have one already, just regard it 
  to be the "case and power supply" of your N.E.M. if you cannot
  find any other use or do not like that machine
- 'Programs' in the sense described above will run both on the
  PC processor and on the N.E.M. processor, the first handling
  the user interface, disk i/o, interactions with MIDI sequencers
  and other MIDI software, and loading programs onto the N.E.M.
  processor (nothing heavy usually; a cheap 286 can suffice).
  The second accepting and executing requests directly
  related to sound production
- Performance actions by the user are taken by the computer which
  figures out what commands to give to the N.E.M. hardware.
  By popular demand, computer keyboard and mouse will never be
  used in performance; only in programming.

The idea of a synth into the computer is, of course, old as the 
PC history (AlphaSyntauri for the Apple II, Casheab for the 
S100 bus, etc).  But now it would serve a different purpose:
make the N.E.M. open, easier to program and relatively cheap.

From the marketing point of view, they could decide to market
both a complete system (a PC plus the board), or the board
alone.  And make a family of similar keyboard controllers,
the 61 keys, the 76 keys, the weighted 88 keys, etc, with the
same set of standard, programmable input devices (sliders
etc).  A controller standard should be established before
writing user interface software!

And ... guitarists will have a guitar-controller with several 
'performance handles', but following the same standard, and so
on for other instruments, but all the rest (HW+SW) remains 
unchanged: the N.E.M. will excite all the electronically-open
musicians!  Of course, each community will use its favoured
control programs.

The board will have a fixed, well-defined IRQ number which
is guaranteed to work, or your money back!      :-)

|> I just want to thank Furio for getting this discussion started.  
|> If you think these discussions don't trickle down to the manufacturers, 
|> think again. 

OK: I think again, and again, and again ...
furio
--
Furio Ercolessi
Materials Research Laboratory           |   Intl School for Advanced Studies
Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign   |   Trieste, Italy
ercolessi@uimrl7.mrl.uiuc.edu           |   furio@sissa.it
Newsgroups: rec.music.synth