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A Passport To
Great Music
by Al Ferrier
It seems like
an age since I started using my Atari 1040STE
for music. Come to think of it, it's nearly
ten years but I don't regret a single moment.
I wanted a computer
that would easily fit in with my existing synth-based
music system and the built-in MIDI ports were
a major plus. If ever I needed a demonstration
of just how good an Atari could be as the brains
of an integrated MIDI system, my good friend
Alan Platten provided it.
Over the course
of about six weekends, I visited Alan at his
home in deepest Kent, ostensibly to record some
tracks I had written for a demo. Alan
and I beavered away getting the tracks onto his Cubase
set-up and they sounded great. Here was
the flexibility I'd been after for ages. No
more arduous step-time sequencing on my aged
Korg Poly 800 Mk 2; the whole thing could be
multi-layered and even editable!
Strangely enough,
it wasn't Cubase that captured my imagination
but a program that Alan had ceased to
use. He recommended Passport's Master Tracks Pro to me; its graphic pages
and easy editing
a positive boon to someone taking their first
tentative steps in Atari sequencing. Six
months later I took the plunge and bought my
Atari and Alan's copy of MT Pro. I've
never looked back...
The beginning
and the end
MT Pro was supported
on the Atari by its Californian software developer
Passport until 1989 when it decided to concentrate
on the Mac and PC versions. I bought version
3.5 but soon upgraded to the final Atari version,
3.6, which is almost identical to 3.5. I
soon found the page-based set-up andtape recorder
recording interface a cinch to work with; it
was as if the program was actively helping me to
write interesting stuff and it even forgave
the odd mistake I made with it. I couldn't
have asked for better.
One of the first
things I noticed as I got to grips with file
sizes, desk accessories and Auto folder programs
was the size of MT Pro's main program file:
it's tiny! A mere 130 KB plus a few extra for
the resource file is hardly anything and it
meant I could experiment a bit when sorting
out a combination of desk accessories that I was
happy to run MT Pro alongside for maximum assistance.
It's a very stable program as well.
MT Pro is a 64-track sequencer so there's loads of room for
layering and overdubbing. Each track has
solo, loop and mute selectors and you can record
on more than one track at a time. A handy
little feature is a text-box which enables you
to enter a description of the track and what instrument
is playing its notes. Add to this a little
program change dialog beside every track and
you can recall exactly what is playing what
and what sound is being used.
This makes for
an easy-to-use interface; something that has
the power to handle all the hard work for you
so you can concentrate on being musical. It's
totally GEM-based too and doesn't go in for
littering its pages with loads of options and
buttons.
Programming is
done over three basic pages, the Track Sheet
which I've detailed above, the Song Editor which
looks after the arrangement side of a song or
piece and the Step Editor which displays
the notes in each track on a piano-roll style
grid.
Play to win
MT Pro has some
features which were to become standard a bit
later as software sequencing became the norm
in amateur and professional studios. Several
spring to mind but I must mention the librarian
section and its versatility when synchronizing to
various codes. MT Pro contains a useful system-exclusive librarian which gives you flexibility
in saving and loading programs into
your various bits of kit. You can even
add comments to each SysEx file as you save it to
remind yourself of just what that string sound
or lead patch sounds like. Having a generic
librarian built-in saves time and hassle quitting
and reloading and can be a real help.
I should add
that MT Pro saves and loads SysEx data in its
own format so it's worth bearing this in mind
when pulling down sounds for your kit from the
internet. If you are keen to do that, MIDIEX is probably
better as that handles raw SysEx data much
better. Once it's in your kit, you can
let MT Pro take advantage!
As I mentioned
before, MT Pro syncs to various codes coming
off tape as well as directly to MIDI when it
can run either as a slave and as master time-keeper.
In fact, not only does it read SMPTE and
MIDI Time Code, it can "stripe" (generate) SMPTE
onto multi-track tape as well. It's functions
like these that make it a positive joy to work
with when doing soundtrack work. There's
a little sub-function called Markers which locks
a certain event in the sequencer to a timecode
position for enhanced accuracy and even a Fit
Time variable which adjusts the tempo of a piece
to fit a certain timespan. The scenario
given in the (excellent) manual supposes a jingle
composer who is told his music must fit into
less than thirty seconds for a commercial. Fit
Time makes the number-crunching a doddle and
everyone involved is chuffed. You can
imagine the scorewriter being well-pleased overall
and it's not hard to see why.
So what's it
like when it's running? The actual record/play/stop
functions are hard-wired, as it were, to
certain keys: the space bar plays
and stops and the record function takes its cue
from the [Enter] key. Apart from these,
you can also remotely control the actual tape recorder
functions from your master keyboard or other
MIDI controller as play, stop, record are
fully configurable when playing over MIDI. If it makes things easier for
you to have your
top C key start playback, then go to the dialog
box involved, highlight it and just press
the key. The sequencer has a built-in
metronome which can also be configured to play
over your monitor's speakers or over MIDI. You
can alter the settings for
bar, beat and MIDI channel and even the duration
of those notes!
Rock at your
own risk
Apart from all
that I've mentioned above, there are a good
number of features that only make themselves
known to you as you get more used to working
with it. Alongside the Track Sheet,
Song Editor and Step Editor pages are separate
pages for velocity, program change, conductor
(tempo) and several other MIDI-definable parameters.
These are quickly summoned
with the function keys on the ST. They
are fully zoomable too so you can go in
close to see just when an event happens. These
pages enable you to "draw" the velocity
curve you need with your mouse for that snare
fill or whatever and this can work a treat.
It makes it very intuitive and takes out
a lot of the maths involved.
MT Pro has an
intriguing "jukebox" facility: if you decide
that two songs sound great one after the
other, just leave a few empty bars, put in your
program changes for each track and paste
the data from the second song onto the end of
the first. The manual says that you
could sequence up a load of songs like this
but I reckon the eventual file would be too
huge for most floppy-based systems and would
take a fair while to load and save even
with a hard drive. That said, I have done
just that a few times and it is a useful method!
I believe
MT Pro was one of the first software sequencers
to handle different MIDI file formats. It
has the ability to write a piece's data as either
Format 0 (all data on one track) or Format 1 (all
parts exploded onto different tracks). It
can't convert between formats but I've often found
Sequencer One or Breakthru is good for that.
It's worth bearing in mind when saving and loading that MT Pro uses its own file format
with the extender .MTS so it's not acceptable
to any other sequencer. For those that
work across different platforms and formats,
it might be more use to save as a MIDI file instead.
Fade to grey
It's probably
true what they say: each musician, arranger,
remixer or producer gets to know only one particular
sequencer very well. With me it's MT
Pro but I know others that can't do
without their Sequencer One or Cubase or even
KCS. It's whatever you get used to using
but, if you are happy with the method and what
is produced, that's fine.
It's a shame
that Passport passed up the chance to develop
MT Pro further on the Atari but I knew some
years ago that it was still supported on the
Mac and PC with version numbers being
as high as 4.8 (Mac) and 5.2 on the PC. I'd
love to see how they improved on a masterpiece!
Al Ferrier
The author works
in both electronic music and sports journalism.
He has tinkered with synths, drum machines
and other assorted technology since 1984 and
continues to play live with his
covers duo Souvenir as well as composing theme
and soundtrack music with partner David
McNamara. Both David and Al were members
of early '90s London trio Company.
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