Philips Music Module prgrams : Musicbox

Musicbox w as the buildin prgram of the Music Module I spend hours and hours and hours fooling around. Transforming my voice with echo and pitch in realtime,  impressive for MSX 1 software,, was just 1 of features I loved to use. The sampler could not sample more than 4,6 ? Seconds or 4 small ones, you could play them on your MSX keyboard with different pitches. It was big fun to hear your voice can be transformed into a baby or a very old mans voice. And most important, you could use the samples like any other instrument i  the simple songeditor. So you could play lets say, a solo on a Spanish riff , sample your voice saying Ole and replace the instrument thst plays the solo with the sample. Result: you will hear Ole a lot when playing your arrangement ( which is a solo and a riff). And there was more, you also could change the drumkit, not much, just another snaredrum or cymbals. But it can really make a change if you listen to the change riff. I call them riffs, Musicbox called the styles and there are a lot of them. Some are very simple and annoying, like scottish, some are just great like pop or rock n roll or indian. I typed in some short songs from the musicboook I got in the Music kodule package, only short ones, cause you need to putt every note into place at the rightplace,which was not easy and very timeconsuming. I record with my taperecorder all sound from the audio cassette that was also partof the package. Not much to record, but sampling the rock guitarriff gave me enough new ideas for arrangemrnts in Musicbox editor. I forgot to tell you there was another feature I never ever had seen before on MSX, it could rearrange and record in realtime the notes you are playing so every note was in perfect sync timing with the music. Very handy for me cause I never could play in ritme. Special for this post I created a zipfile with the program Musicbox and all the stuff I made or collected. I am not sure if Musicbox will work with the Toshiba MSX - AUDIO cartrudge instead of the Philips Music Module, so you really need  a Philips Music Module( or emulated) to let the Musicbox work. How a lot of funwith playing these files, or watch the video to get a short impression of Musicbox.

See also the post about the Philips Music-Module. This is the 3rd I guess.

Philips Music Module programs: Drum System

I told you in earlier post, I got this program from a MSX-er from Arkel who worked at the local TV-station of my town Gorinchem with a MSX NMS8280. He got it with some other German MSX software. Yes German, Philops Drum System wss never sold in the Netherlands, which was a real shame. A lot of Music Module owners would buy it without hestite.

Mmmm more the same post, different little story.

Philips Music Module prgrams : Drum System

Its from Philips Germany I guess, just like Musicbox and Music Creator made by Computermates. Sorry not much to tell about Computermates, but they did a wonderfull job cresting these programs.

See also the post about the music module. This program was never sold in dutchy land. I would buy it without a doubt. It came from PHILIPS Germany.

Highlights of MSX: Philips Music Module !!!

If you never heard of it, you are not born in Europe. 
Never mind, I try to explain what the Philips Music Module is and why I like it so much.

The Philips Music Module was a kind of MSX-Audio music cartridge with some extras.
It had an interface for a special Philips keyboard, a midi interface, 2x mono output, a built-in microphone, a line-in input and a volume adjuster.

If you bought the original, you got 1 music-book, 1 manual and an audio-tape with some sounds to record. 
The software called "Musicbox" was build-in and started automatically when the 
MSX-computer was powered on.

I had plenty of fun with this "Musicbox" software. It was made for MSX-1, but all screens 
had different colors and looked all very nice and easy to understand.

You could record your own voice (or someone else) and play with it on your MSX keyboard
or you could play along with lots of different music-styles while the "music box" made it sound just right. You could change instruments, drumkits, tempo...eh...

Some MSX-ers just hate to press ESC key for avoid starting "Musicbox" , removed the chip from the circuit board inside and pasted more sample-RAM on it to sample more seconds than the standard 4.6 seconds (32Kb). I let somebody else do it, to run more sample demos and sample-programs like Sampbox.

Philips made more software for the Music Module, like "Music Creator" 
(sold together by the Philips keyboard) and "Drum System" (Philips Germany). 

"Music Creator" was more than "Musicbox", a music arranger and composer.
It had also a kind of drum-sequencer, but much simpler than the "Drum System"
 "Drum System" was a drumkit-composer and -sequencer.

I liked "Drum System", cause you could sample your own drumkit and create your own drum riffs. My coffee-cup drumkit was the best drumkit I ever made. 
If you had a joystick connected you could play in realtime any drumkit you had on disk.
You just had to follow the rhythm...

I made 3 packages for each program, a program disk, and a software disk.
You can try for yourself.

To play around with Musicbox: Mediafire / Pcloud

To try to be serious with Music Creator: Mediafire / Pcloud
To make beats with Drum System: Mediafire / Pcloud

<video making with bluemsx ???>

There were vids made but very raw and slow I should speed up the part before playing sounds of music. Packages were never made , but maybe the maps are still somewhere.

Philips Music Module prgrams : Music Creator

Music Creator could only be bought witha big keyboard.

Video still to be made ? It has a drumeditor song editor and arrangement editor

MSX Highlights : MSX Diskmagazines

In the Netherlands, we MSX-ers had several MSX magazines with reviews, listings, and software on tapes or disks. However, as the goes by, MSX magazines disappeared from the magazine stores and subscriptions were canceled after a while. 

