Conference napalm::commusic_v1

    Gee, I think my advice (unless you want to sell what you do)
    is to call up one of these places and work out a deal for the
    sources like: you give me the sources, I've implement these features
    for you.
    
    A lot of places might not accept such a deal. I wouldn't without
    knowing who you are, but I'd always be willing to take money
    from you for a "source license".
    
    	db

    There are *plenty* of sequencers for the Atari that will blow EZTrack
    out of the pond.  There are also lots of topics on sequencers in here
    (try DIR/TITLE=SEQ).

    Good luck on writing your own.  It's NOT trivial - although I consider
    myself a good programmer, I spent circa $250 on MTP rather than fight
    with my own code. 

-b

    
    I agree with Brad, a lot of effort needs to go into a sequencer
    , much more than say a librarian. This may be a good place to start
    though, particularily if youve not dealt in this environment before.
    However if you are serious you may want to pick up a copy of a book
    called "C programming for MIDI" by Jim Conger. It deals primarily
    with the IBM but may be of help. There may also be some public domain
    stuff around that you could get hold of and build onto it.
    
    Good Luck, Ken
    

I'm in basic agreement w/ the preceding entries however ...

Seem to recall the CMU Midi Toolkit, by Roger Dannenberg (sp?) having source 
code for some basic MIDI building blocks. This was specific to the 
Roland MPU 401, IBM, and Lattice C environment, but I think the higher-level
functionality may be useful for transliteration to Pascal unless only sources
for the I/O routines were included with the rest being obj libs.
The cost was minimal.

Anyone know what the toolkit includes?  When I spoke w/ Dannenberg in '86 (he
was also working on music representation), the toolkit was just being made
available.  Since then I have seen numerous references to it, suggesting some
ongoing work.

    re .0 & .4	There IS something available that includes a MIDI kernal,
    a fairly decent sequencer and a whole bunch of "primitives" (??) and
    some other "schtuff" all in source code.  It was written up a couple
    of months ago in {whatever magazine is still under my bed} as a
    sort of build it up the way YOU WANT IT and kwityerbitchin kit.
    I'll TRY to remember to type in an excerpt, or at least the reference,
    on monday- which is so far away right now, or the week-end, since
    I SHALL get bored !
    
    	Reg
    

    re .5	Well, I  *_DID_*  remember to look this up.  It turned
    out to be the September issue of MCS {and/but} it is for the AMIGA
    computer.  I don't regard this as 'bad' news since the AMIGA is
    more rare than AtariST or Macs, so it is likely that they will port
    it to the larger bases.  Or, {dumm de dumm}, a Commusic volunteer
    "might"  just step up ??
    
    	Reg
    
    	An aside, there is also a  "coming_in_February"  Mac-sac equivalent
    (roughly) for the AMIGA, so it might become the prefered machine
    pretty soon, i.e.  it will be able to run all (almost) mac and ST
    software as well as AMIGA specific stuff, whereas STs will only
    run ST and mac s/w and macs will be able to run only mac s/w. 
    

St running Mac software <> Mac w/ Midi.  St with Mac software and magic sac
(and spectre128 99% likely) can't talk MIDI.  Might be a problem on
Amiga too.

Chad

    
    	OK, the product I have been refering to is MIDISynergy I, by
    Geodesic Publications, no address or phone number supplied in the
    article.  Since I don't have permission to reproduce the article
    in whole or in part I'll just try to hit the high points.
    
    	They claim that you'll need rudimentary programming skills and
    access to a ManxC compiler.  There's a blurb about doing a complete
    turnaround on the (now) traditional approach to copy protecting
    software by providing sources and accepting back any additions from
    users that they would like to share with fellow users.  Supposedly
    they'll make these available, though no plans for distribution are
    mentioned, not clear if it would be for free, etc.  (Sounds like
    DECUS of long ago ??)
    
    	Under "Technical details";  The MIDI kernal is in assembly language
    (they seem to think thats the bit you'd never want to touch, ha)
    and the "bells and whistles" are in C source.  Something about the
    ManxC compiler being a two step compiler, so the C files provided
    and the user developed ones can be optimized for size and speed at
    assembly time (maybe they mean size OR speed).  The plain white
    paper manual (does that mean cheep ?) includes printouts of the
    source files and programming hints on connecting user files to the
    "stock" sequencer.  Also an excellent technical explanation of the
    "standard" MIDI file formats, the file structure used by the software.
    List of files on the disk:
    
    File name	Function		# lines
    
    10.asm	MIDI Kernal		700
    20.c	Main program		150
    21.c	Gadget Interface	800
    22.c	MIDI functions		400
    23.c	IFF-SMUS reader		450
    
    	(These look so 'round number'ish' that they might be estimates,
    i.e. not final, or "when ?")
    
    	The standard package when compiled will produce a working sequencer
    that has record, play, loop, rewind, locate and what the article
    describes as unusual things like mouse controlled pitch bend,
    modulation and moused transpose.  Has file compatability with Opcode,
    Dr T's, MIDIfiles and Amiga SMUS sequence formats.  Also a MIDI monitor
    window that displays incoming midi events.
    
    	The big thing that is missing is quantizing, or any type of
    timing correction, they figure this will be (one of) the first things
    added by the altruistic users group.

    	Reg	{Amiga owner, natch}
    
    PS  Yes, AtariSTs running mac-sac via their midi port might have
    problems running midi software at the same time through their midi
    port, though the mac would presumably be running the midi stuff
    out of a printer or similar port since it doesn't have a midi port
    until a midi interface or something is hooked to its serial port
    (I think ??) so maybe thats where the ST would have to run the midi
    out of now that the real midi port is taken up with the mac-sac
    thinggie.  My comment was really directed at general software, i.e.
    with the tendency toward things like mac-sac (emulators and whatever)
    the owners of the less popular (to software marketers) machines may
    actually have a wider variety of software available to them.
    {and there's always the bridge-card:-^) }