Bits and Bytes (1983)
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Just finished episode 10. I'm quite the classic rock fan. Does anyone know if any bands from the 80's used computer generated music?
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@connorsoliver said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Just finished episode 10. I'm quite the classic rock fan. Does anyone know if any bands from the 80's used computer generated music?
They mostly used MIDI sequencing to control synths, which were digital by then. Computers/processors could only really handle note data well, audio takes a lot of horsepower compared to MIDI.
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@connorsoliver said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Just finished episode 10. I'm quite the classic rock fan. Does anyone know if any bands from the 80's used computer generated music?
They did, I can't think of any though. But loads of pop bands especially did it. I was a musician a little in the 80s and there were whole publications dedicated to it then. And around 1986 I attended the COUGOR (COmmodore Users Group Of Rochester) meeting and the ACORN group (The Atari equivalent users group) sponsored an all-electronic artist to come and do a whole concert.
The Amiga and Atari ST were huge music production systems in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was in that period that loads and loads of studios starting using those tools all of the time.
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@RojoLoco said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
@connorsoliver said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Just finished episode 10. I'm quite the classic rock fan. Does anyone know if any bands from the 80's used computer generated music?
They mostly used MIDI sequencing to control synths, which were digital by then. Computers/processors could only really handle note data well, audio takes a lot of horsepower compared to MIDI.
Which is why the Amiga and Atari ST specifically were used for more, they had extra hardware built in for that express purpose, and because they had that, people made peripherals for them as well.
But even there, MIDI was big. So you'd often use external tools like Korg keyboards, to be automated by the computer. They were basically special purpose audio computers at the time.
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@scottalanmiller said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
@connorsoliver said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Just finished episode 10. I'm quite the classic rock fan. Does anyone know if any bands from the 80's used computer generated music?
The Amiga and Atari ST were huge music production systems in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was in that period that loads and loads of studios starting using those tools all of the time.
Those did multitrack audio or sequencing?
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The Amiga and Atari ST were also huge leaps forward in performance. They were 16bit Motorola 68000 machines made well and were orders of magnitude more powerful than their 8088, Z80, Commodore, Apple, TRS-80 and other competitors at the time with their 8bit machines designed in the 1970s.
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@RojoLoco said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
@scottalanmiller said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
@connorsoliver said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Just finished episode 10. I'm quite the classic rock fan. Does anyone know if any bands from the 80's used computer generated music?
The Amiga and Atari ST were huge music production systems in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was in that period that loads and loads of studios starting using those tools all of the time.
Those did multitrack audio or sequencing?
Yes they did! They were really the first machines able to do that and affordable by humans rather than companies.
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@scottalanmiller said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
@RojoLoco said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
@scottalanmiller said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
@connorsoliver said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Just finished episode 10. I'm quite the classic rock fan. Does anyone know if any bands from the 80's used computer generated music?
The Amiga and Atari ST were huge music production systems in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was in that period that loads and loads of studios starting using those tools all of the time.
Those did multitrack audio or sequencing?
Yes they did! They were really the first machines able to do that and affordable by humans rather than companies.
Crazy. I didn't have multitrack ability until Pentium II era.
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The Amiga 2500 was really the leap. You could do that stuff with the 1000, 1500, and 2000 but it was super limited. The 2500 (right at the end of the 80s) was 200-400% more RAM, like 200%+ more CPU power, and newer support hardware than even the older Amigas and was so powerful that it was still blowing away most IBM PCs in the mid-1990s.
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@RojoLoco said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
@scottalanmiller said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
@RojoLoco said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
@scottalanmiller said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
@connorsoliver said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Just finished episode 10. I'm quite the classic rock fan. Does anyone know if any bands from the 80's used computer generated music?
The Amiga and Atari ST were huge music production systems in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was in that period that loads and loads of studios starting using those tools all of the time.
Those did multitrack audio or sequencing?
Yes they did! They were really the first machines able to do that and affordable by humans rather than companies.
Crazy. I didn't have multitrack ability until Pentium II era.
3D rendering via ray tracing, too!
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The Amiga 1000 in 1983 was handling 4,096 colours and 640x480 displays, too! Which seems silly now, but displaying colours and doing 3D rendering was unheard of back then.
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Episode 11 down, is there a reason that a lot of programs used green as a color for text and what not?
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@connorsoliver said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Episode 11 down, is there a reason that a lot of programs used green as a color for text and what not?
Yes, in the OLD days, monitors only came in green, it was the only colour. It was "black and white" with the white being green. Green is for visibility, it's easy on the eyes and very clear. Some were made in amber or light blue, but almost all were green and were so common that they called them "green screens" (prior to the video term.)
Later when people had colour options, often green was (and is) still used for the same reason that they manufactured that way long ago... it's just easy to read. But others do it to be nostalgic.
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@scottalanmiller said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Later when people had colour options, often green was (and is) still used for the same reason that they manufactured that way long ago... it's just easy to read. But others do it to be nostalgic.
Kind of both reasons is why i set my terminal to this on my workstations.
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Just finished up the series. So cool to see the mouse being introduced.
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@JaredBusch said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
@scottalanmiller said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Later when people had colour options, often green was (and is) still used for the same reason that they manufactured that way long ago... it's just easy to read. But others do it to be nostalgic.
Kind of both reasons is why i set my terminal to this on my workstations.
Same here. I love how it looks, and I love the feeling of being back in 1983.
I tend to use a slightly lighter green than you, and I make the background grey rather than black for lower contrast.
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@connorsoliver said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Just finished up the series. So cool to see the mouse being introduced.
You moved through that fast!
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@scottalanmiller said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
@JaredBusch said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
@scottalanmiller said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Later when people had colour options, often green was (and is) still used for the same reason that they manufactured that way long ago... it's just easy to read. But others do it to be nostalgic.
Kind of both reasons is why i set my terminal to this on my workstations.
Same here. I love how it looks, and I love the feeling of being back in 1983.
I tend to use a slightly lighter green than you, and I make the background grey rather than black for lower contrast.
I am just lazy and didn't get specific. I simply chose the built in green on black
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@scottalanmiller said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
The Amiga 1000 in 1983 was handling 4,096 colours and 640x480 displays, too! Which seems silly now, but displaying colours and doing 3D rendering was unheard of back then.
Did Amiga sell a monitor that was capable of 640x480 at that time? That's a year before IBM had EGA, which was only 640x350, and four years before they finally got to 640x480 with VGA.
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@CharlesHTN said in Bits and Bytes (1983):
Did Amiga sell a monitor that was capable of 640x480 at that time?
Yes, even with the original 1985 Amiga 1000 release. Not only did they sell it, I have the original model sitting here with me and it still works.
