[blog] Why use a computer with Gig Performer rather than hardware

Hey, that was an MSX, I owned an MSX too and made my first publication ever (a source code!) in MSX Magazine, I was 15 years old :wink:

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I remember the sprites used for graphics on MSX

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MSX was an attempt at standardisation that was not successful.
However, many manufacturers responded to the call, such as Canon, Casio, Panasonic, Philips, Sanyo, Schneider, Sony, Toshiba or Yashica.

@David-san I myself read and copied in MSX Magazine hundreds of lines of code that I didn’t understand at all, @pianopaul only to display a bad sprite on the screen after several days…

On the other hand, making music on the CX5M was a great joy: playing on a keyboard or on a guitar plugged into a midi microphone and seeing the notes and chords displayed on a score made me proud to be able to produce a score without knowing how to read or write a single note. :star_struck:

In retrospect, the musical result is quite a performance, considering that it was done with a Z80 processor running at 3.58 MHz (not GHz :unamused: ), a 32kb ROM, a 32kb RAM, and that once the scoring software was loaded, there was exactly 8kb left to create an 8 track song.

I can’t help but let you hear you two examples of my first recordings made with 8kb and played without overdub. But the pitchbend (and all the continuous controllers) had to be played sparingly so as not to consume all the available memory in few seconds…
(1985 recordings from a cassette recorder - Yamaha CX5M, Yamaha DX7, Yamaha RX11, MutliFX Ibanez UE405)


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Very nice (also the music) …

I had a Commodore 128 (sort of 64) myself, but I also had an MSX for some time.

It was indeed quite a challenge to make a song with the limited amount of memory. The issue is that to get a better quality, the resources need to be multiplied with factors.
And actually, it’s still interesting to see that music production still puts a lot of boundaries on nowadays multi GHz processors, GB Rams and GB/TB SSDs.

But even hardware devices (like the Korg Kronos) cannot compete software wise with the speed VST’s are developed and the resources available in laptop cq desktops.

Here’s a quote:

This adds to this blog, as it explains efficiency in programming sounds vs hardware. :slight_smile:

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Anyone using it?
I’m asking because I don’t see it discussed much on reddit and there’s no existing community that I could find. I’ve been getting into it over the past few weeks setting up my live performance rig and I have to say I love it so far. The visualized nodes are great and my CPU use is at an all time low. I get the ocassional issue loading up super plugin-heavy project files, but once they’re loaded everything seems super stable.

By “it”, are you referring to Gig Performer or a particular plugin?

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YouTube comment by James Brady

My Kronos flamed out twice at our last gig (tech said it would need a motherboard - not happening!). Just got the Arturia KeyLab 88 today and downloaded Gig Performer. Time to get to work. All these videos helped to convince me to take the leap, so thank you. Wish me luck!

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Another one converting from Korg Kronos to Gig Performer

Craig Beaumont wrote:

Thank you, Brett and Sam! Absolutely one of the best demonstrations of the power and utility of Gig Performer. Simultaneously playing parts often done by 3 players, combines knowing what one hopes to achieve, ones physicality, thinking out of the box and the utility of GP in enabling a great musical performance. Kudos!

Link: https://www.youtube.com/live/RL2sbbOb7Mk?feature=share

Indeed amazing when you can not only reduce number of keyboards (or pedals, etc.) but also number of musicians! :slight_smile:

Are you tired of fumbling with hardware mic switches during your live performances? Say goodbye to the hassle and hello to a game-changing solution: Gig Performer Virtual Software. In this video, we’ll dive into how Gig Performer can revolutionize your live performance setup.

Learn more here.

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