CLASSIX2... by Rob Baxter With this new collection of Baroque music, specially arranged for the Amiga, I have set out to improve on what I had achieved with my previous disk (Classix1, also available from 17 Bit Software), both in terms of musical interpretation and, possibly more importantly, sound synthesis. The instrumental sounds on this disk are all new and unique to this collection and were created exclusively using the remarkable SYNTHIA (about which, more later!). There are no digitised sounds used at all - I don't even own a digitizer! Once again, the music of the 17th and 18th centuries is given the Synthia treatment. I hope you find the naturally bright sonorities of the music from this period as pleasing as I do. It is certainly well suited to the computer music medium and I have chosen some of the more popular examples of Baroque music to demonstrate this to you. ABOUT THE MUSIC: ARRIVAL OF THE QUEEN OF SHEBA is the popular name given to the Sinfonia to Act 3 of HANDEL's oratorio Solomon which was first performed in London in 1749, and it is the opening track on this disk. The main melody is carried by two Oboes over a characteristic figure of broken chords played by the Strings. The oboes periodically step forward to play unacompanied duets and I have suplemented the conventional oboe sound with two distinct and purely synthetic tonal variants. J. S. BACH wrote four Orchestral Suites of Movements, from which three extracts are presented on this disk. The first file comprises the charming and lively BADINERIE from Suite no. 2 in B Minor, and the lovely AIR from Suite no. 3 in D Major. Badinerie (or "Frolic") is a term used by 18th Century composers for a quick, frivolous movement in duple time. The piece on this disk is a good example, it was originally scored for flute and strings with harpsichord continuo. The AIR which follows was made famous with the arrangement by August Wilhelmj, in which the first violin part is transposed down so as to be playable as a solo on the lowest string of the instrument, hence the name "Air on the G String". The version presented here is the original and is performed throughout in multiple string voices (more or less...!). The ALLEGRO DECISO is probably the best known "bit" from HANDEL'S WATER MUSIC. The "Water Music" is a suite of some twenty pieces which were composed by Handel around 1715 for a royal barge procession on the Thames. The orchestra would have been ferried along on its own barge and Handel arranged this suite for the brighter instruments of the orchestra, brass and strings predominating, so that the music would carry well in the open air. King George I must have apreciated the effect, as "...he caus'd it to be plaid over three times in going and returning..."! The GAVOTTE is the final example on this disk from BACH's orchestral suites and is taken from the Suite no. 3 in D Major. A Gavotte is a French dance in fairly quick 4/4 time but Bach lends an almost symphonic feel to the style which transcends the mere notion of a courtly dance! Here, brass, strings and timpani create an almost heraldic motif while softer, more lyrical interludes evoke the more traditional image of the formal dance. BACH's BRANDENBURG CONCERTOS can be considered to be poised on the dividing line between chamber and orchestral music. They represent the peak of the Baroque concerto form in the 18th century, the brilliance of interplay between soloist and tutti (full orchestra) has rarely been approached before or since. The Concerto no. 5 presented on this disk can truly be said to be the first real keyboard concerto. Prior to this work, the harpsichord was deemed unsuitable as a solo instrument in an orchestral setting as it lacked the volume and penetration essential for a soloing instrument - in other words, it simply couldn't "sing out" above the rest of the orchestra and was hitherto confined to mere continuo (accompaniment) roles. Bach's brilliant scoring changed all that! In the tutti sections, the harpsichord merely fulfills its traditional continuo function, but in the solo passages it shares space with just a single violin and single flute and is allowed to become a real melodic force. In the final third of the First Movement, the harpsichord takes over completely and performs a brilliant extended solo before the full orchestra returns to close the movement. The final work on this disk is PACHELBEL's CANON AND GIGUE. The Canon is very well known indeed, but it's accompanying gigue (jig) is not so familiar. A Canon is a polyphonic composition in which the introductory part is imitated by one or more other parts. Pachelbel's famous Canon is a supreme example of the genre as you will hear. The Gigue is really very short, just two repeating 10 bar sections, but it uses its time wisely and accomplishes quite a lot in such a short space of time. ------------- ABOUT SYNTHIA: In simple terms, the Amiga generates its high quality audio by "playing" wavetables through a Digital to Analogue Convertor (DAC) within the Paula custom chip. A wavetable is simply a numerical representation of an audio event and comprises a series of discrete "samples" of the sound over time. The most commonly used method of getting interesting sounds into the Amiga is via a hardware sampler or "digitiser", together with one of the several excellent sample