re methods, the beauty of jungle rhythms as made early in the history of jungle is that it was all about how you cut your amen and what you did with the slices. there was nothing else really, everyone had the same basic things to work with. just a sample cut up and rearranged with various pitching, time stretching, volume level and panning. that being said, there were a number of ways to get there, and all had their strengths and weaknesses.
much of what you hear from the early years came from '
trackers.' basically a tracker is an old style sample sequencer (circa mid 80s to present) that handles midi too, on a rudimentary level. the interface is based around text commands that fly by like a piano roll. each command resides on its own line (or tick, usually at a resolution of 32nd notes). basically a big step sequencer with capabilities as a sampler that may seem basic, but all available tricks used in combination are all anyone uses for sampled phrases.
AST is an EMU endorsed 'DOS tracker' which utilizes the EMU8000 chip found on
Creative SoundBlaster AWE32 and 64 soundcards in a direct manner, rather than through the shitty Creative Windoz driver... therefore allowing direct control of the sample data and hardware via pattern writing. every step can contain a note value, a velocity value, a note cut off, and any one of about 60-80 commands related to any aspect of the system including parameter automation, FX application, tempo, instrument selection, etc. you can resample the instruments output (internally, perfectly trimmed measure), save to disk, edit in an external editor (with plugins, etc), reload and away you go. youre only limited by the internal 20bit buss resolution and your imagination! oh, and no native plugins although there are a few destructive DSP functions in the sample editor... basically very fun to use, if you ask me. not as hard as it looks. you can step input it all, or use a controller in some capacity although i havent tried it yet. no sync options unfortunately, but theres midi out, so you can couple it with a midi patchbay and theoretically control a number of pieces of gear from it. my idea of fun. (
example of music made 100% in AST the oldschool way)
AST Features:
- 32 Channels
- Support of EMU8k, MPU401 (midi) In/Output, OPL3/FM and PC-Honker
- programm and use your AWE-card like an professianal sampler (like AKAi...) with the advantage of an integrated pattern-based sequencer.
- Direct hardware control about Filters, LFOs, Envelopes, Reverb and Chorus effects - Very fast Midi timing. Extremely low latency
- More than 40!!! different effects, even 16 Pitchshifters possible in realtime
- Groove and shuffle effects for every channel
- Dynamic track allocation
- High quality, fast and intelligent player-routines (sends only real necessary midi data)
- Use AWE-Rom samples or load *.wav's / FT2 *.xi's into the AWE-Ram (or load anything you want)
- User defineable font and colour style
System Requirements:
- Any 486 IBM compatible machine with at least 40 MHz and 1024kB RAM / 1 MB Hdd-space (prolly even less)
- DOS 6.2 or Win9x (no Windows2000)
- any SB compatible soundcard for OPL/FM and MIDI output
- an SB-AWE32 / 64 compatible soundcard with RAM onboard for using all the features
(c) Patrice Bouchard, Markus Feil and Alex Sidow 1996-2000
the card is basically an eIII sampler engine with an FM chip and a talking chip, the rest of the card is a soundblaster 16... its 13 inches long! this is the oldschool jungle way!
you can use a newer
Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold card which has a much better signal to noise ratio, and even has a 20bit spdif output.
theres an easy way to
add up to 28MB sample ram to an AWE64 gold...
i spent total less than $100 on this whole idea, including the computer.
if youre a fan of the sampling sound of the late 80s/90s, this method has that sound. the filter is pretty good, and the effects are base, but they can be done.
the other method is (are) an Akai MPC or other Akai sampler, or perhaps a Peavey SP or Roland S series. you name it, its been done.