But many MSX groups filled that gap and released countless magazines on disk. Of course, the idea was stolen from Compile with their Disc Stations, but when BCF released a couple of their own Disc Stations, with demos, games and lots of stuff to read, every MSX club made their own Magazine on disk, some had multiple. To name a few Dutch Disk Magazines:

- BCF Disc Station
- Dragon Disk
- Quasar
- Genic Clubguide
- Sunrise Magazine 

- Future Disk

- Golden Power Disk

- Paradise

- Near Dark
- ROM
- Track

- D.I.S.K.

- MCCA  Infodisk

It was a great way to be more famous in MSX land, get some money and release small programs that nobody would buy if they had to sell it separately. For me it was a great way to know about the newest MSX software, see some demos and play some minigames.  

A couple of personal notes about some disk magazines:
* I was a great fan of the Golden Power Disk (always a yellow disc), sadly the stopped all sudden. 
* I had a subscription on Sunrise Magazine ( there was also a Sunrise Picture disk but my budget was not high enough to have both. 
* Later when the Sunrise Magazine stopped I got a subscription on the Future Disk, which kept going when almost every other MSX disk magazine had stopped. 
* As EMP-Soft we send a disk full of music files and some demos to MCCA Infodisk, when they ask for MSX software to put on their Infodisk. I checked and they put some of them on Infodisk 6/7/8/9.

At MSX.ORG they kept a decent collection of Dutch disk magazines, but there was so much more. My own collection is not that big, I only bought most of those disks on MSX fairs. 
And not every magazine was worth to subscribe. On MSX fairs I always wanted more to buy than just disk magazines, like music demos, new games, and utilities or new hardware. 


Anyway, most of these disks were made for MSX-2 computers, cause they were most common in the Netherlands,  so there was not much stuff made for MSX-2+ and Turbo-R. For this post, I will put my collection of some obscure Dutch disk magazines in 1 big zip file as a surprise package.

I hope you have fun with this collection even if most of the texts are all in Dutch. Mediafire / Pcloud 

For me, it was a real MSX Highlight, after nobody wanted to publish anything about MSX. The MSX scene itself stood up and created their own MSX magazines.

Highlights of MSX: easy way to add more hardware

On almost every MSX-computer there were 2 cartridges slots.

These could be used for almost everything, interfaces for harddisks, diskdrives, slotexpanders, modems, rom-games, music-cartridges and more and more.

It is impossible to name every kind of hardware that could be inserted into 1 of the cartridge slots.
They were easy to use and you could choose from more than 1 company, if you wanted additional hardware for your MSX.

Even in these non-MSX times are still companies that sell their MSX games on cartridge.
Check out: http://www.msxcartridgeshop.com/

Highlights of MSX: listings

Because the MSX-Basic was capable of many things without or with a little help of machine-code, lots of listingbooks were available for MSX-1.

And every MSX magazine had some listings in it, cause they were very populair and the magazine could make some extra money by selling cassettes and disks with the programs of the listings on it.

The listings were getting longer so some magazines make controlprograms to check if the typer had not made mistakes.

I had a lot of fun typing in games, utilities and music.
And I learned a lot about how to use MSX-Basic commands, cause most of the time
I had to check and fix the errors in the listings.
It was also a cheap way to get new MSX software, without paying high prices for cassettes or disks.

The pics show some of the books with listings I had typed over.
Frequently I was suprised by the quality of these listings and still play or use these listings
during my MSX sessions...

Highlights of MSX: FM-Pac

I had to say it, most of the music in MSX games made by PSG, could not compete with the ones in Commodore 64 and its SID musicfiles.

Even worse, some of the greatest PSG music in MSX games were conversions of the Commodore 64 originals !
Yes, I mean those Benn conversions of Gremlin Graphics...

In MSX-Basic it was possible to create music with 2 different methodes, it was still not easy to create drumsounds or different instruments.

Then the Panasonic FM-Pac came on the Dutch market.

I bought it from Time-Soft, a computerstore in Amsterdam (who sold also lots
of imported MSX-stuff from Japan, but not cheap).

The package included the FM-Pac of course, an A4 printed (on red paper) list of
commands and some marketing "blabla", a MSX-disk full of music (and demo's )
of winners of a Time-Soft Fm-Pac contest, and a MSX-disk with the first Dutch FM-Pac demo,
with stolen music and pictures of other Japanese stuff.

After I listened to the disks I started an Japenese game I got from my MSX partner
in EMP-Soft and I was speechless by the sounds of the intro-demo.
I think it was the game Aleste I  from Compile.

I made asap an appointment with him and that afternoon we tried to find all games
that had MSX-Music (as it was called).

I think that FM-Pac finally made it possible to make and listen to great music on every
MSX computer and not only those MSX-2+ with the strange signs on the keys.
And maybe it kept the MSX scene alive for 3 or 4 years longer.

Later I sold my FM-Pac to my EMP-Soft partner and bought me a cheaper Zemina FM-Ship,
cause I didn't use the Pac part (for save games), like he did.

FM-Pac (or must I say MSX-Music) was a MSX feature, nobody wanted to miss.