10/22/2021 0 Comments Music Software For Apple Mac
Initially, the program was backed up by a physical add-on – MOTU’s legendary hardware is still revered to this day – but over time, and as personal computers were blessed with the advanced processing power we take for granted today, the external elements became less important.Performer was a way to visually compose and sequence tracks using electronic instruments, something which back in 1985 was still an incredibly novel idea. Even better, Performer allowed producers to dig deeper into the hidden features in their shiny boxes – notoriously difficult-to-program synthesizers such as the Yamaha DX7, which previously were only patchable using a clunky LCD display, were now open to be controlled by a far friendlier system.Five years after its original release, the sequencer’s advanced MIDI capabilities were bolstered by a hard disk recording option, and the program was renamed Digital Performer, a name it retains to this day. It was released only two years after the introduction of MIDI, the protocol that enabled computers (and other hardware) to communicate with a growing arsenal of compatible synthesizers, samplers and drum machines, and worked as a bridge between the computer and a studio’s worth of gear. Can you really imagine how Chicago drill would sound without FL Studio? How quiet music might still be without L1 Ultramaximizer, or how T-Pain might sound without Autotune?The following programs changed the way we think about the relationship between music and software, for better and for worse.One of the very earliest commercial software sequencers – and certainly the first for Apple’s Macintosh system – was Performer, from Massachusetts-based software company Mark of the Unicorn (MOTU for short). It wasn’t long before software actually started to surpass most hardware, and for all the times you hear Jack White harping on about dubbing to two inch tape, it’s far more convenient to just boot up your shareware (read: free) copy of Reaper and simply hit record.In 2014, you can even make music on your phone – with software that would put a decrepit copy of Opcode Vision to shame – but those old programs that many of us had to plough through, crash after crash, were absolutely crucial in informing not only the digital audio workstations and suites of plug-ins that we have available to us now, but also the music itself.Max has since seen the addition of a video manipulation package (Jitter), a plug-in bundle (Pluggo) and been integrated with popular DAW Ableton Live, and continues to grow in popularity.Potentially, Max can be engineered to do pretty much whatever you need, providing you have the chops to program it. Puckette depending on who you talk to), which introduced revolutionary real-time audio processing.In 1997, Zicarelli started Cycling ’74, who since 1999 have handled all of Max’s commercial packages. Guided by Puckette’s powerful new program Pure Data, Zicarelli evolved Max into Max/MSP (which either stands for Max Signal Processing or Miller S. The BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop were also spotted using one at various points throughout the 1980s, and synth innovator Wendy Carlos has called it “the one essential piece of software ‘equipment’.”Weird Al Yankovic & Wendy Carlos – ‘Carnival of the Animals – Part II’ (1988)Max was developed in the early ’80s by American music professor Miller Puckette while he was studying at French electro-acoustic music institute IRCAM, and was intended to be a “computer environment for realizing works of live electronic music.” It was based on ideas from Max Mathews (who also lent Max its name), developer of the massively influential MUSIC (the first computer program to generate audio waveforms through synthesis) and Barry Vercoe (developer of MUSIC 11, and eventually Csound) but unexpectedly began to attract attention from users outside of the academic circle.What helped take Max beyond the confines of the lab was the involvement of the tireless David Zicarelli, who commercialized the software with help from Opcode Systems (the developers of Vision, another competing sequencer) and began to sell it in 1990. Warp veterans and noted gear obsessives Autechre are paid-up members of the fan club (Sean Booth mentioned in a 2008 interview that it would be a copy of Digital Performer and a microphone that he’d take with him if he was locked in a jail cell for a year and allowed one piece of equipment), and so are Björk collaborators Matmos, who have been using the sequencer since way back in 1987. It’s tough in 2014 to recall a time when some kind of visual composition and production tool wasn’t the norm, but Digital Performer helped set the stage for much of what was to come, and did it with the kind of rock-solid, industrial-strength power that is still spoken about in hushed tones.Digital Performer’s versatility and its complex MIDI functionality has seen it championed by a certain tech-obsessed subset of electronic musicians, and rightly so.
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