Musicians and The Atari ST (1989) Mike Pinder,Dave Grusin,Jimmy Hotz, Mick Fleetwood,Scott Gershin
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- Опубліковано 28 сер 2024
- This historical video (provided by Jason Scott) is the full-length video collaboration between Mike Pinder and Atari's Frank Foster for "Musicians and The Atari ST" This was part of a trio of ST promotional videos created with Mike Pinder, having Sam Tramiel and August Liguori as executive producers.
As seen throughout the video, you'll spot Lee Ritenour, Dave Grusin, Mick Fleetwood, Scott Gershin, Mike Pinder, Jimmy Hotz and several others favorably admire the music production capabilities that the Atari ST provided during the late 80's.
Information thread for the Atari Hotz can be found here: atariage.com/f...
Dug out my old ST, I'm an electronic engineer who started programming as a kid on the atari 8-bit and bought an ST as a Teen (I saved for years). The machine still runs, I just want to keep it going because once they are gone, a lot of music history goes with them. And people still talk about how much better the timing is compared to modern systems. This is because on a modern PC you are going through several subsystems that were designed with several layers of buffers for throughput not latency.The ST was just ram to midi.
My Atari Mega STe running Cubase in the early 90's was the most solid and reliable MIDI setup I've ever owned.
Wow, what a shock to see the animation I made (:26 to 1:46) back in late 80's. Animation was done on an Atari ST. I also used Dr T's amazing sequencer -- which had features still not available in modern DAWs -- and a Roland MT-32. Amazing to see how far things have come. Now we have orchestras in a box and singing computers - my current playground.
R.I.P. Jimmy Hotz 5th June 2023 age 69 years. Died from a heart attack according to a his friend.
The ST1040 midi and cubase was far more reliable than my protools midi. It was bulletproof.
True. And hilarious. Hence why i have only ever used Protools while working at someone elses’ studio. It’s fine for recording bands. But i don’t do any of that at home, and these days I use Bitwig, which just makes PT look ancient.
Allan Holdsworth still used (until his deatha few years ago), saying it was 'bulletproof'.
Sounds like Reaper.
I had no idea the Atari ST was so powerful.
Check out info on the Yamaha CBX-D5 which was designed to connect to the Atari ST and Steinberg Cubase Audio. Each Yamaha cost around $4000 back in 1993 and you could chain two for eight 44.1kHz 16-bit audio multitracks, complete with onboard EQ, FX, mic preamps etc and clock sync for video etc.
Retrocomputing plus 80s music, what a great combination!
7:06 Lee explains that the Atari has the best rhythmic feel of all computers. He's totally right. I could never quite put my finger on it.
I made my entire music graduation project ('92) based on the Atari controlling a Roland D10, Alesis HR-16, Kawai K1r plus a Quadraverb and some other outboard gear. I also had printed scores in there. Before investing my entire savings into a home studio I realized that I didn't need an expensive multitrack recorder. This was revolutionary, since it all went directly and live to to 2 track digital VHS and later to DAT. Those were the dayz man!
You needed an expensive multitrack if you were recording and layering guitar parts and vocals along with synths though. If you only used electronic sounds, then you were in luck.
I got my Atari 1040ST with Pro24 back in 87 and it changed my life! It's really interesting looking back at this American promotional video. I'm from the UK and was actually over in California in 1989 to record some music. I had to get an Atari ordered in as nobody had them, everyone seemed to be using Macs. It seems to me that the UK used Ataris and the US used Macs. Of course, now, most of us have a mac in our studios.
God, I miss my 1040STs. I had 2 of them back in the day. Not only easy to use, but tough as heck too. One got dropped from waist height and landed face-down on a concrete floor and was perfectly fine. Those humble STs were quite powerful using stuff like C-Lab Creator and Notator.
The 1040 ST was my first sequencing computer and I loved it! MIDI jacks directly on the machine with rock solid timing that killed every other computer (in terms of timing). SMPTE Track was what we used in the studio and I don't recall many problems. Hooked it up to an Akai S1000 to fly samples in on productions back then. We've come a long way!
4 meg of memory .i miss my Atari, happy days
I had an 1040 ST which I upgraded to 4MB. I used Cubase v.1.0 and a Roland Sound Canvas. All I needed for 15 years! Changed my musical life.
Ditto but MT-32
I did so much MIDI on my Atari ST's as a teen. I loved the hell out of it.
The track at around 5.40 is a perfect example of ‘just because you can, doesn’t mean you should’
Sounds like decent pr0n music 🙂
Still sounds like half the stuff currently on smooth jazz stations.😊
@@omnipop4936Still better than current top 40 though.
