# Who started composing music under the old school Amiga / Atari Sound Trackers ?



## lychee (Jun 26, 2020)

Hello.

I just stumbled across a video that just reminded me that I'm old.



When I was younger I had two computer brands that have completely disappeared, the Atari ST and the Comodore Amiga.
I only used it to play games until I discovered a music program called Sound Tracker.
By manipulating this program until I understand how it works, I discovered that I had a musical ear and that in me this hid a composer.
I would like to know if any of you have had the same experience as me?


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## StefanoM (Jun 26, 2020)

I Started with Amiga 500


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## damcry (Jun 26, 2020)

I miss my Atari ST 😢


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## PatrickS (Jun 26, 2020)

Same here on both Atari and Amiga.


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## Sunny Schramm (Jun 26, 2020)

Here on Amiga 500 - and I also got my first sampler on amiga 😆

I think it was this one:






Later on I got my first real 24 track midi-sequecer but I cannot remember the name...

Good old times 🥰


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## Geomir (Jun 26, 2020)

Agony, the Shadow of the Beast(s), Turrican(s), Monkey Island(s), Loom, King's Quest V, Jim Power, and so many more, I still have their soundtracks in my mind. No I did not start composing with my Amiga 500, but I started to value video game music as much as commercial music or Film / TV shows music... 

Some of my inspirations come still from those old beautiful games...


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## lychee (Jun 26, 2020)

Cool to see i'm not alone 

I recently discovered that there is a modern Soundtraker named Renoise, I will be both curious and afraid to test it.


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## Wunderhorn (Jun 26, 2020)

Amiga 500, then Amiga 2000 - fun times with Soundtracker, Noisetracker, Protracker, FTM etc.
Try imagining to limit yourself to four tracks again!


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## Sunny Schramm (Jun 26, 2020)

lychee said:


> Cool to see i'm not alone  I recently discovered that there is a modern Soundtraker named Renoise, I will be both curious and afraid to test it.




So - have you already heard from this new "hardware"-tracker? 🙂









Tracker - Polyend







polyend.com


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## lychee (Jun 26, 2020)

Geomir said:


> Agony, the Shadow of the Beast(s), Turrican(s), Monkey Island(s), Loom, King's Quest V, Jim Power, and so many more, I still have their soundtracks in my mind. No I did not start composing with my Amiga 500, but I started to value video game music as much as commercial music or Film / TV shows music...
> 
> Some of my inspirations come still from those old beautiful games...



Oh my god, you just mentioned a good part of the culprits to my voluntary confinement, because of these games I no longer saw the light of day.
For me the music that marked me during this time is actually that of Turrican II, and Wings Of Death, notably this one:


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## Alex Fraser (Jun 26, 2020)

Oh, yeah, had an Atari STe. Didn't have the tracker software, I started with something called "Gajits Sequencer OnePlus" which was an early midi sequencer.

I've spent the evening sorting though a few NI expansions - an easy embarrassment of riches but somehow too easy. I'm nostalgic for the early days of having to work for the sound.

Also: In my day, if you had an Amiga, you were the ENEMY.


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## lychee (Jun 26, 2020)

Alex Fraser said:


> Oh, yeah, had an Atari STe. Didn't have the tracker software, I started with something called "Gajits Sequencer OnePlus" which was an early midi sequencer.
> 
> I've spent the evening sorting though a few NI expansions - an easy embarrassment of riches but somehow too easy. I'm nostalgic for the early days of having to work for the sound.
> 
> Also: In my day, if you had an Amiga, you were the ENEMY.



lol, so in this case, I was a traitor.
I ended up cracked by seeing the visual and sound quality of the Amiga.
There is only one game that will remain to my taste better than on Amiga, this is the famous Wings Of Death that I mentioned above.


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## Alex Fraser (Jun 26, 2020)

lychee said:


> lol, so in this case, I was a traitor.
> I ended up cracked by seeing the visual and sound quality of the Amiga.
> There is only one game that will remain to my taste better than on Amiga, this is the famous Wings Of Death that I mentioned above.