editing packages on the market. However, this requires you to have access to the interesting sound in the first place, be it on record etc., or made by a "live" musical instrument or human/animal voice! Both sources imply of course that the actual process of sound creation occurs OUTSIDE the Amiga! Direct synthesis of sounds actually on board the Amiga is a very attractive alternative to the above but for some reason there are very few packages which permit you to do this. One, of course, is the "Analog Synth" section of SONIX which is quite versatile and easy to use. It is somewhat restricted in its capabilities though. For serious synthesis, SYNTHIA represents the state of the art for the Amiga. SYNTHIA is a suite of five programs, each one representing a different method of synthesis. There are three general purpose synthesisers: SUBTRACTIVE, ADDITIVE and INTERPOLATION and two specialised synthesisers: PLUCKED STRING and PERCUSSION. SUBTRACTIVE uses the method commonly found on the older analog synths like the Moog, in which a harmonically rich waveform is processed by a variety of filters to produce the desired sound. Amplitude and frequency modulation can then be added to enhance the sound. ADDITIVE lets you build up a sound harmonic by harmonic and allows you to control the intensity of these individual harmonics over time in order to create some remarkably complex and realistic instrumental sounds. INTERPOLATION is a unique method of synthesis which can produce some remarkable dynamic effects just by smoothly changing the shape of one waveform into another. With care, some startling sounds can be created with no additional processing. For instance, in the first track on this disk "Arrival of the Queen of Sheba", there is an oboe-like sound in the second solo which sounds like it is being wildly filter-swept! In fact, this sound was created in INTERPOLATION with no filtering used at all! PLUCKED STRING is a specialised module devoted to the creation of such sounds as guitars, string basses, pizzicatto violins and so on, in fact, any instrument which has to be plucked! In essence it is similar to SUBTRACTIVE in operation but it employs special algorithms to impart a highly realistic "pluck" to the attack of the sound. PERCUSSION as its name implies is for producing all manner of drum and allied effects. It can also be used as a highly versatile "special effects" generator for all those wierd "synth-like" effects (that's the only way I can describe them!). In addition, each module shares a number of common tools and special effects such as filtering, flanging, reverb and so on. Each module also incorporates a device known as a NON-LINEAR WAVESHAPER which can serve a number of functions. It can be used simply for creating some interesting distortion effects, like "fuzz" on an electric guitar for instance. Or, it can be used by the more adventurous musician as a sixth, completely independant method of sound synthesis in its own right. All of SYNTHIA's modules output their files in standard IFF 8SVX format which means they can be used in just about all the popular score editors available, SONIX, Deluxe Music and so on. In addition, any digitized sound in this format may be loaded into SYNTHIA for further modification, perhaps a touch of flanging or filtering for instance! For the creation of the sounds used on this disk however, SYNTHIA was not the end of the story. Once synthesised, each sound was saved, then further processed in SONIX to give variations in loudness (for dynamics), vibrato and articulation in order to maximise the expressiveness of the music. Therefore, you will find that there are several versions of any given sound on this disk. Feel free to use any of the sounds on the disk for use in your own SONIX creations! Above all, enjoy the music! I hope you are able to listen to it through your stereo, that's what Amiga music is all about. I'm sorry about the lack of graphics to look at, try listening with your eyes closed, you get much better pictures that way! ROB BAXTER November 1989 AFTERTHOUGHTS DEPT... When you boot this disk, the Amiga's audio filter is disabled, allowing the full frequency range of the Amiga to come through. Unfortunately, it also allows the dreaded aliasing to come through as well! Because of the relatively low sampling frequency used in SONIX, some degree of aliasing is impossible to avoid. Although I have tried to minimise the effect of this by band-limiting my sounds wherever practicable, aliasing can still be heard from time to time - even the best Amiga music suffers from this malady! You can turn the filter back on again in order to reduce the aliasing even more - but only if you enjoy listening to music with your ears full of clotted cream! Apologies to the impatient for the time it takes each piece of music to load! All these pieces need to load a lot of instrument data and of course, matters aren't made any better by the fact that the Amiga isn't exactly blessed with the fastest drives in the world! Press space... THANKS-FOR-THE-MEMORY DEPT... Unexpanded 512k users may find that they need to disconnect or disable any external drives they have connected to their Amigas, especially for bigger files like the Brandenburg 5. SPECIAL THANKS TO MARTYN AND EVERYONE AT 17 BIT. VERY SPECIAL THANKS TO PSW. THAT'S ALL FOLKS...