This short documentary is pure History of music technology, especially for people like me, who started around 1985 with a Tascam Porta Studio 4-track and quickly with an Atari ST, in my case 1040 ST FM, which I still have. I also have a color and monochrome screen, although it doesn't work. But I keep the manuals of several things, like Cubase 1.0 and other things. Of course, nowadays I find it much more practical to work with PC (I still have Cubase 5.1) and several keyboards and drum machines of the time. What I would have really liked, although I understand it a little, is the possibility of automatic subtitles because there are words that escape me. In any case, thanks for sharing this gem with the world!
Wow you had a 4 track! For me it was bouncing between two stereo cassette decks running through my Peavey 12 channel mixer, and building up songs with my Drumdrops cassettes .. remember those? Then I got an Alpha Syntauri digital synth that ran through my Apple IIe and allowed pre-midi multi tracking in the box, then by the time this video was made I was on a toaster Mac running Opcode Vision. I still have those old Mac’s .. two SE30’s sitting on the closet shelf. These days it’s Reaper on a PC laptop and iPads. Yeah this video definitely brings back memories of a much different time. I’m glad you hung on to some of your old gear, I dumped my Jupiter 8, DX7, and two Minimoog’s in 1989 to put the money towards the up coming Korg T1 😢 lol
@@chrisstrobel3439 Well yes, I started with a Tascam Portastudio and a Roland Alpha Juno 1, with a TR-505 and various other things, then I had the Atari and well, since then making music, it's of vital importance to me!
Great history of real life application for those who love to reminice. I used Dr T’s Tiger Cub synced with the Roland Sound Brush and Canvas got me from a solo rocker to the end of casino lounges, biker runs, car shows and Golf Turnies in a real kick arse classic rock an roll show band. I got out just as the circut died a brutal death. Thankfully I have my dual boot system and a great day gig, ha ha ha. My 1040 STe worked so well I kept it in the loop until I mastered PT’s around 2006 Peace and Maximum Respect 👽
Tiger was a blast. There was nothing like it on any platform at the time.
Such an awesome video, very interesting to see how people used the Atari back in the day when MIDI sequencing was just starting to take off. Also, towards the end: "In performance, we use the sequencer mostly for sequencing things up" :D
I graduated from a Commodore 64 to an Atari 1040ST back in the day. It was an evolutionary leap. Loved that system.
I wish I had watched this 30 years ago! Would have definetly influenced what computer I wanted.
I start using Atari ST 1985. With Notator. I worked in pro studios with Pro Tools than I had my own smaller Pro Tools system at home. Even though Pro Tools already has MIDI implementation I was still using ATARI for MIDI, in sync with Pro Tools for Audio. Later, not only MIDI got better in Pro Tools but also the first soft synthesizers arrived. So, around 2007, I started to work more and more only with Pro Tools. MIDI and Audio. From Audiomedia 3 sound card I went to Digi001. In the big studios was already TDM and than everything else. So I could control both soft and hard synths via MIDI and Audio. I bought Logic (very expensive at that moment) but I only used it for printing scores... It wasn't logical enough for me. BUT than Logic 8 came and also a job from another studio in Logic environment. Before I was converting anything from Logic to Pro Tools and than back when I was done. But now I though I will give Logic a chance. That was the turn point for me! I didn't get back to Pro Tools and I couldn't go back to Atari Notator. There was no looking back anymore! Of course Atari was great. Especially when (after a while) I started to use hard drives with it in stead of... floppy disks. But it's quite normal: It was a MIDI machine only for hardware synthesizers only! No integration of any kind etc. But for that time Atari was definitely a Pro choice and so many great music productions were done with it. I still have mine in a corner. And I still have some music ideas there that I never had time to move it over to my new system.
Back when technology was exciting. Nowadays it's mostly uninteresting or downright scary.
All of this gear was expensive compared to now , could be quite hard to buy or even demo unless you lived near one of the 5 or so largest cities. Most gear then was either holdover boomer tech from the 60s and 70s that was usually regarded as clunky and noisy, or the gear was frustrating 'pioneer' tech we'd prefer to forget about.
disagree, we have free daws and softsynth plugins that you can use on a $50 used laptop - things have never been cheaper, easier, or more accessible
@10:00 that incidental music in Colors was outdated when the movie was released...they were trying so hard to capture that sound from Coldcut / and the Rap groups 'sampling' techniques but were stuck in elevator music mode. The studio gave it a green light.. but probably out of desperation. Wasn't a great movie either could have had a stronger theme.