Haha. In our collective heart-of-hearts, us STe owners knew that Amigas were better for games. We never said it out loud though. The game I played most was Elite II Frontier. Good times.


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## Akarin (Jun 26, 2020)

I used to play around with FastTracker II in my late teens. Mostly to make drum loops so that I could play bass on top of it. It was more stylish than a metronome.


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## Simeon (Jun 26, 2020)

Dr. T on Commodore 64 and moved on to Bars and Pipes on the Amiga. 😎


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## SGordB (Jun 26, 2020)

MIDI composing began for me in the early 90s with Music X on the Amiga 500 (and later the Amiga 2000) and eventually Bars and Pipes Professional. They were wonderful, magical tools for wringing the most creativity out of my modest arsenal of MIDI hardware. VIs were a miracle yet to be born. I still feel the loss from the tragic bankruptcy of Commodore. Its Amiga kind of outAppled Apple as far as affordable, accessible creativity was concerned, IMO, but the hardware was unstable - at least for me - in a way Apple has barely ever been since I moved to it ~10 years ago from a 10-year interlude on PCs.


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## method1 (Jun 26, 2020)

I started with a c64 and Activision Music Studio.
I still have a working c64 with the ultra-advanced (by 1983 standards) mssiah cartridge 
I also got an ST when it came out, but mine was a lemon, constantly breaking down.


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## rnb_2 (Jun 26, 2020)

I got my first Amiga - a 2000 with the Video Toaster add-in card - in 1991 after a co-worker at CompUSA showed me some raytrace renderings he did on his Amiga. Along with spending too much time playing games (World Circuit/Formula One Grand Prix, Speedball II, Sensible Soccer, and The Killing Game Show were my favorites), I also started dabbling in music, though not with a tracker, but with Bars & Pipes Pro, a Roland Midi controller, and a Roland Super Sound Canvas (SC-88).

I have an Amiga A1200 that still booted the last time I tried it, and I may still have my old Midi interface, but the Roland controller and synth are long gone. I keep an old Dell flat panel around just to use with the non-interlaced graphics mode that the AGA Amigas supported.


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## Satorious (Jun 27, 2020)

Ah, nostalgia - love it! I started out by making mods on my Amiga 500, Soundtracker, Noisetracker, Protracker, Octamed etc etc. One even made it into a commercial game (although it was for an Archimedes release) Then got a PC and continued with Screamtracker for a bit before getting into the actual midi scene much later. Loved the Amiga, some pretty talented mod-makers out there - particularly on the demo scene (Romeo Knight, 4-Mat, Jesper Kyd, Moby, Alister Brimble and all the others). Here is my recent lockdown "homage"...


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## mjsalam (Jun 27, 2020)

Amiga 1000 over here. (Defender of the Crown!). I remember how it could do like hi-res at 640x480 or something like that but the monitor's refresh wasn't fast enough so it would flicker. But it looked so crisp by comparison that you would try to use it for as long as you could stand before having a seizure.

Sonix was my first!


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## C.R. Rivera (Jun 27, 2020)

Simeon said:


> Dr. T on Commodore 64 and moved on to Bars and Pipes on the Amiga. 😎


I sure missed Dr T!


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## GNP (Jun 27, 2020)

Started with Modplug Tracker.


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## Loïc D (Jun 27, 2020)

Amstrad CPC6128.
Can’t remember the name of the software...


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## Rob (Jun 27, 2020)

Atari and e-magic Notator... four Mb ram iirc.


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## wst3 (Jun 27, 2020)

the first computer to sneak into my studio was the portable version of the Commodore 64, with the SCI interface & sequencer. Crude, but enough to convince me that the idea of a computer in a studio just might be more than a passing fad.

From there I went through an Amiga 1000 to an Amiga 2000 to an Amiga 3000 with several add-on boards, including the Sunrize AD516 and the Blue Ribbon One Stop Music Shop (and the Mac emulator - that was fun!)

