Last month's look at American music software packages took note of the fact that the Yanks have more money than we do, but their enthusiastic support of the more expensive Apple, Macintosh and IBM computers may be brought to an end by the launch of two machines which seem designed for the computerwise musician. The Commodore Amiga is already available in the States, but the UK shouldn't be too far behind; the Atari ST will appear soon in the UK, although the company are much smaller over here than in the States.

The Amiga has been described as "much too impressive to have come from Commodore" and seems set to revolutionise the home computer industry. It's a 16-bit machine, which means that it can calculate much more quickly than a Commodore 64, BBC or Spectrum, and works on a system known as Multi-Tasking — in other words, it can perform several functions at once. As far as musical applications go, this means that you could be loading a new set of MIDI sequences while you're still playing the old ones, which is pretty nifty for stage purposes.

The Amiga has a 256k memory which can be doubled in size simply by slotting an expansion onto the back, and on top of that has 192k of memory devoted solely to sound, graphics and animation. There's a built-in speech synthesizer with a male or female voice, so your computer can now talk back to you.

At this point hard information on the Amiga begins to get thin on the ground and to run into the realms of the unbelievable. But try this for size:

- 4-channel stereo sound with 32 voices
- Polyphonic sound sampling
- Compatible with Fairlight CMI samples
- Compatible with all IBM software
- Video sampling and cartoon quality animation.
- Mouse-operated (a real Macintosh-buster!)
- Harmony package orchestrates an accompaniment for any monophonic sound input
- Serial Port for a MIDI interface
- RGB monitor port for Genlock to video machines

As for the software available when the Amiga is launched, so far there's a word processor, a colour video digitiser to capture still pictures from videotape, a Score Writer for full musical texts programmed via MIDI, a score word processor for professional musicians, a four-voice synth-sequencer package for educational purposes, and what Philip Glass would no doubt describe as a whole shitload of games, business and computer language packages.

Now if the Amiga was going to be £10,000 we could all sit back and wish we had one. But it's not going to be £10,000, and it's not going to be £5,000. In fact the basic machine is going to be less than £1,000, and that's with a built-in disk drive(!) It's already being used in the US to create animated films (that's how good the graphics are) and if the music capabilities are comparable the machine's going to be absolutely awesome. A quick preview of the sampling facilities at the PCW show (with a flute and an electric guitar chord sound) was encouraging, and UK versions of the Amiga should be delivered in February. If there are any more questions, I'll be at the front of the queue outside the first shop to take delivery.

As for the Atari 520ST it's described as "making the Amiga sound like Sooty's toy piano", and is a 16-bit machine costing £749.80 with a half-megabyte disk drive and a Mouse. There's only one music package in the initial releases though — Bank Street Music Writer by Broderbund (through Software Express) — but there are several games such as Ballblazer (Ballblazer?) and Rescue From Fractal us from the Star Wars people Lucasfilm, which should keep us occupied until the music stuff turns up.

On the more affordable front, the Syntron Digidrum for the Commodore 64 has been updated and is now even worthier of consideration than before (ie, it's bleedin' brilliant). The Digidrum module clips onto the back of the 64 and the software plays 10 Songs of 100 steps chosen from 51 patterns at time, which can be composed on a Compositional Page and chained on a Song Page. New sampled sounds, patterns and songs can be quickly loaded from disk, and sounds available at the moment include glass sounds (a là Depeche Mode), an excellent Latin set, rock drums, electronic drums, handclap, sound effects and more. The package is £65, and sound quality is comparable to the Korg DDM110/220 drum machines; there's only a single audio output and a simple one pulse per beat trigger output, but for the price the Digidrum is an essential purchase.

Over in the US things are still jumping on the small computer front, luckily for us. MusicData have just launched a package called Soundfiler which records MIDI System Exclusive dumps from the Yamaha DX7, Oberheim Xpander and OB-8, Roland JX-8P and Casio CZ-101. Sound information is stored on disk and can be recalled at any time, and the package is designed so that new synthesizers can be incorporated as they're launched. The package runs on the Commodore 64 or Apple.

Syntech have packages called Studio 1, 2, and 3 which are polyphonic MIDI sequencers fora US price of $225.95. They run on the Apple, Commodore or IBM computers and allow real and step time composition with punch in and out, track merging, 16 sequences with eight tracks per sequence and a MIDI delay function. Syntech also have a MIDI Studio C-64 package for the Commodore 64 which is a cutdown version of Studio 1 for $129, and Song Player C-64 which allows you to store and recall 16 songs in any order for $179.

Mimetics have a Macintosh MIDI interface almost set to go — manufactured by Assimilation, it comes with the Music Works MIDI sequencing package for $179. And for the wealthy, there's always Octave-Plateau's Sequencer Plus for the IBM computer; 64 tracks and 60,000 note storage for $500 excluding the Roland MPU401 interface.

Back in the UK, Rosetti have their JMS Score Writer up and running, and hopefully we'll be taking a look at it next time. I'm off now to start queuing for my Amiga.

Commodore Business Machines, (Contact Details)
Atari Corp UK Ltd, (Contact Details)
Syntronics (Digidrum), (Contact Details)
Mimetics Corp, (Contact Details)