Chris Ahlstrom (GEnie: KICKAHA; Compuserve 73340,26) 9950 Topanga Canyon Blvd Chatsworth, CA 91311 (818) 998-0490 The format of this file is SMF 1, on MIDI channels 1-7. My setup employed the Casio HT-700 on channels 5-7, and the MT-240 on channels 1-3. The original format for this song is Edit Track II, on the Atari ST. I recommend Edit Track II. Download MIDIMOVR.ARC from GEnie to play this file. It is in the MIDI section of GEnie, *not* the ST section; it is "freeware" provided by the makers of Edit Track. It plays any SMF 0 or SMF 1 file, EZ-Track+ files, and Midi-Track (Edit Track) files. Read its documentation. The mouse buttons are important. TOO HOT FOR MY CHINCHILLA by Tangerine Dream Tangerine Dream is a German duo that composes and plays their own electronic music, along with an occasional acoustic instrument. They've recently (last few years, anyway) used MIDI quite a bit. Atari has sponsored a few of their concerts. The album "Optical Race" included the Atari logo. (Hmmm, is this a little corporate sycophancy on the part of Tadream?) They used Steinberg/Jones music software. Their latest album, "Lily on the Beach", employs Cubase music software, which you can download for your Atari on either GEnie or Hybrid Art's BBS, I believe (try Hybrid Arts first). It is Atari ST software. Compared to earlier albums, the songs are much shorter, and maybe a little more simplistic, on these two albums. Perhaps this is because of MIDI, where it is easy to re- use previous measures. Still, they come up with a strong tune every now and then. Our title song comes from "Lily on the Beach". Of course, in no way can I duplicate it with the limited setup I have. As usual, I try to provide all the tracks needed to get a start on recreating the song for yourselves. ------------------------------ Some track labels have "!x" ("x" being a digit). This just means that the track is meant to drive or alter the behavior of any tracks having the given channel number. These tracks are very peculiar to my set-up; they are the only places you should find machine-dependent information. Track Ch Name 1 7 Bass Reiterator A soft clock for sections of the song. 2 3 Bass Try a realistic wood bass sound. 3 5 VoxHumana/Chords The original uses a chorus voicing. 4 6 VoxAquila, High High-pitched call like an eagle's. 5 6 VoxAquila, Low Low-pitched call, like an eagle's. 6 2 Piano/Soft Piano Two lines, each at different velocity. 7 2 Lead Guitar 1 Improvised melody line. 8 2 Lead Guitar 2 Improvised melody line, very similar. 9 3 Cellos Short passage for ending the song. 10 6 Ethereal High A rather atmospheric track. 11 6 Ethereal Low A rather atmospheric track. 12 2 Pedal/Drones Very low-pitched filler. 13 6 Clangs/Sweeps Metallic sounds or filter sweeps. 14 6 Vibrato voice Strong vibrato sound for filler. 15 1 Rhythm 1 Includes the following drums: [MT-240 Drum notes, patch 9] No Dec Hex (note, decimal, hexadecimal) 1 Bass Drum 1 C1 36 24 1 Gated Snare G1 43 2B 1 Rim Shot A1 45 2D 1 Snare Drum 2 F1 41 29 1 Synth Cymb 1 F#2 54 36 1 Ride Cymb 1 C3 60 3C 1 Timbale Mix A4 81 51 1 Cowbell 1 C4 72 48 1 High Agogo B4 83 53 1 High Agogo C5 84 54 1 Conga Low G5 91 5B 1 Conga High E5 89 59 1 Clsd HiHat 2 C2 48 30 1 Open HiHat 1 D2 50 32 1 Tom 3 G3 67 43 1 Tom Mixed B3 71 47 1 Synth Tom 3 A#3 70 46 16 2 Rhythm 2 Includes the following drums: [MT-240 Drum notes, patch 9] 2 Gong 1 C#3 61 3D 2 Tom 4 A3 69 45 2 Timbale High F4 77 4D 2 Timbale Mute E4 76 4C 17 2 Sustain for the MT-240 18 1-3 MT-240/EditTrack Patch selection (including drums) 19 5-6 HT-700/AtariST Patch selection 20 5-6 HT-700/AtariST Patch selection A word about some of the tracks. First, tracks with similar names have very similar, but not always identical, notes, allowing for transposition. The "Vox Aquila", "Ethereal", and "Lead Guitar" tracks are of this nature. It seems important to me to play the "Lead Guitar" tracks on the same voicing. I have no patch that screams in a manner suitable for improvised rock guitar, but the trumpet patch sounds nice. "Aquila" is Latin for "eagle" or "hawk". The term doesn't quite describe the voices chosen by Tangerine Dream. I can't think of any better... pitiful knowledge of musical terms, you see. The same lament holds for the "Ethereal" tracks. Try an airy version of a string patch. "Piano/Soft Piano" contains velocity information of 64 for some of the notes, and 32 for others. I cannot play these back on my setup, but perhaps you'll be able to hear the desired effect. The "Sustain" track affects this track, but only because it made playback sound better on my MT-240. I took certain liberties with the "Bass" track. I could not detect accurately what was played on the original recording. I'm not entirely satisfied with my improvisations (step-recorded improvisations, that is). I also took liberties with some of the "Lead Guitar" passages. I preserved the nicest parts, but didn't like other parts well enough to try to duplicate them. I picked my own improvisations, and I like them a little, not a lot. The MT-240 has a nice set of 49 drums (though a few of the drum notes seem a waste of memory.) This tune employs a lot of percussion instruments that I cannot mimic. Furthermore, the sound of them is sometimes too thin. To obtain a better effect, I decided to add a couple of extra rhythm instruments. In the percussional interludes (two sections that are almost all percussion), up to 10 drums occur at once. On the MT-240, this meant I had to use both channels 1 (six notes) and 2 (four notes). So, I broke out four of the drums into their own track, "Rhythm 2". The channel here, 2, has to do double duty on the MT-240, playing the drum patch (patch 9) for the percussional interludes, and a normal musical patch for the rest of the song. If you can, replace the "Rim Shot" with the sound of a small plumbing pipe being struck with another small plumbing pipe. Other metallic substitutions will bring themselves to the minds of those having better drum sets than I. On the MT-240, I notice an interesting effect: playing the Snare Drum 2 patch with a long note duration yields a stereo sound, but short durations put the sound in only one channel. I use a duration of 6 ticks for all my drum notes, since this is long enough that I can point to it with my mouse during graphic edits. If you do not have a drum machine, but do have a storehouse of ready-made rhythms in the ROM of your synthesizer, you can let your synth's clock drive your sequencer. Each sections requires a different set of drums, but all sections should use some kind of 16-beat rhythm, if they use rhythm at all. The descriptions of the rest of the tracks are rough-hewn at best. But hey, I hafta leave some fun for you guys! With my setup, I set the HT-700's base channel to 5, so that it operates on channels 5-8. The MT-240 must always operate on channels 1-4, alas. In summary, I know this thing is far from perfect, yet I am rather fond of it at the moment. It's funny... the more you listen to a song, the more defects you find in it. One could "fiddle" forever, and never finish a song. ---------------- FANFARE SECTION ---------------- Thanks to R. Geiger (GEnie: RG.ALASKA) for continuing to create and upload music, all nicely done. Thanks to Roger Jewell (Los Angeles) for giving me tapes of stuff he'd done on a beautiful Kurtzweil synthesizer, showing me his whole studio setup, and making me forever unsatisfied with my Casio toys. Thanks to Doc Harding (Augusta, Georgia) for his great support of the Atari club, and the loaner of his Yamaha PSS-680. And his sharp mind!