[Liverpool] Retro Computing

[Richard Smedley]

On Fri, 2009-02-06 at 16:05 +0000, Dan Lynch wrote:
> I use a DAW most of the time these days, I only used the 
> Atari at school when I had the chance. I then moved onto 
> Cubase when I was older and could afford a PC. As a MIDI 
> sequencer yeah the Atari is great, simple and still 
> powerful enough, I know people who still use them. These 
> days I'm doing a lot of digital audio work with big wave 
> files and so on. I used to use a separate tape recorder 
> in the studio as a lot of people did and sync to the midi 
> sequencer with a SMPTE timecode track. These days it's in 
> one PC tower. As long as you get the end result sounding 
> right it doesn't matter what you use :)

I only make acoustic music nowadays, but 19 years ago
I remember spending a couple of days in a MIDI studio,
set up above the Midland Bank at the bottom of Hardman St.

Funny thing is, after all our effort, we produced a
load of drivel that sounded like a New Age record.
A good example of being steered by the "instrument"
away from our normal sound :-/

Now, I'm about to set up a MIDI keyboard and PC 
for the kids' homework. Does anybody still use
MIDI with joystick ports on sound cards, or am I
going to find only USB MIDI works well with modern 
distros?

 - Richard