My first attempts at music on the Amiga were trackers, but I just never quite got it. I don't remember all the software, but I used Bars & Pipes Pro a lot, and still miss it, as a MIDI environment it was as good as anything else out there, although it did get left behind as audio started to become more integrated into the sequencers on PCs and Macs. Dr. T had his Keyboard Controlled Sequencer (KCS), and Roger Powell released Texture for the Amiga. I miss Texture too, not so much KCS, not sure why. And Dr. T also had Copyist, which was way ahead of the pack at the time. Dissidents SampleWrench was my main audio editor, and MIDIQuest was my librarian - I use both on Windows now. I also uses "M", which is no longer available for Windows, I have a Mac Mini I am trying to sort out, and I will pick up M for that once I do. Laurie Spigiel released Music Mouse (I think) for the Atari, Mac, and Amiga. It was a ton of fun, and I will get that for the Mac as well.

I have tried using Bars&Pipes in various Amiga emulators - it isn't the worst, but you wouldn't want to use it for real production work I'm afraid. I was part of a group that attempted to port it to Windows. That effort fizzled, for a variety of reasons, and I don't even remember why anymore, but probably because progress was slow? 

I still have one of my old Amiga 2000s, with a bunch of cards, in my office. I keep looking for an affordable, working Ethernet adapter, not sure what I'd do once I had the machine on the LAN though<G>.


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## quickbrownf0x (Jun 27, 2020)

Guilty.


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## FinGael (Jun 27, 2020)

I started with my MSX (2 voices, programming with basic ) and Amiga 500 and 1200 were next. Much love for Protracker.

ok... sorry... have to do this.

\o/ AMIGA 4EVER \o/


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## kleotessard (Jun 27, 2020)

I started on Atari STE using Audio Scupture by The Synchron Assembly. With the ST Replay I could make my own samples.
I lost most of my work but I have many good memories !
I found https://drive.google.com/file/d/1s2MRd7_y0iwlmYxAebhXbEKFH460RBhw/view?usp=sharing (this module file 'Nice Fly') in my archive folder. This file might have more than 25 years I think.

You can play this file with winamp or with Open ModPlug Tracker. Here is a https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I7X_s8QsIJbKLHIvggoYqnPmy7PDuqsC/view?usp=sharing (mp3 rendering) if you want to hear this extraordinary composition 😍👍 😇!

Disclamer : Listen with caution this could cause an intense ears bleeding 🤣.


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## Stillneon (Jun 27, 2020)

Commodore 64 and Steinberg Pro-16, followed by an Elonex PC (20Mb Hard Disk) and a sequencer called Prism. The good old days....


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## Wes Antczak (Jun 27, 2020)

Atari here, with Hybrid Arts SMPTE Track and then Steinberg Pro 24. Also M. Recording down to a TASCAM DAT machine. My first sampler was a Prophet 2000. I also had a few Proteus modules, a couple TX units from Yamaha, a Pro One, a Super Jupiter, etc., etc. 

I should also add that with the Atari I never had any crashes... ever.

As 'primitive' as things may have been back then, I still feel as if I got a LOT more music done in those days.

Now it seems that I spend more time updating the software and plugins.


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## Hadrondrift (Jun 27, 2020)

Started with Commodore 64 and C-Lab Scoretrack. After that, Atari ST and Creator, later Notator.

The restrictions at that time had a positive effect on my creativity. Today's diverse and powerful tools can tempt you to perfectionism. Getting things done is harder nowadays, at least for me.

The score editor of Notator was top notch, even on the small (but great) monochrome screen of the Atari. Amazing piece of software. Still missing some functionality today in Cubase, flashing selected notes for instance.


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## Geomir (Jun 27, 2020)

lychee said:


> Oh my god, you just mentioned a good part of the culprits to my voluntary confinement, because of these games I no longer saw the light of day.
> For me the music that marked me during this time is actually that of Turrican II, and Wings Of Death, notably this one:



I love this theme of Wings of Death as well, it's so intense, if I could ever make a cover for it, I would go with power metal!

And yes my favorite of all Turricans is 2. Amazing music! It cannot be compared with the modern standards, but all those songs were very "honest", in a way that you could not hide a "boring" composition by using ambience, effects, reverbs, distortion, etc... All those songs had to be powerful, creative, and catchy on their own without the help of the amazing plugins we own nowadays.


