History - 4

Will There Be A Future?

Well... let me answer that first question straight away - of course there will still be a future. The question would have been better put 'does CONCEPT CITY still have a future' and here we shall see that in fact yes it does.

CONCEPT CITY Studio 4 is based out in the leafy suburbs of this great metropolis. Compared to the vast dinosaurs of yesteryear the actual equipment count is small. A personal computer*, effects pedal, guitars, microphone and some headphones. "Oh no - he's gone acoustic" I hear you shriek...

Actually dear Listeners CONCEPT CITY has gone 'virtual'. It's been digitised and placed in a box. As well as the buildings and the people all the recordings, art galleries and libraries have been digitised. If you could see the information stored in the box it would be like a massive library, set in a landscape sculpted by the life of Mr Concept. Tens of thousands of sound recordings, pictures, books and photographs all ready to be accessed in the twinkling of an eye. A whole lifetime archived. Recordings from TV and radio, live gigs, overheard conversations, telephone calls and more - all carefully transcribed from the old cassette library into digital form. All the citizens and buildings have been digitised as well and turned into pixels. It's quite painless...

This whole website was created on that machine. And so too will be the future of CONCEPT CITY for not only does the machine contain the archive of information it contains the tools to transform that information into new works of art for your entertainment.

'Hey - I need to know a bit more about this - can you expand a little here please buddy?' I hear you say...

Nowadays modern PC's are quite powerful and can run software that would have had computers of yesteryear on their knees. For instance the PC I am typing on is 3000 time faster than the original UK101. The software we use for making music gives us a whole recording studio far more powerful than any home setup of 20 years ago, in fact you can create professional recordings on a PC costing £500 using software that is FREE.

At the center of your music making software is a program called a sequencer. This can record audio and digital information (MIDI) in real time. It's like having a massive tape recorder with unlimited (or almost) tracks on which you can see the music on the tape! You can move pieces of sound around the screen as if they were pieces on a chess set. The sounds can be squashed/stretched/reversed/pitch changed at will, and effects (such as reverb/echo/chorus) can be applied to every individual piece. It's sort of like a wordprocessor for music!

Usually the sequencer will come with some of it's own effects etc, but you can also obtain items of software called 'plugins' which will add extra features to your sequencer. These features may be more effects, or 'virtual' instruments. The instruments can be played at the same time as your recordings. As well as commercial plugins there are hundreds of free plugins readily available.

The sequencer will also be able to play small snippets of sound called 'loops' or 'samples'. These short sounds can be played at different pitches to make music - and sometimes the software is clever enough to time-stretch them so that, if the pitch is say increased, the sample will not play in a shorter time.

Mr Concept has even got a sequencer in his pocket! It's on a small computer called a Palm Organiser and the software is called Bhajis Loops.

If you want to know more about making music on your PC then buy a copy of Computer Music Magazine from a newsagent. Every month the cover DVD has a complete music studio in software for FREE! Follow the link for more details.