The plans call for eight stations plus a teacher's station, each with a Macintosh Computer, color monitor, and a Yamaha SY35 synthesizer. Two of the stations will also be equiped with Audiomedia cards, Mackie 1202 Mixers and some rack-mounted effects and synthesizers.
You can expect to see a lot more activity in the workstation room next year. Even though another computer room will be set up in Robertson for word-processing work, the TIMARA workstation room will still service people using music software such as comp students scoring with Finale, jazz students doing arrangements, music ed people trying out their pedagogical packages, and ear-training students strapped with earphones oblivious to the world while humming out of tune under their breath. In addition, expect to see the room signed out for TIMARA lectures and Synth Ensemble sessions.
There will be more people using the workstation room for their Timara course work. Plans are to turn Kristine Burn's office into a video work room and Studio 5 into a second faculty office. The Tech 103/104 students, currently using Studio 5, will then do all their work in the workstation room. Timara majors will also be encouraged to use the workstation room.
This is the reason for the two expanded workstations. These stations will be connected to a cabinet covering the back west wall. The cabinet will hold a patchbay, a reel-to-reel tape deck, a cassette deck, a DAT recorder, an ADAT, and some analog synthesizers.
At the other end the room, the teacher's station will hold a mixer with inputs from each station's synthesizer and outputs to a stereo sound system. A 21" monitor at the west end of the room along with a white board will facilitate lectures from the teacher's station.
Plans for the workstation room are now being finalized, so if you have any comments or suggestions please submit them now.
Two Shure SM81's for Studio use only (no remote recording or concert use please) can be signed out from John Talbert's office. Also available for signout, is a Sony stereo mic useful for people going out to record with the portable DAT.
The last of our budget for the year was spent on two pieces of equipment. One is a Mackie 1604 Mixer for Studio 4. For those of you who could never get the hang of how to make a noiseless mix with the Yamaha 1604, now you can do it effortlessly. This also means that we now have a Yamaha 8x2 Mixer and a Yamaha 16x4 Mixer available for concertizing.
The other purchase is a Mitsubishi HS-U59 VHS video deck. It features stereo hi-fi audio with record level controls and LED level displays, a flying erase head for clean transitions between video cuts, audio dub for recording onto the low fidelity linear audio track without having to re-record the video (useful for SMPTE sync signal), a shuttle control for easy stepping forward and back, and a jog control for moving one frame at a time.
The Roland PG1000 - the little box in Studio 3 with all the sliders - has been reprogrammed to send out regular Midi commands instead of its usual System Exclusive. Originally designed as a programming device for a Roland D50 keyboard, this modified Roland PG1000 is now a general control voltage to Midi converter. Read the Modified Roland PG1000 instruction sheet for more information.
Future plans include adding 8 external control voltage jacks to the PG1000 and, if any one is interested, a serial port to allow you to program it yourself from the Mac.
Almost completed is a video special effects box. This will enable you to take any NTSC video signal and add special effects such as color/tint changes, inversion, posterization, and solarization. Instead of trying to describe these effects I'll just leave it to you to try them out on your own.
With Netscape (or Mosaic) you can `surf' the internet and explore places such as IRCAM in Paris, the CERL computer music group at Univ. of Illinois, the Computer Music Association. You can pick up Midi files or K2000 sound files, learn about fractal music, find out what's new at Apple Computers, download free Macintosh software like CSOUND, or converse with others in your favorite Usenet discussion group.
Currently, the Timara Home page includes Studio descriptions with photos, TIMARA course catalogue, Summer Seminar description, these Tech Notes, Facts about CSound, and a list of interesting places to explore including those mentioned above.
The unit has 56 sliders numbered from 0 to 55. (There is also the capability for 8 external, zero to five volt, control voltage inputs numbered as sliders 56 to 63.) It also has 10 pushbuttons, 8 of which have taken on new functions as Cursor Left, Cursor Right, Field increment, Field Decrement, Slide increment, Slide Decrement, ENTER, and MIDI.
The unit has four modes of operation:
An LCD cursor can be moved to any of the above fields using the Left/Right buttons. The selected field can then be edited using the Field Increment/Decrement buttons. The edited Slider Window is only loaded into memory when the Enter button is pressed. The Slide Increment/Decrement buttons enable you to step through the Slider Windows without moving the cursor.
No Midi data is sent while in the Edit Mode. The Slider value field provides a running display of the slider value.
The unit supports the following Midi Operations:
Setup# 00 disables all 64 sliders. Setup# 01 was designed for the Studio 3 tech class. Most of the remaining setups act like Setup#00 but are available for future customizing.
The unit will exit its Edit program loop and enter the "Forth Mode" with any key action on the computer terminal when the serial port is connected. To re-enter the Edit program just type EDIT and return.