The only cool part was when Gerardo was a gangsta. Rico Suave
Valuable insight of professional music making, love the passion and enthusiasm in this well documented video.And these guys look straight out of Miami Vice, fabulous.
Edit : 23:45 Mick Fleetwood playing Seven Wonders is the best moment in the video, absolute heaven.
Lee and Dave are my favorite musicians!!!!! When I pick up their music (I'm dangerous going to thrift stores finding their cds/vinyls there) I go straight to the credits to see what gear they used back in the day.
Sampling sequencing RIP. Real musicians playing together can never be replaced. 30 years plus of sampling / sequencing experience and I'm sick of it all. such a facade and one dimensional. Had it's time in the 'limelight'. Real musicians unite.
Nice find, Clint. Many Thanks for sharing!
Ah, the 80s!!!
I had an Atari SE simple Gold...I sold it for more than I bought it for! ..But I regret selling it, it was really cool for its time !!
I grew up my Computer music knowledge because of Atari St, in fact my teacher show us how we can program oberheim matrix 6 with it he also have a Roland Sound Canvas and show us how to build midi sequence with all that gear in classroom i feel lucky that he show to me how to build music with that in the mid 90's, i started making my own track with a Roland groovebox, because of that.
We had a Stacy growing up. Mother used it for her CPA work.
I had a Tandy I built and and some AT standard boxes I pieced together.
wow. its years i don't search for the jimmy hotz video to show ppl and today this was the first result! so great to see the full doc, i didn't know where the hotz clip was originally from. I think I'm going to screen this in a few days here in berlin before a concert in which I'll use an ST running Hotz ******
That would be fantastic! Would be cool to see any performance you create with the Hotz if you manage to record it!
@@RISCGames Here's one i did 2 years ago - watch?v=D-U8tFNXoZM
The only match for the atari/cubase is serious cpu power on a modern pc. Ive still got my 1040ste.
I had that same exact model and Cubase too. 1990. Ah the good old days. Unfortunately, the only thing left from then is a Fostex mixer (it still works!) and the Atari manual ;)
Lee Ritenour playing a modified Roland G-303 guitar synth controller, with the humbuckers swapped out for single coils, but it's unclear what guitar synth he's playing into, given the year, perhaps a Roland GR-700 floor unit, or perhaps a Roland GM-70? Unless it's the same gargantuan G-303 to Synclavier system that Pat Metheny connected a G-303 to?
To this day I still don't know how Atari went under. They led the field in musical programming AND gaming by such a huge margin. Even it's nearest competitor (I would say Commodore) wasn't anywhere close!
- Very few computer manufacturers survived the entire '80s. Most musicians could not afford to computerize their studio within just a fiscal year of these things being new, and MIDI was aimed solely at keyboard players and producers, and no other market. Furthermore, any of those medium-to-high-rollers had to learn MIDI well enough hit the ground running and that took even more time.
- After the success of the 2600 Atari wasted immense resources and fell behind Mattel, Nintendo and Sega on all of their later console game systems. There's an hour-long doc on Atari's demise on YT.
I would respectfully disagree when it comes to gaming, the ST wasn't by all means a good gaming machine, but the MIDI interface and (for that time) high-res monitor were outstanding - until the PC caught up. Soundblaster, cheaper hardware, incredible speed of progress, huge catalogue of hard- and software and more widespread user base made the PC win this race. That's also the reason Commodore went under - they just couldn't catch up with the speed & pricing of the PC since the beginning of the 90's.
@@karl-heinznapp2874 Komputery PC wygrały bo IBM wydał za darmo projekt i schematy elektroniczne swojego komputera i wschodnie firmy (azjatyckie) zaczęły produkować klony komputerów IBM. I dlatego ten komputer na świecie się rozpowszechnił, a Atari z Commodore prędzej czy później musiały zbankrutować.
wow....Atari and legends and the pointer sisters
RIP Jimmy Hotz..
😧 When did he pass?
@@crnkmnky June 5, 2023 RIP
How cool was that using Yes, Rhythm Of Love" music? Nice to hear Dave Grusin and Don Grusin with Lee Ritenour in the studio. During this time, the album Migration came out, and it was digital mastered. Thanks for posting this very informative video.
Atari could have owned multimedia in the 90's and 2000's
and they just didnt know how to innovate
Interesting video.
