1.
A few notes on BP2
BP2
is able to interact simultaneously with three environments:
MIDI,
QuickTime
Music
and
Csound.
The latter is presented in §17.
To
produce MIDI or QuickTime music with BP2 you need any of the following setups:
• a
MIDI interface connecting the 'modem' or 'printer' serial port of the Macintosh
to a
MIDI
synthesizer, sampler or expander
.
This interface is a cheap item available in music or computer shops. A few
expanders have built-in MIDI interfaces and can be hooked directly to the
serial port. If your Mac has a unique serial port connector (e.g; PowerMac
6500 or a cheap PowerBook) you may be forced to install OMS (see below) to
enable communication with MIDI. On some PowerBooks (such as my 5300cs) this
serial port becomes a valid 'modem' port when either EtherTalk or IRTalk is
active, but old PowerBooks such as the PB 150 will remain dumb unless OMS is
properly installed.
This
setup will allow you to produce musical pieces with a high sound quality
depending on external hardware.
•
Opcode
OM
S
(Open Music Syste
m)
installed and an OMS-compatible
software
synthesizer
(such as SoftSynth) running on the same machine as BP2. The MIDI output of BP2
will be routed to the synthesizer via an
Inter-Application
Communication (IAC)
bus
handled by OMS. (See OMS documentation) Beware that your Mac is powerful
enough, and has enough RAM, to run BP2 simultaneously with the synthesizer.
This
solution also produces high sound quality. It is recommended to connect the
audio output to an external amplifier.
•
QuickTime
Music
and Opcode OMS installed. QuickTime Music is a standard extension of MacOS.
Run the "Extension Manager" control panel to make sure that QuickTime
extensions are enabled at startup. In system versions below MacOS 8.0, you
will also need an extension named "QuickTime® Musical Instrument
s"
in the Extensions folder.
Opcode
OMS is free of charge and supplied with many music software packages. You may
download it from <http://www.opcode.com>. You must use a version equal
or greater to 2.0.
With
this setup you will be able to play BP2 music on the Mac's loudspeaker, using
the soft synthesizer imbedded in QuickTime.
If
you connect the Mac to an amplifier and speakers you will notice that the sound
quality is far from that of a professional synthesizer. However, this quality
is bound to improve with each upgrade of QuickTime Music.
The
preceding setups may of course be combined. Once OMS has been installed you
will be able to use its setup to direct BP2's output to the device of your
choice in a MIDI studio, or to the internal loudspeaker via QuickTime Music.
Again, installing OMS is highly recommended if you plan to spend some time with
this and other MIDI music software.
Once
you have understood what BP2 is about you will also be able to
export
music
in two formats:
•
MIDI
files
that may imported and manipulated by any MIDI software (including BP2 itself).
Check "MIDI file
s"
and uncheck "MIDI" in the "Devices" menu;
•
Csound
scores
that may be used to produce sound files in the Csound environment. BP2 has
advanced features enabling you to handle sophisticated Csound instruments in
the most flexible and user-friendly way. If you are already conversant with
Csound and your Mac has a 16-bit sound editor you may check "Csound score
s"
in the "Devices" menu and proceed immediately to §17.
MIDI
instruments (keyboard, guitar, drum, etc.) may optionally be used to control BP2.
Conventional
sounds like cello, piano, flute, drums, etc., will be good enough for
experimenting with BP2. Some of the supplied examples will indeed sound
bizarre unless they are performed on the MIDI device they were designed for: a
Roland® D-50 or D-550 synthesiser with patch data ROM PN-D50-02 and
Musitronics Multitimbral Expansion card (phew!).
A
few sound examples are attached to a paper available on line (see
<http://www.france.diplomatie.fr/hote/delhi-csh/jim96/jim96.htm>). In
the near future, more musical examples using common MIDI hardware, QuickTime
instruments and Csound will be made available for demos.
BP2
is designed to run on a 14-inch monitor, i.e. minimum 640 x 480 pixels, with at
least 16 gray or color levels.