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## lychee (Jun 28, 2020)

For my part, I started on Atari 520 ST then migrated on different Amiga (500, 600, 1200), then went to the PC at the bankrupt of Comodore.
On these machines I mainly work on Soundtrakers. I had obtained a sampler and midi interface to plug into the back of my Amiga and I was working hybrid music on Octamed (a tracker that could play midi).
I used the Amiga sampler for specific rhythm parts and a Technics KN550 keyboard for melodies, sacred era!


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## lychee (Jun 28, 2020)

For those who were in love with the music of Turrican 1 or 2, know that Chris Huelsbeck the original composer made a series of anthological albums dedicated to these memorable games:

It's here.

An Extract:



There is even an orchestral version of the titles:


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## Paul Grymaud (Jun 28, 2020)

Yep !
Still have my old 1040 St + HD (!) + keyboard + mouse (2)
I also have the software PRO 24 (cubase ancestry), many many floppy disks full of sounds and musical folders +libraries for Roland D110, Korg M1 and other stuff
Anybody want to buy it ? Good condition for its age


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## R. Soul (Jun 28, 2020)

I'm surprised at all the mentions of Dr. T's KCS - I hardly ever heard from anyone who's used it.

I started on Amiga 500, using SoundTracker, ProTracker and NoiseTracker. I wish I had some of those tunes, but they are lost on a floppy somewhere, or possibly a cassette. My oldest surviving tunes are from 1993/94.

I still catch myself on YouTube every once in a while listening to the tunes from The Last Ninja and demo composers like Skaven, Purple motion, Jester and 4-Mat etc. Those were the days


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## nolotrippen (Jun 28, 2020)

lychee said:


> Hello.
> 
> I just stumbled across a video that just reminded me that I'm old.
> 
> ...




I was always on a Mac, but my sequencer of choice back then, Passport MasterTracks Pro kind of puts me the same nostalgic time frame.


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## mickeyl (Jun 28, 2020)

Grew up on the Commodore C64 and the AMIGA 1000 – created quite a bit of music back in the days of the demo scene. Here are some details.


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## ghobii (Jun 28, 2020)

Yup, Amiga 500 then a 1200. Dr T's...Bars and Pipes sounds familiar. My brother had the Atari, it was definitely a Mac vs PC type of thing.


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## BWG (Aug 2, 2020)

I started on an Amiga 500 with Music X. Spent a lot of time playing Kick Off 2 though! Moved onto an Atari 1040, far better for music but dreadful for Kick Off.


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## Henrik B. Jensen (Aug 2, 2020)

I wrote music for two Commodore 64 games called Unitrax and KGB Agent.
Later I co-founded the demo-group Upfront on the Amiga along with my big brother and my best friend at the time + others I knew from the C64 period.


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## nolotrippen (Aug 3, 2020)

Your post got me thinking. You didn't ask about this computer, but it is, in fact, no longer around. Sure, Apple and Mac are still with us, but everything about this Mac SE is extinct, from the hardware to the OS. I used one to write manuals and music for a game company that produced for Commodore, Atari, etc.


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## lychee (Aug 3, 2020)

BWG said:


> I started on an Amiga 500 with Music X. Spent a lot of time playing Kick Off 2 though! Moved onto an Atari 1040, far better for music but dreadful for Kick Off.



I don't know if we can say that the Atari was better for music compared to the Amiga, its advantage was above all to have the integrated midi and Cubase software, which put it in the foreground with regard to musicians .

As said above, I did the opposite, I went from the Atari to the Amiga and I started the midi on the latter.
I don't know if there was an equivalent on Atari, but me on Amiga I used Octamed, a tracker which allowed me to combine midi and samples at the same time, which made me save on dedicated samplers which was inaccessible for me at the time.


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## BWG (Aug 3, 2020)

lychee said:


> I don't know if we can say that the Atari was better for music compared to the Amiga, its advantage was above all to have the integrated midi and Cubase software, which put it in the foreground with regard to musicians .
> 
> As said above, I did the opposite, I went from the Atari to the Amiga and I started the midi on the latter.
> I don't know if there was an equivalent on Atari, but me on Amiga I used Octamed, a tracker which allowed me to combine midi and samples at the same time, which made me save on dedicated samplers which was inaccessible for me at the time.