How cool a Mirage Sampler in action 14:08
Yes! It’s sweet.
absolutely digging this
sheesh,,,,computer graphips have come a long way
Good stuff
Lovely! Thank you.
great find, love the part about ADAP
I had the 1040ST ad on my wall as a 13 year old. (next to a Yamaha DX-7 ad) .. in 1987 - by 1989 this was getting long in the tooth due to the Akai stand alones - cool video though I saw clips from years ago - that guy's studio was the real lust point in the video for sure in the late 80s. thanks for the full video
You’ll have to come back and check out what’s on queue for upload in the near future if you loved his studio as much as I did, it’s unreal. Just have to get to it…
@@RISCGames thanks for your response and efforts Clint - and don't be dissuaded by my comment about not supporting sampling anymore in the comments.. that's a side effect not a reflection of your channel or what you share. It's just my personal evolution.
I left two of these with screens and dongle's on my wall in the late 90s because I got an iMac... uggg!
22:09 The joy of sampling someone saying "FUCK OFF".
He's saying "Oh god"
Nights in white satin was made on an ST.. that openeing proclamation should have said 'some' audio was made not ALL
Sweet video Clint! Where did you dig this one up? 😀
I know it's been on archive.org for a long time. I think Clint just put it up on UA-cam to reach a bigger audience.
“I’m Nolan Bushnell. Let me just piss away owning the entire music production industry.”
Nolan Bushnell sold ATARI way before this infomercial . It was the Tramiels that are partly to blame . Mostly , it was the people running the home computer news media calling ATARI and Commodore as game companies . ATARI slaughtered the Apple Macintosh and BOTH the ST and Commodore AMIGA were better PCs than any Wintel POS .
@@akfreed6949 Word!
Every computer has it’s own feel ha? Lee clearly had no idea about computers back then.
the golden age of embracing the computer into music ... Now these folks are relics, while the onslaught of technology goes on and on ...
Yes we are...maximum respect and peace.
24:09 Is he playing for real at all? Because none of it seems to match up with what i'm hearing. Or is it hard locked the correct chord/key and he's just triggering timing?
One of my first and favorite DAWs ran on the Atari ST. I loved it. I just don't recall the name of the software.
TOS (The Operating System) is the operating system of the Atari ST range of computers. This range includes the 520ST and 1040ST, their STF/M/FM and STE variants and the Mega ST/STE. Later, 32-bit machines (TT, Falcon030) were developed using a new version of TOS, called MultiTOS, which allowed multitasking. hope that helps :)
Pro24 is what i was using on my 1024 ste in the 80's
Yep, Steinberg before Cubase@@enoz.j3506
Amazing to see Grusin getting his grubby hands on all this - I thought he had bowed out by 89. @6:00 - what was the guitarist playing I didn't hear it.. was it converting his guitar notes to midi with that cheesy synth line?? ? It didn't follow what he was forming on his hand though. he was doing chords when I hear a single note
Yeah the 80s really tried to make use of guitar-to-midi, but it definitely has not caught on
Yes he was playing the synth line. It looks like a similar guitar Pat Metheny uses to do his synth/guitar stuff. He was certainly soloing and you can even see him bend the strings along with a few of the notes. Lee Ritenour was famous for doing this kind of thing
@6:00 I think he might just be playing standard rhythm guitar not actually converting to MIDI
@@OPdbx so it's taking a chord and making one note I assume - thanks for your reply friend.
@@SPINNINGMYWHEELS777 I think where you time stamped he's just playing basic normal rhythm guitar. He did play that synth lead you hear, but just before that 5:30
It's pretty funny that MIDI on the Atari was rock solid, but now with modern PCs MIDI, especially over USB is absolutely horseshit. To record the audio of external hardware in my DAW without a tonne of jitter and latency I need to use an Expert Sleepers USAMO, a device that relies on a VST plug-in to convert the MIDI information into audio, bung it out an interface, then convert it back into MIDI again, What a faakin' palaver!
Exactly! Primary reason I still use the ST with the Hotz translator oppose to the PC version.
maybe you need a better daw? I honestly never encountered issues like that
@@Fedor_Tkachev_Music Nah, I use Cubase 12 Pro on a new system, the issues I mentioned are very real. You can do a simple test if you own a synth or drum machine that features both USB and Analog Synch In. Download the free ERM Multiclock plugin, then route the audio clock signal generated by the ERM plugin and send it to the Synch Input of your synth/drum machine. Record a minute or so of audio into your DAW this way, then repeat the process, but use USB MIDI instead, then compare and contrast both audio files. I absolutely guarantee as long as your ASIO buffer is as low as possible, the track you recorded with the Analog Synch will be far tighter and more accurate.
@@Rr0gu3_5uture hmmm worth testing out. I could run eurorack voice via es8 and bass station 2 via usb to see if they go out of sync
I literally have issues with latency all the time. I always have to adjust the audio a bit to get it back in time. Annoying
I used to do all this with my Amiga 600 and an external MIDI controller a long time ago!
25:12 Jack Black's humble beginnings.
I am wondering which one is that guy, left middle or right as Atari logo clearly depicts two drunk guys leading sobber one in the middle.
Please how can I run my korg M1 keyboard workstation and my Atari st running on clab notator software with a notator dongle
a poor mans fairlight
Haha, hardly 😂
Well, to be fair, unless you were rich at the time and could afford a Fairlight II, IIx or III, every sampler under it was a 'poor mans fairlight'. The ST was primarily a sequencing tool.
@@clivejones5880 Exactly. A Fairlight was like 80k when they were current. So hard to actually think about, but before digital DAWs, we were really kept in a tiny, claustrophobic space. Even in my modern DAW, I constantly revert back to Arturia's emulator of the CMI. Just the best VST by far that I have. I can make half of my entire track or more just with that.
That describes every digital composition system not named Fairlight or Synclavier.
@@AntarcticGuitarEnthusiast 2 fairlights,,,,oh my god,,,,,$$$$$$$$$$
Landfill
Why in God's name did Mike Pinder not ever create new age/atmospheric recordings after parting with the Moody Blues? A master of sound, and nothing of the sort from him, with knowledge of this technology? Baffling and painfully disappointing. Mike, are you out there? It's not too late.
The Atari ST was so far ahead of it's time, but pricing was not aggressive enough to capture market share.
Is that Mick Fleetwood??? No way! Rad...
mick fleetwood 21.30 .... :)
No mention of the STe, unacceptable.
I presume it came out later in the year..
12:44 Yes - Rhythm of Love. ;p
So basically this was a bedroom musicians daw them?
Hi Res monochrome monitor 🤣
(graphics for video obviously done on an Amiga)
"All the animation... created using Atari ST"... screen 0:07 end 29:24? Amiga is so weak that you have to lie?
the video was produced by Sam Tramiel, what in the world would they need Amiga for?
I love when AMIGA users try and trash the ST and ATARI . I always reply the AMIGA is really an ATARI because the creator of the AMIGA is responsible for the original 8bit line of ATARI . And the AMIGA DOES HAVE ATARI patented parts in it . For instance the joystick controller design is ATARI patented . Sega and Nintendo had to pay ATARI for use of their patent as did Commodore .
There’s no way that printed sheet music was actually accurate. Printed music from the Atari was notoriously incorrect
Why? I printed lots of scores on the ST and it looks exactly what I played. Sometimes, It's too accurate so I have to quantize the track. The only caveat was I used Notator, not EZ Score which is what I think they are using here.
@@puffpuffin1 Jeff Davis must be a Commodore fanboy .
@@puffpuffin1 Did you print it out with a dot matrix printer?
"Bzizzit... dzit... bzzzitt...dit... dzzitt"
The music notation was MIDI based. How can it be inacurrate?
I’d say the amiga 500 was better for music than the Atari ST
This isn't about the Amiga, it's about the Atari ST and it's MIDI capabilities, and the amount of software that was available for it - the Amiga didn't have MIDI. Every studio had and Atari ST in the late 80's.
For professional music studios Atari ST was the standard for long time. Amiga had it's own tracker-scene but it was underground hobbyists thing.
Amiga was the graphics computer. Didn’t have built in midi
I started off with an Amiga, then bought an Atari ST with Cubase 3.1. Although you needed a MIDI interface to use the Amiga, it had far better sound and graphics. When I switched to Cubase on Atari I still used the Amiga MIDIed up to the ST because of its superior sampling capabilities. I ended up ditching the Amiga when I eventually bought a n E-mu Esi 32 though.
@@Rr0gu3_5uture Cool. Yeah Amiga had sampling capability. That's why trackers thrived in Amiga. I guess people used Atari ST basically as a MIDI controller to control hardware synths and samplers.
3:42, my man invented playing laptops on stage... kinda cringe
You cringing at this is way more cringe than that. Must be sad to cringe at every little thing.
@@sub-jec-tiv Must be sad to get triggered by every little joke youtube comment
@@ryanbates362cringe face
Hybrid Arts SMPTE Track being a preferred sequencing software.