OMG I remember Octamed it was brilliant!!!!

I think the Atari having MIDI onboard was the killer element. The Amiga was incredible and I loved it but I seem to remember there being a boat load of issues with MIDI timing from Music X. I never found a quantise feature in the early versions as well. Maybe that was just me.


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## wsimpson (Mar 22, 2021)

I started writing music (poorly) on a Mac in 1985 and that all changed in grad school in 1986 where they had an Amiga 1000. I got really into music sequencing, sampling, and eventually into ray tracing graphics and 3d videos. So much so I managed a computer store for a while that specialized in Commodore products. My first computer was an Amiga 1000 and I remember thinking I got a good deal when I bought 2MB of RAM for $1500.


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## chrissiddall (Mar 22, 2021)

Atari ST with Notator here, using a Yamaha MU5 for sound. Happy days!


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## Markrs (Mar 23, 2021)

lychee said:


> Hello.
> 
> I just stumbled across a video that just reminded me that I'm old.
> 
> ...



Absolutely loved watching this video. My brother had an Amiga and would use a sountracker. He never really stuck with it but I do remember him using it and being pretty amazed back then.


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## Paulogic (Mar 23, 2021)

I had a Wersi 4 octave Midi keyboard for my C64, but used it as "a synthesizer".
Sequecing was with notator on a Atari 1024 ST with color monitor and 2 midi in/out
interface and a lot of affordable synthesizers and one expensive one (Jup 8).


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## lychee (Mar 23, 2021)

wsimpson said:


> My first computer was an Amiga 1000 and I remember thinking I got a good deal when I bought 2MB of RAM for $1500.


$1500 for 2MB of ram????! Oh my god lol, times have really changed. 
I really nostalgia look back on that time, maybe one day I'll be tempted by a Renoise or something.


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## Oliver (Mar 23, 2021)

Ataris ST with Cubase, then Amiga 500


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## kilgurt (Mar 23, 2021)

ATARI ST & Steinberg Pro 24.


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## Hadrondrift (Mar 24, 2021)

Various Atari-ST Models with Emagic Notator, but started with Commodore 64 and C-Lab Scoretrack and a Yamaha DX-21.


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## Rachel (Mar 24, 2021)

Great video! I don't remember which computer it was as I didn't know anything about computer at that time, but I remember having fun with my brother's computer and playing with a software called Fast tracker. I was completly amazed that I could create music with a computer. That was the start point of my passion for composition


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## muddyblue (Mar 24, 2021)

I startet with the good old Atari ST and emagics creator (bought up by apple now Logic) in the 90ies. I still have the Atari....


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## Virtuoso (Mar 24, 2021)

I started with an Alesis MMT8. God that was painful to use!







And then Bars and Pipes 'Professional' on an Amiga 500...






Followed by Pro-24 and then Cubase. It took me another 16 years to get Logic!


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## TomislavEP (Mar 24, 2021)

Ah, the memories!

I've gotten my first C64 system sometime after the war in Croatia (during 1993). I was only twelve at the time, so I was mainly into fun and games when it comes to computers. 

In the mid-'90s, I've started learning sequencing on the two keyboards workstations I had at the time: Yamaha V50 and Korg M1. Not until 1997. I had a PC system. When I've finally gotten one, I did some baby moves in computer recording by exploring the early versions of Cubase and Cakewalk. I also had the legendary Creative SoundBlaster Live, though I hated its sounds in comparison to the hardware. I still haven't discovered VST's back then. My serious journey into computer composition and production actually begun a whole decade later - in 2008., I've purchased my first Pro Tools system.


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## iMovieShout (Mar 24, 2021)

My first music and composing computer was the Commodore Amiga-1000. Purchased to develop and finish my University project, which was called the MIDI-Sequencer. To record, playback and edit midi data. 
Before this I had an Amstrad-CPC64, a Sinclair ZX-81 and Sinclair Spectrum, and a Commodore Vic-20. The Amiga-1000 was probably the best computer I had ever owned until PC's became more popular.


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